Album Notes

“My Dad was in the Sex Police.”

Misha Angrist saw those words on the six-year-old boy’s paper and became concerned. He wondered if he should tell the teacher or perhaps even place a call to Child and Family Services.

Angrist, a science editor at Duke, had recently moved to Durham and was volunteering in his daughter’s first-grade class at Club Boulevard Humanities Magnet School. He had asked the children to write a story featuring a musical instrument. One of his daughter’s classmates, Ben Maxwell, wrote about his father Jody, who played drums for legendary Chapel-Hill funk-rockers Sex Police in the 1990s.

Ben’s mother and Jody’s wife Julie happened to be in class that day and assured Angrist that her husband was a musician, not a pervert or a vice cop. Angrist, as it happened, was a weekend guitar player looking to put together an original rock band. He called Maxwell, who was itching to play again after a long layoff.

The two soon caught wind of a couple of other musical parents of young kids at Club Boulevard, singer Jennie Peters and bassist DJ James.

All the foursome needed now was a name. Acknowledging the band’s origins in the halls of Club Boulevard, whose school mascot is the manatee, they went with “Sea Cow.”

Earlier this year Raleigh guitarist Andrew Snee, also a father of young children, joined the fray.

“That’s what it takes to be in this band,” says Peters. “You have to know something about soccer practice, Harry Potter, Spider-Man, minivans and car pools.”