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History:
Part II
It was a night in 1994. Our high school was having it's annual
talent show. Complete with cloggers and baton twirlers. Although
I don't think there was nearly enough fire. Is there ever? I
mean really...
So I de cided
to perform one of my songs for the Floor Show. I choose "Every
So Often." It turned up on the 'no money' side of "The
Folks." The place was nearly full. Counting everyone's
parent's, grandparents, and friends it was close to a thousand
people. It went well. I got a lot of offers for dates that night.
Girls like that sort of thing. And a few guys said, "Dude,
we need to totally start a band." Regardless, that ended
up being my first big public performance if you don't count
house parties and sitting around the back of "Boothill"
after dinner theater shows.
But I cut my teeth on that stuff. "Hey man, play that one
song…you know, bah-dah-dah-dunt-dah" or "Dude…if
you play 'Black' right now, I'll love you forever…"
the best was always, "Wow, so you like, wrote that?"
It all came and went every night. Or at least every other night.
I tended to stay out late. I mean late.
Our senior year my compadre' Jason Keezer and I did a video
to one of my songs for the Kansas Film Festival. It placed,
but our stop-motion G.I. Joe movie swept the whole thing…another
story. The video was for a certain tune called "If I'd
Known What You Wanted." It also turned up on "The
Folks." The video came out really cool and another relationship
grew out of the casting of a certain Kyle Hager as one of the
characters. We had known each other from Boothill days, playing
gunfighters but never had officially hung out in a hanging out
sorta way. He really was taken with the music and wanted to
get together sometime and do some aforementioned hanging out.
Hang we did. Lemme esplain…no, there isa too much. Lemme
sum up. Kyle basically said if I wasn't' going to sing my songs
for a people and try and really do something with this then
he would. I was pretty flattered because I considered him a
good singer and knew he had enough talent to sing most anything
he wanted. Well, I took him up on his offer needless to say,
and we began meeting a couple times a week and singing and playing
until the wee hours. My place, his place…various houses
of people. Some we actually knew. I kept writing and Kyle kept
singing. I sang most of the harmony parts initially but we always
prided ourselves on some nifty vocal intertwining. I sang the
occasional lead but was still learning the methods of control.
We played parties and gatherings. It felt great to know somebody
was listening and enjoying something that I had heard in my
head and brought out in a song. I remember one night when a
rather pickled gunfighter (name withheld) walked up between
songs and said, "You remind me a lot of Jethro Tull."
'Hmmm' I thought. Even without the flute? Eventually even our
first producer, musical cohort and bass player Alan Shalby said
a song reminded him of "Aqua Lung." Well, as you can
imagine, after TWO comparisons I just had to get into Tull.
I bought a remastered greatest hits somethingerother and proceeded
to miss every note everyone else was hearing that prompted such
statements. Oh well, the whole country was confused a few years
ago when Tull won the "Best Heavy Metal Album" Grammy.
What? So we started noticing that people legitimately were enjoying
our stuff and that the requests for recordings were more common.
We realized that we were on to something. We would become an
official duo and give ourselves a name and pursue this thing.
We were ready to become…a band. You may argue it takes
multiple members, like 3 or 4 …oh no padre'. Now-a-days
you can be solo and be a band. Crazy how it works.
Remember turkey has a chemical or juice or something that is
scientifically proven to make you fall asleep during football
games right in the middle of the living room. Honest. I read
that somewhere...
Hope you all are well. Thanks for listening and reading. God
Bless.
-jared
top five discs in rotation:
Michelle Malone - Hello Out There
Blues Brothers - The Definitive Collection
Patty Griffin - 1000 Kisses
Christopher Williams - Side Streets
Maggie's Dream - Maggie's Dream |
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