Before this continues, I'm going to say a couple of things. First, I should be asleep. I have class at 9:30 in the morning. Woo! Soviet Politics three and a half hours before I'm normally awake. Second, I'm changing things up on here for a bit. I'm pretty sure that all two of the people that read the Asswipe Chronicles don't really give a damn about what I'm up to. If you actually are, please seek help. I have a couple of stories (that are true, kinda some nitty gritty shit) that I think would be fun to tell, so I am. I had a third one but forgot what it was. If I remember it, I'll come back to it. Oh yeah, this shit is really long. I should probably take a page from the guy that write the blog Vonnegut's Asshole and break this shit up into parts. Oh well. Oh yeah. That was my third point. Go read Vonnegut's Asshole. It's really funny. You can click on my profile and get to it. I follow it.
And back to...It All Happened Because My Dad Tried to Kill the Dog!!!
We're hitting the rewind button way back to late February of 2004, maybe a little before. I was a junior in high school, first year in the E.Y.O. A couple of months earlier, some long haired dude named Patrick joined and was a part of the percussion section. Being the weirdo that I was at 16, I butted into conversations and made the dude my friend. For a while he kept asking me to come jam with him and I kept saying that I would eventually, knowing that I really didn't want to. I finally decided to when, like I mentioned, my dad was pissed at my brother for not feeding the dog and tried to kill the dog (put him out of his misery is what I think he said [I also think he was drunk]). My mom got mad at him and used the argument that you can't shoot a gun in city limits. That and killing the dog was mean. I didn't want to hear them argue (because I was a teenager and had bigger fish to fry), so I grabbed my guitar and my little amp and went to join Patrick and a couple of others.
Now, I had never really talked to the others before. I had seen them at shows and whatnot, but I never really talked to them. (Important note: Owen wasn't there this particular day. He was doing something else. Jesse Moore was with us on bass this day.) After about an hour of just dicking around and trying to get a feel for what everyone knew, it clicked. We were having fun playing songs. I can't remember what we played, but I remember that we played for probably 4 or 5 hours and didn't even notice. It was that awesome.
We got back together a couple of days later, this time with Owen playing bass. It's the line-up that people came to know and loathe. Me playing guitar and singing, Patrick playing guitar and doing the oozin' ahs (oohs and aahs), Owen playing bass, and Bowen playing drums. Man, we practiced everyday. Owen and I had a couple of songs that we had written about a month before that were intended to be used in another band, a band that didn't make it out a garage in a subdivision on Whorton Bend Road. Those were actually the songs that people came to like the most. We even managed to churn out a couple more in just a matter of days. We even had our first show booked less that two weeks after that first Saturday. Bowen and Patrick had already picked the name Suburban Skies. I really hated it. I still hate that name.
Owen couldn't make it to the first show, so we had to find a filler. I thought it was going to be a clusterfuck. We tried to teach Devin all of our 6 songs in two days. It didn't matter. Halfway through the show he jumped off stage and didn't play another note. We didn't care. It was fun. Ken's Club. 13 March 2004. Suburban Skies and Seraphim. Bowen drew the fliers and one still hangs on my bedroom wall at home. We played six or seven songs, including a couple of covers. Seraphim played after us and we all stood outside (sorry Devin, that band was fucking terrible).
We had our next show booked a couple of weeks later. It was us and the Rikers. I was the one that asked them to play that show with us. We were all still pretty new to each other, our little tribe that we have, and I remember watching the Rikers play a couple of times and loving it. For a week and a half before the show, we piled into Bowen's little truck and drove all over Etowah County handing out fliers. I drew these. There's also one hanging up on the wall in my bedroom at home. We felt like we were doing something important. We rode around in that little truck, listening to Minor Threat's Complete Discography, thinking we were like Black Flag or something (in how we were promoting, now how we sounded. We sounded more like Kerplunk-era Green Day and some Screeching Weasel.) Really, that's what I wanted from this band. No internet, just riding around in one of our shitty vehicles passing out fliers, listening to the bands that I wanted us to be when I was 16 and 17; Screeching Weasel, old Green Day, early to mid- 90s NOFX, The Descendents, Osker. The list goes on and on and on.
I remember the day very clearly for reasons other than the show. It was 10 April 2004. It was on 10 April 1994 that I experienced death for the first time. A week and a half after I turned seven years old, my grandfather on my mom's side, Poppy was what I called him, died. Before I went to Patrick's house to run through a couple of songs and load up, I stopped by the cemetery and sat at his grave for a few minutes. At the show, the Rikers played first and we all had a blast. We played second. I remember three things from this show. One) At the very end of our set, the neck of Patrick's guitar hit me in the head and the clipped strings on the headstock ran down my neck and I bled like hell. Two) After Ken put that $72 in my hand (we were promised 20% of the door that night), I felt dirty. I wasn't doing this to get paid. I didn't want to get paid. I just wanted to get up there and play shitty punk rock songs with my best friends because it was fun and I loved it. That was payment enough for me. Hell, I still don't want to play music to get paid. Third) I was almost hysterical with joy after the show. For real, we were sitting in the Waffle House afterward and I was so excited that I was doing something that I loved that I almost cried.
After that, we played one more show in April and one in June. Both times we ended up playing really early in the day. Both shows were these big clusterfuck shows that lasted all day. After that, we didn't play another show until August (unless you count us dickin' around in Morgan's backyard for his 17th birthday. That's another story for another time.) Apparently, everyone had thought that we had broken up. It makes sense almost six years later. The summer in high school would have been the best chance to keep writing and playing and whatnot. We did try to record a couple of times over that summer, but I always managed to get a cold in the middle of an Alabama summer. It was miserable, and I'm really glad that we lost that CD. Along with me being sick and us playing the songs that people knew, there were some terrible fucking turds on there. Really, it was the point when Patrick was really into hardcore and indie and was writing songs like that. I can't speak for Owen and Bowen, but I hated it.
We got back at it in August. We played at Wallace Hall for the first time. It was fun. I was sick, but my voice managed to not go out on me through the set. The singer of the band after us asked for a different microphone (because he didn't want to "catch pop-punk" or some shit.) I didn't think much of it, but others did, and this would become an issue later.
That October, right around Halloween, we were playing a show (another clusterfuck with too many bands) on a flatbed trailer in Hokes Bluff. After watching a bunch of bands that I hardly remember, the Rikers doing a Screeching Weasel cover, hanging out all day, Adam Brooks almost going to jail, and us constantly having to cut our setlist until we ended up with just four songs instead of the original 17, it was our turn. We had a new song that we had written the night before (I wrote the lyrics that week as well) and we were going to play it, but it was cut and I was disappointed. The girl that I wrote it about was there and I wanted her to hear it. No dice. I did get back at the guy who asked for a new microphone though, when I called his band the most pretentious bunch of cocksuckers playing music in Gadsden. I almost got my ass royally kicked. I didn't back down though. All I remember after the show is sitting off away from everyone else with the girl that I had written the new song about that we didn't play and sitting with her at the Waffle House after that. I kept insisting on buying her a cup of coffee and she kept insisting on drinking mine. I didn't complain.
We tried recording again. I got sick again. This time, with it being the fall, a cold seemed more understandable. It was horrible. It took forever for me to try to get control of my voice. Towards the end, I thought we were done. The others wanted to record one more song. I objected. My vocal cords couldn't take it. Really, I sounded like I was going through puberty again (but with the funny hairs already in place.) They kept insisting. 3 to 1. I lost. We did it. It was bad. At one point in the song, I remember not feeling my throat and my voice going all over the place. This recording was what became known as "Emo Therapy". We made 100 copies and did any and all sorts of labeling and artwork ourselves with nothing but Sharpies.
December saw our first out of town show, at Angel Heart Tattoos in Anniston. Us, the Rikers, and Oliver's Army. It was awful. I forgot the words to a new song, Bowen thought that a fog machine would be cool (it wasn't), and the only people to watch use were the Rikers and the 4 or 5 people from home that drove down to the show. We all hated it and never vowed to play in Anniston again.
We played a couple more shows in 2004, both at the same place. All I really remember from either of them is either blatantly telling Patrick's girlfriend that I liked her while we played and getting banned from this place after the second show, a New Year's Eve show that had some terrible hardcore band from Birmingham try to do an 80s pop cover. What a way to end the year.
We didn't play for a while in 2005. We did a show around Valentine's Day with Lowbeam, The Reagans, and Sloprocket, but we just worked on new songs. The next show we did was at the place that had banned us three months before, and then in Anniston (even though we swore that we would never play in Anniston again.) The show at 24/7 really pissed them off. We played forever it seemed like. Probably ten or twelve songs. To end it, Patrick burned a flag and pissed on it in front of the place to put it out. The Anniston show sucked. The other people there were nice, but it was dull.
We ended up doing some battle of the bands in Atlanta, our first out of state show. It was supposed to be at the Masquerade, but the people organizing it didn't know what the fuck they were doing. We ended up at the overflow venue in a ballroom at Georgia Tech. We had to be there at ten in the morning (which was made worse because we all went to the Gadsden High prom the night before) and play shortly after we got there. I was mad at Patrick because we had a new song that we were going to play that had some complicated guitar part that he was supposed to play and the day before, he punched Bowen in the head and fucked up his hand. When we were ready to play, one of the judges said to us, "Tell us your band name, where you're from, and what the name of your songs are. You're going live on the Georgia Tech radio station." I said "Okay. We're Suburban Skies from Gadsden, Alabama and this song is called The Etowah High School Class of 2005 Can Kiss My Lily White Ass!" It was terrible. We couldn't get it over with fast enough.
We found out that May that Patrick was going to be moving to Florida, leaving the band. We made sure that his last few shows with us would be fun. We did one more show on a flatbed (that actually wasn't too bad, two at this new place called the Performing Arts (those shows were really fun because the air conditioner didn't work, so it was hot as hell and the room was tiny and crowded), and then a benefit at the Arts Center. That was Patrick's last show. It was fun. Honestly, I think it was one of the more fun and most energetic shows that we had played.
After that show, we were going to get my brother to take Patrick's place. We taught him the songs. Hell, he even worked all summer to buy a new guitar and an new amp (that cost him about a grand). All of the sudden, to my dismay, we were a three-piece. I wasn't too stoked. This is the point in the story where this all started to stop being fun for me. We played our first show as a three-piece at the Grind, following the very first First Friday. It was us and a band from Decatur called the Cycle that I had been trying to get to Gadsden for a while. They were really cool. A little too poppy for my tastes, but they were fun and really cool guys. We ended up playing one more show at the Performing Arts (and were somehow held responsible for there being a used condom out back in the parking lot.) We got paid for this show, too. Once again, I didn't like it. Another thing that pissed me off was that the money was used to get us into a battle of the bands in Birmingham. We had a bad experience with one of those earlier in the year in Atlanta. Why would we do another? Except, it didn't go as a contribution from all of us. Just Bowen. Owen and I each ended up paying the rest. In hindsight, I shouldn't have ponied up the money. That show was terrible. That's when I had had enough. We had one more show booked that year. I remember sitting in my car, talking to my girlfriend and telling her that I was going to end the band. I wasn't happy doing it. The only reason that I didn't was because she told me that what I did made people happy, and I believed it.
The next show, another at Wallace Hall, was supposed to be a benefit show for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. A bunch of bands played. We were playing last. Someone (I mean Bowen) thought that it would be a good idea to drop the curtain, dim the lights, and play that bit from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I just stood there embarassed. It was so dumb. The three of us had this huge stage to ourselves. The guys running sound didn't know their assholes from a hole in the ground. I got fed up and unplugged the cord running from my amp to the P.A. and just turned the volume all the way up and hoped that I could be heard. The show was bad. I should have quit then and there. I wanted to just take my guitar off and walk off that stage and forget that what had just happened had happened.
Instead, my brother finally started playing guitar with us. His first two shows were just a day apart from each other. One at the battle of the bands in Birmingham and then two days after that in Huntsville. The battle of the bands was terrible. There was some other band whose name I don't remember. A couple of them were cool. Their singer annoyed the hell out of all of us. I hated that kid. Seriously, he was 14. All I remember about their set was someone heckling them, saying "I have underwear older than you!" We played right after them. I didn't want to be there. I just encouraged everyone watching us to keep drinking. We were at the High Note. The more they drank, the better we would sound, or the more they would heckle us. This was after we started to play, when the amp that my brother was using decided to stop fucking up. We didn't even stick around to see who won. I didn't care. It wasn't us. I didn't want it to be us. I wanted all of this to be over with. The show, the shows, the band. All of it. Huntsville wasn't much better. The place that we played was an abandoned textile mill. It was early January 2006 and the place had no heat. We weren't using our own gear, but Cavalier's gear. We didn't have a way to haul all of our gear and us up there. I remember picking up a radio station through my guitar and the amp that I was using during the set. After the show, the guy that ran the place told us that we were unprofessional and would never be invited back. We were 18, 18, 17, and 17, in chronological order. We didn't care about professionalism. We just wanted to play. We were supposed to play in Johnson City, Tennessee on the day between these shows. It would have been our first show in Tennessee sandwiched between our first shows in Birmingham and Huntsville. We ended up canceling though. There was a snow storm or some shit up there.
We played another show two months later, at the amphitheatre in Gadsden. Someone not in any of the bands decided to break something and the police were called and the show was shut down. We applied to play the Warped Tour in Atlanta that summer but stopped playing shows and, well, talking, about two weeks after that. We found out after our last show (and kinda while at Warped) that we had actually been accepted to played Warped Tour 2006 in Atlanta. We were going to play on the Ernie Ball Stage. Megan was walking around and saw Suburban Skies listed on a board giving all of the set times and told me that she thought to herself "That's weird. Another band called Suburban Skies." I also shit enough bricks to do the mason work on a high rise after I found out that it was us on that board.
I decided that summer that we should play one more show, just for the hell of it. A goodbye of sorts, for anyone that cared. Thomas and I booked the Rainbow City Community Center and got Tyler to the Train Tracks, the Screaming Cocks, Cavalier, and the Reagans to play with us. Owen almost backed out because someone had said something about getting the Rikers back together to play the show. I had to talk him into playing. Bowen decided to go rafting. When I told him that the show was still on, he got mad. We got John McCartney. My brother quit his job at Wal-Mart to play (which I was proud of for multiple reasons). The last show was fun. We played for a while. We played songs that we had played for the entire two and a half years, songs that we hadn't played in over a year, and songs that we've only played once or twice. With John playing drums, every songs finally sounded like I wanted them to sound. It was the most fun that I have ever played.
We hit the last chord of the last beat of the last song and we all loaded up and left. That was three and a half years ago. We've talked a couple of times about getting back together and playing a show or two. The most that ever came out of it was last summer. I was the only original member left. My brother was still playing guitar. John was still playing drums. I didn't think Owen seemed interested, so I got Jesse Hyde to play bass. We practiced once. It took a while to remember the songs.
That's it. I hardly ever talk to Owen, Patrick, or Bowen anymore. I hated it at the end. That last year or so was the worst. That was when it stopped being fun and started feeling like a chore. That was when I was embarrassed to sing the songs that I had written myself. Every now and then though, I hear a song and start thinking about how it would have been fun for us to play it. I'll close my eyes and imagine it, at a high school talent show or something. I see me dancing around playing my guitar when I wasn't singing, Patrick or my brother and Owen doing the same and doing some oohs and aahs, Bowen just pounding away. Sometimes, that thought crosses my mind. And just think, none of this would have ever happened if my dad didn't try to kill the dog.
