Clown Shoe

Epic

That was the very last thing ever recorded by members of my old band. Of course by recorded I am referring to our little setup in my living room my guitarist and I (drummer) used to put rough tracks on disk and send to our singer who lived about 3 hours away. 

We would get together a couple times a week and come up with ideas and every so often one of them would be deemed decent enough to turn into a song. Sometimes we would just record the entire session of us getting together then go back and listen to excerpts and find riffs or beats that sounded interesting then talk it over and piece them into a rough track that we would rehearse 2 or 3 times then we would do our best to record it so we could send it off for modification by the vocalist. He would listen to the track and send me an email back with comments corresponding to times within the song where he would need changes. Once a month he would make the trek down to see us and we would hold a marathon rehearsal to actually practice the songs with his lyrics in place and hope that all the changes were correct. 

It wasn't always done this way. 

When we first started we all lived withing a few miles of each other. I was the oldest, had a steady job and a family, they were all seniors in high school. They found me at a point when I had given up on being in bands. I was sick of the attitudes, the constant ideology that we had to hit it big. I was settled into a more modest goal, I wanted to make music for myself. 

When these guys found me I was not interested in playing in a band at all. They kind of threw their demo onto my desk, I refused to even take it. After a few days, I had a colleague of mine give it a listen on his way to get us coffee. When he returned he would not comment on the quality or the talent, of which he would normally never hold his opinion back, instead he merely said "You should listen to it."

Well, it had something about it. Wasn't great, wasn't terrible. I called them up and we started a band.

In the beginning things were pretty normal, we had a practice schedule and a plans to record our own demo which we eventually did. My only regret really is that we didn't pool our money together and book time in a studio and get a decent 5 song ep out.

We ended up having a set list of about 12 songs, all of which were around 5 - 7 minutes. The song linked at the top was eventually turned into a full fledged song, and it ended up being of of my favorites and a crowd favorite, but it was never recorded properly beyond what you hear now. Also, when I was digging around my hard drive looking for other songs I realized the my actual favorite song that we did, which was written rather late in our career was never even recorded at all beyond the scratch guitar track.

I had some really good times playing with those guys despite the age difference but I am rather glad I don't deal with it anymore. Damn I do miss making music though.