I See It Forming Patterns

Sorry about the hiatus. One of my other lives took over for a bit. It's hard when there's only 27 hours in a day.

So... EBS bit the dust. Well, that's too simplified. In truth, the drummer read the writing on the wall; he somehow knew that once I started my own band, EBS would no longer keep my interest, so he disbanded the band.

Since Bill said, "I'm in!" almost simultaneously with my announcement that I wanted to start an original band, my first-choice guitarist was locked in [side note: my brother is seriously a mind-blowing guitarist. if the guy had some kind of manager to put together the business end, you'd be seeing his name on the cover of Guitar Player magazine]. It took me all of 2.3 seconds to figure out who I needed to call to fill the drum chair (well... throne, really... they're called drum thrones).

David Carlberg had been a few years behind me in high school. He was a rambunctious class clown in the percussion section. He was/is also a life-long friend of my cousin Chris, brother of Jason (who you will meet eventually...). I had actually played with David, and even been in the studio with him. He had been in a band called No Strings Attached, made up of students from my alma mater (where I had been hired as a substitute teacher the year after I graduated. craziness). No Strings Attached had pulled me in to play keyboards on a few songs at a school dance/concert (Queensryche's "Silent Lucidity", Van Halen's "Right Now"--which I butchered, and The Black Crows' version of "Hard to Handle"). Their senior year, they also brought me into the studio on keys for a hey we might never see each other again so let's document this type of EP (for which I was very thankful, by the way - it was an opportunity for me to get my professional studio legs).

David is one of the most naturally gifted musicians I have ever known. He's the kind of drummer other drummers are in awe of... but also sort of hate. The guy couldn't read a lick of music and he couldn't do a "proper" drum roll in the rudimentary sense... but his kick drum work was faster than most guys on the scene could play a drum roll with sticks! More importantly for me, the guy had big open ears and a big open mind in the area of music. He was a sponge.

I called David up and gave him the scoop - I wanted to start a rock band and play originals (with a cover or two here and there). The word I kept coming back to was tribal. I had turned my back on rock when hair metal hit, biding my time listening to Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Weather Report, Chick Corea... Emerson, Lake, & Palmer, Yes... But now rock had finally gotten some guts back. Punk made a resurgence with some aspects of grunge. Pearl Jam was riding the charts with a fretless bassist. Things seemed to be making sense to me again in the rock world... and I wanted to rock.

I gave David a cassette of a bunch of songs by various artists, not to learn and cover but to get a flavor of the range I was going for. He said yes. I was ecstatic.

Next I had to find a singer...