We Need A New Band Photo. Issue #2

In all the talk about my new my music endeavor, I realized that I had yet to tell you (the public internets) about the other new band I'm starting with my good friend Matt Edington. Unlike my solo material and band behind my name, this other project is very much a collaborative effort between he and I and more of a dedicated sense of "meeting in the middle of the unknown" rather than playing half of my style of music in a set and half of his. It's weird that I would say that if you knew the story of he and I and how we started my old band LAYMANS TERMS back in 1994. I had met Matt when we both attended Whitman Middle School in the Crownhill/Ballard area when his mom was an art teacher of mine. I worshiped Pearl Jam (still do) and he idolized Pink Floyd (still does). We were both one of the few skinny white boys who would wear band T-Shirts to school (the one's our mom's would let us wear), but weren't cool enough to carry our guitars everywhere with us. Remember back little (but now big) music dudes, you'll know what I mean...

We became friends and taught each other how to play guitar. Matt had gotten his a couple of months before me (an acoustic), and I had gotten a 3/4 size electric for my 13th birthday (thanks Mom!). We didn't know what we were doing, but knew we had a band we called "A New Beginning". So Heavy and Deep...I know.
Did we make band shirts on White Hanes T-shirts with Sharpies? Hell yes we did!
Our first show was at the 8th grade Talent Show. We played only he and I playing 2 original songs that were about 8 minutes each (radio friendly!), and was made to put on a dress rehearssal the night before by my parents. They made us do it over and over with me using a lamp for a mic stand. Embarrassing? Yes.
Naively Confident we did our best only to lose to our middle school rock arch-rivals because (in our reasoning) they played an NIRVANA song, AND they had a drummer. How dare they...

Years passed, and as LT went through different lineup changes, Matt and I stood steadfast in where we wanted to take the band playing all the necessary horrible first shows and talent shows in the puberty of a rock and roll band.
Matt left the band in 1998 (damn you stupid growing up rite-of-passage friend arguments!). Though he was not in the band anymore, we still maintained a friendship as he formed THE APOLLO PROJECT and LT released albums throughout the years.

Last summer when Matt returned to the U.S. after a living in Asia for a couple of years, LT had broken up and we began talking of playing together again. The idea was something we were both into and we began writing songs. Weeks later, we evaluated where we were and decided that it just wasn't clicking at the moment and left the door open for trying again in the future. In March, we began practicing again under the idea of forming a band with no preconceived idea of what it would sound like whatsoever. What I mean by this is how I referred earlier to "meeting in the middle". It doesn't sound like my stuff, it doesn't sound like his, and that's what I think we're both enjoying about it. It's interesting for me to see how people who started so much the same can end up so different, but still have that common thread between them of what worked in the past and how that can work in the present. The (as of now) unnamed band hopes to debut in Late Summer/Fall, and I will be playing with them as well as continuing to write and perform my solo material.

On a different note, hopefully you saw that I will be playing The HIGHDIVE on June 30th for an early 6:00pm show.
The cover is $5, and I will be opening for Trevor Ras. I've never played for the Happy Hour Series before, and would invite you to consider this an appetizer for whatever else your evening brings!

Word.