There’s always a reason to say no. “Would you like more tomatoes in your blueberry squash?” or “I’ve seen the gloried-eyed soul of a killer laundry repair man, have you?” But, ‘yes’ can be an elusive beau. I grew up in an upper middle class container where wonderful things happened, but, they happened down the street. As an aging youngster, I held on with a perforated grip to my Spartan desires. I took my long hair, my after-college haze and my underage girlfriend and in a garage in Addison, IL, with a chain smoking Jimmy Page wanna-be I started singing and writing. The legacy of that year and half can be summed up in the following greeting card Maroon 5/Matchbox 20 sentiment, “I got a pocketful of roses and a handful of thorns.” My mushroom shaped grunge hair and pop-tart weed breath made a slight impression, but, only to confuse people who thought I was a bad Eddie Vedder impersonator. Still, no longer just singing along to mix tapes in my ’77 Pontiac Ventura, I moved on to Norridge and a basement no less, with three ragamuffins who thought I was an asshole but a soon to be poet. Sitting on the arm of a dumpster bound couch (though the couch didn’t know it yet) my guitarist, Dan Wean, and I found "god." (not literally) Through the post adolescent, quasi-confessional scribblings in my Walgreens journal and his precocious melodic craftsmanship, we grew about 5 years in talent in that one moment. We tried to bring the rest of the band along, while also fighting our own self-destructive tendencies. An inevitable evolution in taste and facial hair selection led us from goateed, long haired jam banders to short haired, whisker-free alt-country rockers. Dan and I and our bassist, Big Bear Barbier, formed Easy Tiger in 2001. By the end of our first album I had reached a pinnacle of artistic and spiritual awakenings, not unlike Leonard Lowe from that DeNiro/Robin Williams movie. The subsequent years were to be as kind as the previous in that what comes together can quickly dissolve like jeans dropped into a volcano. If you can call playing the Stones’ “Dead Flowers” over and over again for 3 years ‘playing’ then I started playing guitar in 2000. By 2005 my songs were actually listenable. With lyrics like, “She tastes/And breaks off a piece of me/And the noise is definitely, deafeningly beautiful,” I had come a long way from “Purple cowards stand and wave.” I recorded a solo album, borrowing friends for the backing band, and released it earlier this year as My My My, Theme Songs for Your Melancholy. Before and during its year or so long production (stealing a red riding hood walk through the studio when the crazy wolf wasn’t looking) I played solo shows. And throughout the few years of my burgeoning solo career, a stellar collection of Wednesday night gigs played in shacks with bombed out Grain Belt and Old Shay beer signs over the door, for old drunks who thought Frank Sinatra was a fag cause he always wore a suit and liked to read, I attempted to find like minded players via the internet. But, as in love, music is about luck and timing and both were elusive. Then March of 2007 came in like a girl with great legs and smiled my way. Before April had drowned us in her wet musings, four amazing people came into my life through Craigslist. I met John Roper, bass player, groove master and bop dancer, Bill Skafish, a burly amazing drummer and young daddy from the sticks, Theo Blair, a young and fetishistically busy Ultimate Frisbee player who also plays awesome keys, and Sarah Snow, a shy but expert harmony singer and ex-theatre brat with a killer bod. John is from Austin and in between late night burritos, he regales us with deadpan delivery jokes and his encyclopedic knowledge of music. He’s in a Talking Heads cover band with Theo who is a sweet-natured tall young man, from New Jersey. Theo underplays his talent and always has great ideas about the details of our songs like a transition or an ending. Bill has this wonderfully cheesy sense of humor, with moments of sheer profundity. He’s also an underrated mimic. And The greatest line I ever heard came out of Bill’s mouth, “You’re playing puppies and kittens and I want snakes and lizards.” Sarah is a sultry, mysterious woman-chile. A wry vulnerability lurks beneath her sweet sarcasm. These guys injected so much life into the tunes on Theme Songs that they’ve transformed a simple acoustic indie pop idea into a rock behemoth. So far we’ve shared the stage, at an WXRT show of Police Covers, with great Chicago bands like Air This Side of Caution and Company of Thieves. Richard Milne of WXRT’s Local Anesthetic has said some wonderful things about our new single, “Chemistry is For Lovers,” but asked that we not quote him. He spun it throughout August, and for most of us it was the first time being on the radio. We just finished recording an album of all new material which should be out by October and will be called Conjugation Nation. Our sound borrows a little from The Shins, Cat Stevens, Wilco, The Rolling Stones and The Hold Steady, to name a few. You’ll love us. Come to our next show, and experience My My My, years in the making but still fresh to the ears. Check out the news, new tunes, posts and pics of the new group at www.myspace.com/iluvmymymy.
Read more...