The Band's Story

Okay, so this may not be the best source to get the real story of The Hitchhikers, but it's a good start. It may not be good because it comes from The Drummer. But it's not here yet, this is just here to tell you that yes, it will come some day. Until then, this is all there is: I met Will in third grade on a baseball team. I met Jon in fourth grade at school. Will, as I understand it, became friends with Zach and Dave in Kindergarten actually. Will met Jon when Jon was on our baseball team. I met Zach the August before 8th grade (1996) and I met Dave in October at a Halloween party we played at where i went as Dave Grohl. Zach met Jonny at a party at my house that we sucked at in late August, just after Zach joined (when I didn't like him.). Will and I formed the band in January, 1996. Zach joined in August, then we let Dave in for a gig in April of '97. Jonny joined in as singer December 1997.

Will Wilcox plays the Lead guitar and is very good for a guy who only knew three chords two years ago. Zach Hartwig plays public Saxophone, otherwise known as the Bass. He uses a pick, and I'm damn proud of him. he can do whatever he wants!!!!!!!!! Dave DeCaro plays Rhythm Guitar and he knows some stuff. Boy does he have a loud amp. Jon Roundy is a laugh, a Joke, and an overall good guy. I love Jonny and his singing, mostly because Will can't sing and he would if Jon weren't here. I am me. That's about it.

I have known Will the longest and he's a pretty good guy. He and I get along okay unless we piss eachother off. I've known Jon almost as long as I've known Will and He's pretty spiff. Zach I've known for a very short time and man are he and I good friends. We do everyting together...almost. Dave is a nice guy, but he has this strange chocolate sauce/whipped cream fetish going on with Kat, who's page you can visit from my index page (hit the back button). All in all, we kick ass.

Let's see now to the real stuff...the history. The band started in January of 1996 with just me and Will getting together playing Nirvana and eventually Foo Fighters songs as well as some stuff we made up. Those were fun days, and we were going to have none other than Jon Roundy on bass. But, well, Jon can't play bass so we kept looking. For months we looked, and found only that bassists are very hard to find. We went through Drew Pfifer, who was not quite as talented as Will thought he was, and Will finally found Zach and brought him in. Zach was actually a guitarist and only temporary, which was fine with me because I didn't like him all too much. But I learned to love him, the cute little guy!! Dave kinda hung out with us and occasionally would plug in his guitar and try to figure out what we were doing, and we took the time to show him once. He finally got it all figured out now I think, which is good considering he's in the band now. Jonny hung out with us a lot too, and I figured since Will couldn't sing and Jonny was in chorus at school, he'd do a better job. And he does! We played our first gig with him on January 31st, 1998, at Rosati Kain. If you watch the tapes, Jonny looks very very nervous but he did a pretty good job anyway. We love Jonny. He's da man!!

We pretty much started out playing in my basement. We played parties and it sucked for a while, but our biggest gig before high school was the MQP spring festival, which was a pretty bad show until the last third. Our second set was horrible. All covers that we hadn't practiced in two weeks. I shudder remembering it...eeeewwwww. So anyway, that kinda got us "out" a little, but not much. We didn't really start making any fans until we got into high school, and then we played at Rosati. We weren't on the t shirts, but we were good enough to be. As I recall, the only cover we played was "New Way Home" by Foo Fighters, and Jonny screwed it up but it didn't matter. It was still pretty good. The crowd seemed to not mind us playing, which is better than yelling at us to get off the stage, but not as good as going crazy for us being there. But things are about to get better...we're about to record a demo and maybe play at The Hi Point. So keep watching for us...

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Email: stixx@stlnet.com