_____We all share common interests, certain things we don't like about the world, certain things we'd like to change. And we figured we'd use one of the worlds biggest corruptions...popularity to take our best shot at changing it. _____We got to together in September at Jonathan W.'s old house out in his little shop where his new drumset was set up. We had a huge guitar Amp, a small gorilla bass amp, NO mic, and a drumset with cymbals made of tin. We knew we wouldn't get that far like this, so we started brainstorming on who we could call that had a microphone. After naming a few we called our current Technical Engineer Matt Vick who told us to bring our stuff down to his place and we could practice there. So we hauled our stuff 4 miles down the road to Matt's shop that also doubled as a photography studio for his father, Ron. We immedietly worked the levels and got to work on our first cover..."For Whom The Bell Tolls". After we did that and worked it, we found that we could do that rather simply. When that night was over we set a date to practice next and when that day rolled around we got to work on some other covers, tracks from punk bands MXPX and Dogwood and also Rap-Rock superstars Papa Roach. This all didn't click for us, after many attempts at perfecting these songs, we finally gave them up and took a road not usually traveled by a band just starting out...writing. _____"Behind the Lines" was our very first and I don't think that any of us actually knows how we came about it. Both the guitar and the bass riff had been written for a long time and the drum part and lyrics came up on the spot. We structured it and that was it, our first song we completed on only one day. After that songs just came 2nd nature to us, the riff would be written, the bass to that, the drum part written on the spot and the lyrics pre-written would be added according to how well they fit. After we had written about 10 songs, there was a huge break of which we only practiced once for about an hour, three riffs were written over that break and out of those riffs came "The Light In The Distance", "To A Candid World", and "Fairweather Friends". Each song more complex than those before the break. After we had structered these we began to think about a live show, and the date set was January 13th. We immediately started to search for covers, knowing that we'd have to play stuff that everybody knew and we came to the conclusion of only five covers (Godsmack - Awake, Papa Roach - Last Resort, COC - Clean My Wounds, Metallica - For Whom The Bell Tolls, and Bush - Machinehead) We also added at the last minute a three minute version of Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of The Republic", which included genre's of music such as, Punk, Ska, Blues, and Hard Rock. We went into the show with a 19 song set, included 3 acoustic songs and we pulled it off without a hitch. _____After the show we didn't practice for awhile, which is probably good because after it you realize how much hard work it took to get there, and you don't want to go through it all again. But when you realize that after you get the material for one show, you can play the same material with a few new songs, some different covers and perhaps another band there with you. So we started practicing again after Emily Berry, a reporter for the school newspaper asked us when were going to play another show in Columbia. We thought about it and casually remarked, "March 10th." With this in mind, we scrapped all the covers we had played at the previous show except for "Machinehead" and picked up a set of new covers. (Saves The Day - Rocks Tonic Juice Magic, Rancid - Journey to the End of East Bay, Pennywise - Brohymn, and Anti-Flag - Tearing Everyone Down) These were no problem, there was only a few things we had to fix, so we did that as we worked on some originals. Main Lie was the first of the three new originals we were going to play at the next show. What made this song so amazing was the fact the lyrics had been written 2 years before my Robbie and I for another band we were in. That song was incredibly powerful with lots of emotion and we liked it a lot. But we got to thinking that we were playing all punk covers and had no punk originals, we had to have an original punk song. That's where Alone comes in, it's dedicated to an old relationship of Robbie's where the girl turned out nothing like she was on the surface. Her name actually appears in the song...if you look at it hard enough.
_____So we got our set...and with the help of a guy Robbie had met this previous summer, got our opening band, John, Oliver, Wes, and Andrew...New and Used. A great group of guys from Elizabeth City, NC that play an awesome upbeat style of punk that will make the crowd jump all night. The monday before the weekend of the show we decided we weren't happy with the set we were going to play, and decided then to subtract "Where's Your Tomorrow" and add a new song with the same feel as "Main Lie". Robbie and Jon of course had been working on a song together and played it, Jonathan added the drums and after I listened to them structure I wrote lyrics. The whole song was written in just a day that was titled "Our Civil U.S" An ode to people who die for untrue knowledge that has been pumped into their heads since birth. So the set was made, and we ran through it Tuesday.
_____Baseball games followed on Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday we had baseball practice then went straight to Matt's to get the stuff to set up the place the night before. We did, and went home with high hopes for the next day. The next day, we ran through the set and seperated until about 5:30. We got back at the venue, made last minute preperations for New and Used to show. They showed up at around 6:40 and set up. They brang a lot of people from Elizabeth City and when they fired it up at 8:30, there was clearly more Eliabethians than Columbians. But as they roared through their set more Columbians showed up to even it out. After their 13 song set we started up. Our set went decently, Robbie broke a string and had to use Andrew from New and Used's guitar. But other than that, we had a pretty good set, even had an encore because people wouldn't leave.
_____That's where we stand, we're looking at expanding our set for the show in Oliver's backyard.
