Reunited, revisited.

Hi.

It’s been roughly a month since the Storytown:Reunited show took place in Oxford, Ohio. That was then – June 17th, 2011 – and this is now, July 15th of the same year. I feel absolutely blessed to have been able to be involved in the whole affair.  The show went well. I would say that we brought the rock to to Miami University once again.

It was wonderful for so many reasons. The music – our music – was at the core for each of us in the band. Brad, Tim, Rick and I came together and forged a bond over our music all those years ago, and it was that bond that allowed us to come back together and perform again. And let’s be honest. We played for ourselves as much as anyone else.

The other part of the experience that made it for us was the chance to reconnect with friends. Many people have the “best years of their life” at college and often long to re-live the glory days. And I can understand why. But that’s not what this was. We did have great years at Miami. But beyond that we had the honor to know and be friends with some of the best people on earth. Period. And what this was, was a chance to touch base, shake hands, hug, embrace those amazing people and personalities that helped to shape us all those years ago. It was a chance to remember and rekindle friendships. It was a chance to live time all over, while remaining happily in the present.

The show was a blast. Our friend and long-time supporter Carrie brought her talented photographer hubbie out and he took some pics. I hope you like them. At the end of the picture show, check out the details about this kind and talented photographer. If you want pics, he’ll sell them to you. At a great price. Enjoy.

Hello, Oxford.

Those are a couple of nice group shots. But David Phillippi, the photographer really blew us away with the individuals. Here’s a bunch.

I hope you like the pics. The photographer has made them available (along with a couple hundred more) here. Storytown Pics.

If anyone would like to buy a few, they are $2 each for print. This money goes straight to the photographer who came out and shot the show out of the goodness of his heart (and a little urging from his wife!).

Have a great weekend.

Time All Over

Did you ever wish you could turn back time?

I did. On more than one occasion. I didn’t turn back time of course, but I did wish that I could.

And, at twenty years old, I made my wishes public.

Most 19- to 21-year-olds would quietly wish for their own personal time shift. Then they’d waste away afternoons listening lonely to the sad shoegazery band of their generation. My sad bands were The Smiths and The Cure, and they both wished to get some time back on their side. I’m told that Morrissey came up missing six years. Long years, as the song goes.

Call me morbid, call me pale

I’ve spent six years on your trail

Six full years of my life on your trail

And so on with the fantastic sadness. Both groups had a lot to be sad about, what with all the fame, money and adulation. Morbid and pale describes a lot of people that never made a dime off of melancholy.

So anyway, back to me.

I didn’t have anything to be sad about. I was in 20-year-old boy heaven. I was of legal drinking age (grandfathered in) at Miami University, long known as a campus populated by attractive and fun-loving young people. I was pale, but I wasn’t morbid. For some reason, though, on several occasions, I wished I could turn back time.

I said before that I made my wishes public. More like sorta public. Public-ish. I mean if a tree falls and nobody hears it, right?

At the time my favorite “job” was being a songwriter. Which means that during college, I had musician fantasies and I wrote a bunch of songs, and thought I was a songwriter. But, I didn’t get paid for it. Although people did pay to see the songs performed. But still… not a Barry Manilow or a Stefani Germanotta level songwriter.

So: I’m songwriter-esque. I made my feelings public through lyrics. And I wrote the lyrics to a song called Comes a Time that included these:

And I’ll run, backwards around the world

Across the dateline into yesterday, girl

I’ll unlive my life, except for all the good things I’ve done.

And you will watch in wonder as I burn up brighter than the sun.

I’ll unlive my life, I’ll undo all my wrongs my wrongs.

In twenty years of running I’ll be gone.

Twenty years of running, I’ll be gone.

I get two things out of the lyrics above.

One, I was sorry. For something. For many things. Who knows? And two, I must have been twenty. Or close to it. I’m neither twenty or close to it now. But I might still be sorry.

Anyway, the important thing isn’t my age. The important thing is that I wanted to improve my past, re-live something, get a “do-over.” I wanted to run – Superman style – in the opposite direction of the turning of the earth and turn back time. That was Superman’s masterstroke in one of the early Reeve movies. (maybe vs those three alien creeps from the Phantom Zone). I thought that if I could pull it off, in doing so I would be able to erase some nasty or hurtful shit that I did.

Looking back, I don’t know what I did, specifically, but I can imagine. Not every 20-year-old in a fairly well-liked rock band is a saint. At the same time I hope that half of every conflict that fueled the content of my songs was fiction. If all of my mea culpas are warranted, then I was a huge douchebag. So for my own sake and sanity, I take the “can I erase this?” nature of my songwriting with a grain or 1,000 of salt. Not good for the hypertension, but a little easier on the soul. Plus, everybody knows that an extra dose of chest-beating regret always helps the creative process.

At least I hope that’s the case, because I think about erasing time in several Storytown songs.

So, as me and the boys from Storytown have been rehearsing for our big rock show (and by “big” I mean we’ll be performing for between 20 and 100 people), I’ve been exploring the thematic content of some of my lyrics throughout our body of work. The time thing is one thematic I used a few times.

In the song Calendar, it seems there was one specific day I was interested in undoing:

It must have been something I said or had done

God knows I never meant to hurt anyone

I never meant to cause you any pain

I never wanted to take that walk in the rain that day.

That day.

That day.

The song was named Calendar as a reminder of that one shitty day. You know how people put an “X” on a day to signify that it’s gone? This song is about that day, but the X cannot be removed. Written in permanent ink. Can’t go back.

In a song called Poison Pen, I lyrically pushed an unnamed antagonist into her future just so she could imagine regretting her past:

I can picture you in 13 years

With a poison pen and a glass of tears

That you cried one night when you realized

That your last thirty years were spent in disguise

And then, toward the end of college, the end of our first run together, we wrote one last song. Made one last push together. We didn’t know it was our last song. We were a band on the brink of implosion and explosion at the same moment. And at that moment, we slid in one direction, slightly, and imploded. Quietly. An implosion felt deeply, powerfully and viscerally by the four of us. At the same time it was just a small event in the worlds that surrounded each of us. For the four of us in the band, our lives changed immediately and completely. For everyone else it was like losing a sock. You just move on. Get another pair.

And so it is that nearly twenty years ago, I wrote a lyric that dealt with time. The thought of undoing my short history came back again. And the last Storytown song was Time All Over. After the first verse the time-reversing wishes begin:

If we could unravel just one day

Put the clocks to sleep some way

Pay off time to take a fall

Maybe we could live time (all over time) all over.

As the song continues, nostalgia kicks in and the longing is that one could easily relive the good stuff of life, perhaps again and again, in one long, glorious moment.

If I could learn the formula

Of time’s cosine or its quotient

I’d rewind to the beginning

And live the good parts in slow motion

So it’s interesting that now, nearly 20 years after the conception of Time All Over, me and my friends are reunited and living time all over. We re-met. We re-became friends. We re-learned our songs. And in a way we are re-writing history, for ourselves, our friends and our children. We’ve literally been apart for the better part of the last 20 years. I’ve been completely removed – and the education and careers and growth of my partners in rock have forced them to grow apart. Our wives and children (except for one wife) have never seen us play together. That all changes two weeks from tonight.

In a way, the wish comes true. We get to live today and yesterday at once. The good parts in slow motion. We get to live time all over, enjoying the wisdom and patience that we’ve learned over the years, mixed in with the mischief and glee of impetuous youth. We can breathe new life into the same tired jokes our wives have long ago learned to roll their eyes at, while reveling in new opportunities to be as immature as possible.

And the show on the 17^th of June is the intersection of it all. It brings music and friends and passions and playfulness from the past together with music and friends and families from the present and beyond. It blends past with present. We can share our yesterdays with our todays and our todays with our tomorrows. And yeah, it’s a bit self-congratulatory, but who cares? Twenty years out we deserve it.

So to wrap this up, there’s one more song to mention. Brad put together an instant classic after our first weekend of rehearsals. We’ve been working on it. We hope to share it on the 17^th. It is called Ninety One. It fits nicely with tonight’s theme of historical reclamation:

I found a picture

It was 1991

We’re on the sidewalk in the front of our apartment

We were smiling

In our flannel shirts and Docs

A look we thought would always be in style

And now I — Wish I could see you now

And hear — You laughing like we did back then

All the way back in ninety-one, ninety one

All the way back down to ninety one

Back to the place we know we all belonged…

Thanks for reading. More to come after the big weekend.

Here’s to being tied together; to belonging to each other. Here’s to our pasts, our present and our collective future.

Here’s to time. All over.

Solo, not alone.

The blogging hasn’t stalled so much as life has revved up.

At work, I’ve moved to a new role. It’s a good move for me. But it’s brand new and I’m feeling the pressure. Worked until late last night.

At home, I’m right between the kids’ two birthdays. Early May and early June. Those celebrations come at me every year like a boxer’s best combo.

Stir in youth soccer. Add swimming lessons (not for me, though I would probably benefit). A pinch of business travel (to Arkansas, no less.)

And then cover it all with some music.

After the rehearsals we had a few weeks back (tax weekend, April 15^th-17^th ). I went out and played an open mic. It’s sort of a closed open mic, if you will, in that it requires an audition of sorts and has a set schedule. It was an interesting night.

The venue: a small, beer-and-a-shot sort of place on Chicago’s north side. Sylvie’s has two distinct sides, a bar side with dart boards and some old, square Nagel prints in silver frames. So random. Maybe they’re ironic. The other side has a decent stage and some tables and chairs. A sound booth in the back.

Both sides of the place smelled of urine, cleanser and hot dogs.

Several of my friends showed up early with me. I paced around drinking water and doing busy, jittery set-up work that didn’t need to be done. They relaxed and drank beer. More and more folks trickled in; I knew them all. It was a great feeling. A scary feeling.

I’ve played lots of shows in my day. Played in front of 11,000 people when I was 17 or 18. Was that scary? Not at the time. Exciting. What could go wrong? It was 11,000 people waiting for us to be done with our set. We were opening for the Michael Schenker Group in Dayton, Ohio. The sign at the lip of the stage was publicizing a chili cook-off somewhere in the vicinity. So the people with feathered hair that were NOT interested in us alt rock kids could take the last train to fartsville until MSG took the stage.

A few years after that we played in front of 1200-1400 several times opening up for bigger bands in Chicago. Way more exciting than scary. We thought we we’re on the path to rock stardom. Plus, I was taking the stage with my three best friends. There’s power in that. Band-of-brothers-type power. It was us against the world. And as trite and hackneyed as that expression is, it’s true. There is instant confidence to be gained by adding like-minded friends and facing people together, with guitars and amps and drums.

It got so that playing to several hundred at time was like falling out of bed. Easy and fairly common.

Playing to 30 people I consider friends? Fucking horrifying.

It shouldn’t be, right? It would be safe to assume that even the worst performance would elicit polite applause and a few “nice jobs.” Friends are friends because they’re friendly, right? True.

But who do you want to please more? Some mulletted knob in line for the porta-potty at the MSG show? Not really a factor. How about the shoe-gazer with the superior attitude? Ok, maybe you want to win over a skeptic or two, but you don’t need to have dinner with them. Friends are with you. You want them to like the music for a reason bigger than the fact that they like you. You want them to think the music is good. To be impressed. To feel that the songs are strong. The lyrics are meaningful, and the performance is good. Maybe even surprisingly so.

Because you don’t want to make a friend into a liar. If I suck up there, my friends are gonna tell me I did well. But when they stop and think about it later… they might think: “meh… hang it up, brother…” And that’s unacceptable to me.

Which is why it is so worrisome to get up there in front of the people that you know and love.

But I did it. I got up there, just me and a guitar and played some songs.

And I was nervous. Add to it a guitar malfunction and I was downright shaky. I have an acoustic guitar with a pick-up in it. That means typically I can plug it in to a sound system and play right through the house speakers. Something went wrong and I had to mic the guitar. Which means I had to sit or stand in one place. Which is not what I wanted to do. So I had to sit. Shackled to this situation, I got even more nervous. My leg literally shook uncontrollably as I sat. I had epic, sahara-like drymouth. My mind raced.

But the beauty of playing for friends is that they do boost your confidence. If you do well, they clap a bit more vigorously than others. They hoot. The holler. They laugh at your attempts at banter. Which feeds back to me as positive energy. When I was younger these were the same people that would buy me a shot and tell me I had a chance with ladies I had no business talking to. Friends, like alcohol can add courage and grit to a nerve-wracking situation.

I kept on. And it was fun. Through the dry mouth and shakes, I think I did ok. When it was over, I got some hugs. I got some complements. And most importantly I got to chase off the nerves and have a few drinks with some good friends. Because even though I was solo, I wasn’t alone.

It was a positive thing. A challenge I set for myself. Some much needed stage time before the Storytown : Reunited show happening this summer. So I signed up to do another one. It’s this Monday, May 16^th in Chicago. Same place same time. Later that week, the members of Storytown will convene in Columbus for a few days of rehearsal in our run up to June.

Until next time.

Fully Vested.

A few weeks back, I wrote an entry that conjured up images of my present self and my 20-year-old self having a conversation about hair. Long hair.

Toward the end of that imagined conversation,  myself and I had a brief exchange about vests. It went like this: What’s next? You gonna call me on your space phone and ask me why we wear so many vests? We fucking like vests!

When I wrote that, I had a fleeting memory that maybe me and the guys in Storytown wore vests a bit too frequently. I wasn’t sure. The drummer was just a shirtless animal, so he wasn’t culpable in any way. But the rest of us?

I investigated. And this is just a sampling of what I found. Waistcoats galore.

Enjoy.

Just another serious musician. In a floral vest. In a junkyard.

It’s hard to look away. So don’t.

Vest on Tim.

Minutes later. Vest on Brad.

The vest is still a part of pop and rock fashion today. The guy from that one band that sings about using somebody wears one. Also, this guy. And there’s more.

leather.

Flowers. Note the beaded necklace that came to a "head" with a skull. Awesome.

Vested.

And more vested. In a studio. In front of no one. Being twenty = being dumb.

Yep. Add in some ripped jeans for good measure.

We have a winner. Shiny. Paisley. Vesty.

Yeah. We wore the vests. But so did our heroes at the time, like Bono, The Edge, Peter Buck. Everybody. So we were no different. It’s funny to look back at these pics and think how serious we were. If we had made it huge, maybe some kid would have dressed like us. Alas that never happened. In June we’ll play again. Smarter. Wiser. Older.

And you can bet on me to wear one. I’ll be vested.

Rock of Ages

It’s been a busy few weeks. Travel, laziness, exhaustion and R-O-C-K have conspired to keep me from writing my trademark “too long, too wordy, too self-aggrandizing” blog posts.

OK, so I’ve never really stepped away from the self-aggrandizing bit, but there’s really no excuse for being brief and succinct.

Tonight, though, I feel compelled to throw a post at you. It can’t be long, because at this point I’ll bore myself and I’ve had a very emotional day. I’m tired. BUT, It can’t be too short, because that’s just another cop-out like my “photo-essay” a week ago featuring a terrible picture of guitar picks in a plastic baggie.

We all need to find our own low point and that last post was it. Until tonight.  My idea for tonight is like some “short-attention-span-theater.” I’ll just cover a few topics briefly, until I run out of gas. (Which is over $4 a gallon!)

The Father of Rock-n-Roll

Everybody here. Comes from somewhere.

In Storytown, we all came from different places, different types of families. We were all lucky enough to get along with our parents, for the most part. Some more than others, sure, but we all came from loving parents. But while we were attempting to gain rock superstardom AND finish college, some of our parents had some choice advice.

“Have something to fall back on,” was a popular refrain of the times.

“Don’t catch anything,” was heard more than once.

My mother was known to say, “Remember that you are a part of this family and a Catholic, so keep your pants on and you won’t get in any trouble.” I actually picture her as Jean Stapleton – Edith, from All in the Family - every time I think those words. Someday, I’ll spout that shit off at my kid. I can almost see the eye-rolling now.

By and large our parents were supportive even if some were a bit more aloof or more skeptical than others. My Dad was neither aloof nor outwardly skeptical. He was all-in supportive. So much so that he came up with a couple marketing ideas that he thought could really help the band (and Bold Bill – you know I love ya).

Here are a couple of his gems:

1. Sell Your Songs. He always encouraged me to sell my songs. “That one’s catchy, you could sell that to a country singer, “ he might say. Or, “It doesn’t matter rhymes with batter! Have you thought about writing cake jingles???” Jingles and country didn’t seem to be R-n-R at the time, but looking back, wouldn’t it have been cool to be all stoned and hear your music playing during a Duncan Hines SuperMoist TV spot? My head would have exploded.

2. Hire Doubles. My dad had this idea: We should hire look-alike, sound alikes, and teach them all our songs, so we could play two shows at once and collect more money for gigging. SO… we’d hire our own tribute band, like Elevation is to U2 or Destroyer is to Kiss. EXCEPT THAT THESE GUYS WOULD WORK FOR US, AND PRETEND TO BE US. After I calmed down and shrugged of the indignities of the suggestion, I did the math. It was cheaper to just be us.

3. His latest idea is sweet. And theatrical. And a little abhorrent to the rock and roll purist among us, but it could have been funny. He reminded me of the long hair we all once had:

A natural brunette.

Like a Pantene ad. Plus rock.

He went on to suggest that we all start this summer’s show wearing wigs and ripped jeans. After a “number” or two we would take them off, revealing – to the surprise and delight of the audience – our shorter more respectable haircuts.

He means well. He’s seventy and spends his spring/summer/fall riding a motorcycle across the USA. Who’s more rock-n-roll than that? Not me.

When the bough breaks, when the bee stings.

These are a few of my favorite things:

Soldiers in my army of mid-tempo, mildly agressive rock.

Yes. I am excited enough about June to have procured new gear. Practicality can suck it.

Gunter glieben glauchen globen.

All right. I got something to say. Yeah, it’s better to burn out, yeah, than fade away.

Immortal words, these. Lyrics from a dimwitted brit rocker, who fronted a band that introduced us all to the miracle of one-armed drumming. What does Def Lep have to to with this blog? Nothing. I’m just using them to get back to the title of this post, Rock of Ages.

I would have used Rock of Aging, but it just felt… meh.

Anyway, as a few people know and fewer people care about, Storytown rehearsed this past weekend. We were brought back together by the promise of a renewed group friendship and the possibilities of the untried combination of rock+aging.

It worked. We rocked.

Maybe not at first. We may have sputtered and limped, cranking it up in fits and starts. But that didn’t last. Cobwebs were shaken off. Twenty-year-old insecurities were faced, dispatched and buried. Muscle memory and the pure joy of creating  something together with FRIENDS took over and — we did pretty f-in good. We might not be able to hair-flip like we used to but, I promise, we will bring some fine wine rock — aged, hopefully for the better — in June.

Guitar.

Bass.

Drums.

Vocals?

(More pics on the Storytown: Reunited FB page)

Yeah. That’s us now.

Marketers. Lawyers. Professors. Vegans. Carnivores. You’ll have to guess who’s who.

Husbands. Fathers. Rockers.

Friends.

The Devil called. He said it was freezing down there.

Today is the day.

Storytown will be together for the first time in 18 years.

We’ll have lunch. We’ll rock. We’ll talk about our kids and careers. We’ll reminisce about my youthful drug abuses.

And not necessarily in that order.

It’s gonna be something.

I’ll go out on a limb here. This is one of the most exciting days of my life. Today is probably only topped by a few other days, like my wedding, or the days my kids were born. It’s exciting.

Here’s how geeked out I am:

new strings

ready, tuned and awesome.

strings, tuner, iphone tripod!

new cord. screwdrivers unneeded.

picks. UK friend Marna: plectrums.

So I know that it’s totally self-indulgent and I do not care.  We will update. We will post.

We are those about to rock. And we salute you.

Historytown

Storytown was formed in Oxford, Ohio, way, way back in the day. Not as far back as dirt roads and horse-drawn carriages, but close. When we lived together, I think we had a Nintendo. So we were at least in the era post-Atari and Intellivision. CDs had been invented. They were edging out cassettes as the leading media for music at the time. I had an Apple II C. The screen was black and displayed primitive letters and images with green dot lights. It was like a rosetta stone/ababcus situation compared to the MacBook Pro that I’m working with right now.

History. Maybe not ancient history, but still. Pretty f-ing close.

Speaking of close, I got pretty close to my history the other night. I was in Cincinnati on business for an overnight. My hotel was on the city’s far north side, close to the site of the meeting I was attending the following morning. Dinner plans with a client fell through. I had time on my hands, a rental car with a full tank of gas, and my shades. It was too cloudy to wear them, but I wore them anyway, because the sun always shines when you’re cool.

I drove up to Oxford, Ohio. Miami University. With the band planning our triumphant, one-night reunion tour, I thought it might be a good idea to check out the venue we were slated to play. While in Oxford (for 38 minutes) I checked out a bit of my history as well. Some things looked pretty much the same. Some shit had CHANGED. Thank god for my inappropriate sunglasses – they helped me mask my wonder and emotion as I loped up and down the streets of Uptown Oxford. I felt too old to be there as a student and too young to be there as a parent, but I still felt like the same gangly and awkward and vaguely inferior kid I used to be. Especially occupying the same space as the put-together kids with their futures in front of them and their iPhones on their ears.

I went to check out the first place I lived in Oxford. I transferred in after freshman year and was lucky enough to be chosen to live in an honors dorm.

Elliot Hall

I was relieved to find something on campus older than I am.

Next I went to check out the place I lived with the other members of Storytown. There is a tradition in Oxford that off-campus houses have names and signs that display those names. There was Reunion, Home Plate, Shakedown Street, Limelight, The Stone House, The Society for the Prevention of Sobriety, Bored of Education, La Dolce Vita and many more. We named our house Never Trust a Hippy. Likely because we all had long hair. Or because we didn’t know any better. It was a reference to the Sex Pistols, I think, as well. Note the spelling of “hippy.” It’s sorta seems like a description. The type of description that will get you STABBED by any ladies present when you use it. So don’t.

anyway…

Never trust the Sex Pistols to win a spelling bee.

We lived here:

Never Trust a Hippy - aka Storytownhouse.

A couple things about this place: 1. No one ever called it Never Trust a Hippy. I don’t think we made a sign, or even ever told anyone but ourselves. Our friends just called it “storytownhouse” or “Shawn’s” or “Rick’s” or “Tim and Brad’s” or “festering sumphole” or whatever. 2. This place looks like a palace compared to when we lived there. I see the ironic caution tape on the porch, and that seems college-esque to me, but the flower beds, clean siding and fresh paint just seem foreign and wrong. We had a screen door that I jumped through trying to recreate a scene from the movies. It was never fixed. We could enter and exit the place without the use of doorknobs. In fact, I think our front doorknob might have gone missing for a spell. Not sure. I do know that we spray-painted slogans like: “sex is the most fun you can have with your guitar off” and other gems on the basement walls. Good times.

Then I went Uptown. Stopped in here:

Yum.

I ate here nearly every day one summer. It was tasty. And nearly free. My special lady at the time was an employee and she frequently worked shifts during times that coincided with my hunger. Convenient. Please note the frightening and very non-Miami-ish advertisement to the right of the Bagel and Deli sign. I’m “not sure” about that shit. I got my piercings (an earring) at a Claire’s Ear Boutique in a mall somewhere. I didn’t need anyplace named after dizziness and/or a Hitchcock movie to push me over the edge of reason.

Across the street was the Taco Bell and Ozzie’s/Balcony. At least that is what was once there.  Now there’s this:

Tyvek replaces the Taco Bell

and this:

Like seeing your childhood home torn down. Ick.

This was a soul-crushing sight.

Ok. Maybe not quite that bad.  BUT, the building above, lovingly named by the new, rent-grubbing owner “The Flats of Calista Tower”  was a complete bummer. For a few reasons: 1.) At three stories, not quite a tower. 2.) We’re not in England, we don’t really call one-level rental units “flats”. 3.) What the fuck have you done with the place that Storytown played SO MANY TIMES during college? Really? Oxford loses a landmark restaurant/bar combo to make room for a tomorrow that includes overpriced housing for girls with wealthy parents. Good job, Oxford Chamber of Commerce. You’ve done a really fantastic job of bringing the Bloomington/Normal aesthetic to Oxford. With a history dating back to 1809, you should be super-proud of all the pre-fab, cookie-cutter construction you’ve allowed. Stay classy, O-Town.

My next stop was a visit to the bar where we cut our teeth as a band. If Balcony — the soon to be “flats” on High Street — was the major-league place to play, this other place was the minors.

Down an alley, Mac-n-Joe's "front" door.

But the bands didn’t play through this door. We went even deeper into the alley. In our day the alley was lit only by a bare streetlamp, high up on a light pole. Now, an approaching patron would find this:

This is almost fancy, compared to what it was.

And inside: no stage, no seats, a small bar with limited seating and even more limited selection. I’m pretty sure cans of Busch Light were available here. Take a look at it now:

'cause if my eyes don't decieve me, there's something going wrong around here.

The bartender was kind enough to let me in to the bottom floor to take this pic. That floor used to be cement. Need I say more? At one time, this was the punkest room in Oxford. No longer. The indie rock ideal has fled, either grown up now and moved on, or just grown less profitable than flat-screens and Yagerbombs. We’ll see what happens next.

What will happen this summer is that the four of us from Storytown and whoever we can convince to come see us will meet in Oxford on June 17th 2011. We’ll meet here:

The Wood's.

and we’ll rock here:

Stage at The Wood's (apostrophe intentional) Wood is the owner's surname.

Or at least we’ll try to rock between hits of pure oxygen and geritol. I wish the geniuses of Big Pharma could come up with something that could restore me to my younger, thinner, rocking-er state for four hours or so that night. Like the Viagra of rock and roll swagger. Maybe they could call it MiaGra and market it to Miami Grads wanting to party like it’s 1991 all over again. I wonder if the name of this bar triggered this line of thought.

Anyway, enough already. As readers of this blog know, pictures are new for me. I hope they didn’t feel like a cop-out. I do like to cram 2500 words into a post when I can. But it was fun to visit mother Miami. And fun to share these pics.

Until next week.

Rock and Roll Road Show: Life is a VANtasy.

For a little while back in the day, I lived in a van with a few other dudes.

Let me start over. I’m writing about touring with a band. Storytown. The oft-mentioned (at least in this-here blog) musical entity that I was involved with all throughout college and a bit beyond. I know that some readers know a bit about this band and a bit about this time of my life. But on the off chance that a newcomer has “wandered” into these pages, you should know this: this shit is real. As you read on and become familiar with the glamour and luxury that once surrounded me and the band everywhere we went, you should keep in mind that we didn’t get to where we were overnight and that a lot of time and effort are what buoyed us to such great heights. Don’t try this at home. (unless of course you have supportive parents and three amazing bandmates to fall back on).

So yeah, let me tell you a bit about life on the road.

It’s not true that it was glamorous. We lived in a van. A used van. The kind of van people dream about when they think of having a career as either: a) a transporter of illegal aliens, or b) a date raper. It wasn’t fancy, it was vancy. It had wheels and lots of room and we drove it from show to show, city to city and state to state. Our instruments and gear resided in a trailer attached to the back. Also in the trailer: a specially designed area for “wardrobe.”  That’s what we called our clothes, because we were glamorous. Wardrobe. That means jeans and vests. I wish I could punch myself in the face right now, for even admitting this atrocity.

The van was expertly designed by a quorum of band members and one father. Which is to say: four useless longhairs sat around and philosophized about what would make a great road van and then Brad’s dad actually built it. (He probably bought the van, too.)

Here’s what we had:

1.   One van, green and white

2.   Two front seats, bucket

3.   A bench seat, less than comfy

And here is what we built (by we, I mean the Dad):

1.   A double-bed-sized upper bunk

2.   A cooler ‘well’ (the cooler lived below the surface of the top bunk and above the area where people slept in the…)

3.   Bottom bunk

4.   Sliding compartment doors, along the insides, housing band members’ personal items.

It was frickin’ genius. The Dad that did all the work made it so. It was built out of plywood. Multiple thicknesses of semi-splintery plywood. We threw futon mattresses on top of each wide sleeping area and we were good to go. It was a fairly spartan arrangement, but to us it was a tour bus. It slept five. We could carry food and drink, books, toiletries, weed, and other small items, no problem. And please understand — I’m only using the term “weed” for illustrative purposes. No one in Storytown ever touched the stuff. Except maybe that ne’er do well frontman. Everyone else was clean as a tea-totaling whistle. (revisionist history, yay!) To us it was like a tour bus, except for the fact that it was: a) the opposite of comfortable, b) very interesting to State Troopers and, c) NEVER filled with groupies.

Come to think of it, ONE young woman did have the misfortune of riding in the van with us. She was a reporter. Her name was Jane.

Jane wrote for a small scene paper in Chicago called Nocturne. She approached us about writing a story about our band and life on the road. We complied. We did a date or two in Chicago and she hopped in the van. We drove from Chicago to the land of Larry Bird, Terre Haute. And played this place:

We played a fucking rocktasmic 2-hour set to 15 people. We always gave our best stuff up on the stage. For 12 or 1200. Didn’t matter.  In this case, the audience included the bar owner and his unreasonably hot and scarily drunk wife. Jane the Reporter was there. Mix in one or two patrons who found it hard to mask their disappointment when we refused to play any Whitesnake songs. And finally, add in a deeply confused, mentally-challenged fan of “all things rock.”

I don’t know how else to put it. He was our biggest fan in Terra Haute.  He had a severe mental situation and he LOVED us. He wrote us letters.  (I suspect he loved EVERY band that played there, but he made us seem special). It was very touching and humbling to play for someone that made fandom their life. He would sit very close to the stage and hang on every word, every note. Looking back, I was too immature to understand what this guy had going on upstairs; I probably didn’t give him enough time or attention. Were I able to sing to him again today, I’d do my best to come at it from a place of undertanding. Here was someone who gave attention and admiration completely and without a filter. That’s rare today. Everyone is a critic. The world needs more fans.

The four of us were fans as well – of this guy, of music, musicians and the touring as well.

From there we went up to Minneapolis. Jane suffered the immaturity and flatulence of five 21/22-year-olds for the entire 8 hour drive. Poor girl. We were set to open for a band called Stickman – a well-known, Twin Cities outfit that was reuniting for a big show.

We played here:

As we started to play, it was clear to us that the crowd had gathered there to see the headliners. By the time we were finished, it was clear they had turned their focus to us, and wished we had more time to play.

Our live show was sorta something to behold. I’m not bragging, just telling the truth:

Rock and Roll!

We had lots of little jaunts like this, traveling together. It brought us closer on some days and likely… on other days drove us apart. We were all resilient men, so the road and all its glamour didn’t slow us down:

- In Iowa City, Iowa we got pulled over and two of us got tickets, one of us got arrested and jailed. Briefly. Somehow we had enough money in our pockets to make bail so we sprung the jailbird and high-tailed it to Ames. When we got there, there was NO SOUND SYSTEM so we cobbled one together with supplies from various frat houses and dorm rooms. We wound up putting on a tremendous show that started after midnight and went until nearly morning. Then we went to Perkins and ate our faces off.

- In Nashville, Tenessee we were paid with a pizza and sent on our way at gunpoint. This was one of those 12-people-in-the-audience-shows. On the way home, our van broke down on a famous stretch of I-75. This highway location was famous because a school bus has lost control and gone off the road and hurt/killed a bunch of people. If I remember correctly, we pulled off onto the shoulder within sight of a sign commemorating the tragedy. We were later towed away. So there’s me, in the tow truck cab with Toothless Joe the driver, looking back at the tilted-back van with my bandmates inside and our trailer behind. It’s a wonder we lived through the night.

- In Ames, Iowa there was an incident with weed and my subsequent inability to be useful. We had done two shows that night opening for a band from Minneapolis called Trip Shakespeare. We sorta adored them. At the end of the night there was the typical atmosphere of conviviality and shared self-congratulations. Someone had a small smoking device. Who was I to say no to my heroes? I’m sure my bandmates would have appreciated my ensuing uselessness more had I loaded out my stuff before indulging.

All true. Also true:

- We opened up for Big Head Todd and the Monsters

- We opened up for Crash Test Dummies

- We opened up for James

And apparently we lived in the era of stupid frickin band names.

Are you sensing the excellence of what my life used to be? We played music. We had long hair. We fought the law (and the law won).

We lived in a van.

Ok, maybe we didn’t actually live there, but it smelled like we did.

About 20 years ago, me and my comrades in rock made a go of it. We did what a lot of kids only dream of doing. And we did it playing our music, on our terms. To me that’s pretty great. I hope it’s enjoyable to read these stories of those days gone by. It’s enjoyable to write them.

Including today, we are 13 Fridays away from our first show in about 20 years. Stay tuned.

What’s With the Hair?

– or –

What Might Have Happened If My iPhone had the Flux Capacitor App and the ‘Now” Me Could Have a Conversation with the 1991 Me.

Picture the 2011 me.

Mussed up hair, fidgety and distracted.  I’m shuffling around, wandering out of my office mid-meeting. Trying to remember my old phone number. I remember the last four digits, sort of.

I flash back to college and picture 1991 Me.

 

Now picture me trying to give out my number.

“Four years before the Battle of Hastings,” I would say.

“Huh?” Came the inevitable reply.

“Well, the Battle of Hastings was in 1066, right?” I would ask. “So…?”

“So?” Blinking. Annoyed.

“So,” I’d continue, gleeful and smug, “1062! Get it? Four years…”

Silence.

“And it’s off campus,” I would add, thinking I would seal the deal, “It’s a three. not a nine!”

What a tool I was. And the thing is, that wasn’t even my line. I stole that factoid from someone else, and used it as my own.

Anyway, back to me today. I remembered the number. I called. It rang, once, twice. While it was ringing I had a thought: I bet 1991 Me still has an answering machine.

When the phone rang back in ”the day,” 1991 Shawn started muttering. “Oh god, I’m too high to talk to a creditor.” This was on the second ring. Dressed in a date party t-shirt emblazoned with Live to Ride/Ride to Live, cut-off army pants and combat boots, I had hair down past my shoulders, probably to the middle of my moobs. It may have been unwashed, it was definitely unbrushed. It got so very unbrushed at one point that my friend K had to detangle an accidental dreadlock. That was rough. Anyway, by the fourth ring I had gone bye-bye. I started yelling to an empty house. “LET THE MACHINE GET IT, I’M NOT HERE!”

I did. After the seventh ring the machine picked up.

POSSIBLE OUTGOING ANSWERING MACHINE MESSAGE: Hey. You have reached the storytownhouse. We’re pretty busy being self-involved and good-looking right now. If you need us you can call our cells at… oh wait, no you can’t. NOT INVENTED YET. Try this: if you need us you can find Rick doing something positive and environmental somewhere. Brad is doing something positively academic. Tim is positively with Pam, and Shawn… well I’m not positive but he’s likely halfway to passed out on cranberry schnapps at Balcony or God only knows where… leave a message at the beep.

Up here in 2011, I heard the beep and laughed. I mean… I know that someone we all know still has an answering machine, but I can’t even fathom that right now. So I started talking… to myself.

“Um, hello? It’s Shawn from the future or… it’s “you” calling. I know you aren’t picking up. Just pick up, it’ll be fun. It will! I promise. I’ll tell you about some girls you’ll meet in 199––

“Hello? Who is this, really?”

“It’s you! I promise.” Then I told him our mom’s maiden name and the name of our childhood pet. He was confused at first but then I told him that those were the answers to common security questions “of the future.” He still seemed a bit shaken, so I didn’t even try to explain that they were “internet” security questions. I didn’t really have time. My call had a purpose.

“Hey man, how are you?”

“I’m good. A little freaked out right now.”

“I just have one question.”

“Me too. Should I not talk about Mom or our first dog?”

“No don’t worry about it. Forget it. Really. Tell everybody.”

A pause. I thought for a second about telling him some of what he would go through. Hinting at this or that. I refrained.

“I have to ask, cause it’s been so long. What’s with the hair?”

“What?”

“The hair. It’s really fuckin’ long.”

“Yeah, well you’re really fucking old. And probably bald.”

“Easy, killer.  Not that old.  And not bald at all. I promise. You got that going for you. Just talk to me about the hair.”

“Um. Ok. Brad had it first.”

“Well, you all have it. Why?”

“We’re a band.”

“So you all needed to have long hair?”

“We’re a band.”

“I know, man. I was in that band. I have pictures.”

“So then why call me? Don’t you remember?”

“I do. I just wish I could remember more.”

“Man… the hair is… awesome. It makes us a little different than a lot of people. It makes us a team. We can swing it around. Girls dig it.”

I really wanted to cut him off RIGHT THERE and tell him the future of his hair. Wanted to tell him the joke that his haircut would become.

“As I recall, people used to count your hair flips. It might have even been a drinking game.”

“Drinking? Awesome.”

“So you’re having fun, you and this hair?”

“This is the best. The best, man. You should be here.”

“I was.”

That’s the point of this whole exercise. Imagining this whole fake call to myself is a chance for me to dive into what life was like 20 years ago for me and the other three guys in a great college rock band. It’s a way for me to interview myself. It creates a bit of distance so I can ask myself questions that maybe I haven’t been totally ready to ask before.

“So, one more question. When do you think you’ll cut your hair?”

“Man, I don’t know. You are missing the point.”

“What’s that?”

“WE ARE A BAND, MAN. It is about four guys together making MUSIC. That other shit doesn’t matter. What’s next? You gonna call me on your space phone and ask me why we wear so many vests? We fucking like vests! We are making something together. Music. Good music. That means something to us. We play a show for 12 people the same as we play for 1200. We make music.”

“Ok. I get it.”

“Really? You think you do? You in a band now, man?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t get it.”

“But I was, I was. I’ll always get it.”

“I hope you always do.”

“I will. And you will too.”

Waking the Band: Storytown: Reunited

I was procrastinating. Trying NOT to write this. Looking at Agency Spy. Looking at clips of stand-up and Jon Stewart. Looking at Facebook.

And there it was.

One of those ads that appear off to the side – you know the ones. Loosely based on your likes and dislikes. Attached to some esoteric data point that symbolizes your loss of privacy. And this one said, “Bonham Rocks Summer 2011.” And I thought: No. Bonham is dead. At least the one that is relevant to me. And then I thought: No. Storytown Rocks Summer 2011.

And then I thought it again: Storytown Rocks Summer 2011. Hol-y shit.

I have been procrastinating.  I mean, it’s been well over a year since my last effort. This blog is called I Wish I Could Remember More. I wish I could remember the last time I wrote anything. What has awakened this sleeping heap of irrelevance? It might not be a mission from God, but we are putting the band back together.

Who’s we? Me and three other guys. Brad. Tim. Rick. Twenty years ago we were a band named Storytown. And this summer, for a couple short hours in June, we will be again.

I know, right?  Weird. But weirder things have happened. There was that little guy that tried to sing She Bangs on Idol a few years back. And some statues of the Virgin Mary “cried” or something. The Who has completed at least three or four “Farewell” tours even with half the original members dead and buried. And then there’s Johnny Weir.

The Storytown reunion isn’t that weird. It might be a lot like the palsied love child of (This is) Spinal Tap and Grumpier Old Men, but I’m guessing it will be more fun than weird.

_______________

So, out of the fifteen or so people that might read this, a couple of you will know about Storytown. You may have heard me talk about those days. You may have been forced to listen to a track that “accidentally” shuffled on to my iPod while in my office at work. You may have seen us while we were playing around Chicago at places like The Metro, Beat Kitchen, or Schubas. Maybe it was at The Vogue or The Patio Lounge in Indianapolis. Stashes in Columbus. Gatsby’s in Carbondale. Maybe even the M Shop or Peeples in Ames Iowa. Most likely though is that you know us from college. Most likely, you met us at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

It was nice to have met you. Hope to see you again.

Storytown met there too.

I met Tim, Brad and Rick right at the beginning of sophomore year. It was musical magic from the first note we played. I had stumbled upon my 3 sonic soulmates. No exaggeration. It sucked when we broke up (here’s reason one) because I was so spoiled by those uber-talented fuckers, that I never wanted to play with anyone else. Don’t get me wrong – I desperately wanted to make more music.  It’s just that I couldn’t tolerate the lesser talents and poor taste of the musicians I would meet. Seriously. I should have worn a t-shirt that clearly stated: If you own a B.C. Rich Warbird, DO NOT bother auditioning. Anyway, I think that you get the idea. It was a good time. And now, twenty years later, I’m going to meet them again. Over the next fifteen weeks, we’ll reconnect, tune up, hit rewind and replay the soundtrack of our college days.

And on June 17^th, we’ll play our first show in two decades in Oxford, Ohio during Miami University’s Alumni Weekend. I hope you can make it. And if you’re interested, you can keep up with our progress through this blog and a Storytown: Reunited page that we are putting together.

I’ll announce new Storytown-related blog-posts from there, we’ll post some pictures… and if I can find a way to make it work, we’ll put up one song a week from our CD Rockfish. It’s probably worth noting that Rockfish was fifteen songs end to end, and on the calendar,  beginning with March 11^th, there are 15 Fridays between now and June 17^th, the night of the big show. That should let us “re-release” Rockfish, in a very 2011 sort of way.

I’ll tell you – I can’t speak for the other guys (but I think they’d agree) – but this whole idea is pretty fun and exciting. Over the last twenty years most of our rock and roll dreams have moved out of the frame. We’ve all focused on our “real” jobs — our current lives. I’m happy to report that each of us have turned out ok. We’ve all gone on to live the types of lives that society deems “successful.” Twenty years ago, Storytown turned out some music – we put a ton of energy into our live shows and the creation of Rockfish. But twenty years ago another thing happened. Storytown turned out four decent young men. We now have among us a lawyer, a professor, a senior marketing professional and an advertising creative director. These geniuses that I rocked with are also the proud owners of a bunch of initials. I’m hanging out with some of this: JD.  PhD.  MBA. We’ve added to the population to the tune of nine – maybe ten – children. We’ve grown up, apart for these twenty years, with this one sizable bit of shared history hanging out off to the side of our psyches. It’s part of who we were. Or has it been part of who we are?

It made me who I am to an extent. I’m not sure, but I am sure that our shared experience has shaped the lives of the other guys, too. Let’s be honest, an experience like that shapes a person. Being paid in pizza and sent on our way by a gun-toting Nashville bar owner tends to leave an impression.

So yeah, we’ve grown up. And so for the next fifteen weeks maybe we can grow down a bit. Maybe our kids will get to see us rock. Only one of our wives (god bless her) suffered through the college Storytown days, so the others might see something new. And I think most importantly, while we’re revisiting “old” songs and replaying “old times” we’ll discover some new things, too. I think we’ll reignite some of the music fire that once lived within us. We’ll re-experience the feeling of creating something. And we’ll have fun, like only boys in a band can have.