Last week I went through a bunch of old recordings of mine from the mid-nineties. It was a pretty exhausting ride. It was not all bad though. I found a couple of gems.
In searching for the recording I was looking for, I reached out to my friend and old bandmate Robbie to see if he had it. He is better at keeping these kinds of things. He informed me he had a folder with most of my songs as well as 177 recordings of mine in another folder. He sent me a few snippets of things I thought were gone forever (which was fine by me), but then there they were, right on my phone in a matter of seconds. We did not find the recording I was looking for though.
In the process of looking for that song, I found a recording of the first song Robbie and I wrote together in Dallas, Texas. The song is called, “Sometimes”. Thirty years ago I was at his house one night and we were playing guitars in the yard. I shared with him some verses I was working on and he said he had a chorus that would fit it and our first song was born!
We wanted to start a band. We needed to record a decent version of the song with bass and drums to give to potential drummers and bass players. Robbie had the idea to invite our friend Troy to come help us. Troy had a drum machine, a four or eight track recorder and a bass, but was mainly a guitar player. He came out to our rehearsal space and we made this recording. Troy programmed the drums and played bass. Robbie wrote the music and played guitar and I sang, except for Robbie’s sweet vocal contribution of “I’ll face my fears” at the end.
We can’t decide which is worse, my screaming “I feel that I will be alright” or his singing of “I’ll face my fears” at the end of the song.
We started our first band called “deep rest”. I vividly remember calling him and saying, I have the name! He was not so sure, but it grew on him. He even got it tattooed across his lower back later on.
We had a hell of a time finding anyone to join the band, but for a while we had Matt Harriss on bass, and a drummer we called “Squirrel”, but his real name was Jerett. I do not recall why we called him squirrel, but I think it had to do with the fact that he was squirrelly.
We practiced a lot and recorded most of the practices. I even bought something like 250 cassettes to record practices on. I have listened to a lot of them and I am surprised to find we were getting somewhere as a band. I would share some of those, but the recordings are muffled.
Robbie made us a website on geocities (do you remember geocities?) and I remember calling him from a pay phone that was outside of a liquor store in Denver, Colorado because he had paged me to tell me he had made a website. He made this animated gif as the “enter” page. We were on our way!
We had hats made for no reason at all and my daughter, who was eight or nine made all the band members puffy paint band shirts.
That band never got far off the ground and did not last very long. We never made an album, but we did put together a rough EP at some point, called “Art in Hidden Truth”. Robbie came up with that title.
Here are the lyrics and recording our first song. It is hilarious and embarrassing and so nineties. Enjoy.
SOMETIMES
Sweating out my fears
Fears of living, fears of dying
Fears of growing old and alone
See me see you in my sleep
See me laughing, see me weeping
At the sounds of you
Sometimes, I wish that I could stay asleep
Sometimes, I fear that I am in too deep
Sometimes, I get and my car and I just drive
Sometimes, life keeps me pacified
Green is the first color that I see when I awake
I don’t know why that is
Don’t confuse me, I’m confused enough
To know what I need to do
I just don’t know how myself
Sometimes, I wish that I could stay awake
Sometimes, I wear a smile that is fake
Sometimes, I hurt myself and don’t know why
Sometimes, life keeps me pacified
So I’ll laugh it off and laugh on
Laugh on until your gone
Until the pain is gone
Go along now, go alone now
I’m alone now, now I’m all alone
Sometimes, I feel that I will be alright
Sometimes, I sit and cry all through the night
Sometimes, I salt slugs just to watch them die
Sometimes, life keeps me pacified
Face my fears
Face my fears tomorrow
Face my fears
Face my fears tomorrow
Face my fears
Face my fears tomorrow
Face my fears
Face my fears tomorrow
Listening to that has me grinning over here. 🥰
Pictures from that studio would have been EPIC as well. I have the ones from the lake. We had writing all over the walls at the studio. I mean there was even a glass bottle of Shiner Bock stuck in the wall. LOL!