The Strange World of Davidh - Chapter 2
"Over the Street and Through the Woods We Go"
After the summer of 1992, me and Brance hooked up with Paul Ketterman (vocals and guitar) and Chris Kell (guitars) and formed the short lived band Whirl, in this band i switched instruments and played drums which ironically i wanted to play in Ultraviolet Dawn, Chad Just beat me to saying "i want to play drums". Again with no money, i had to borrow a drum set, i looked to my friend Joe Whitlock again who had played drums in a band called Concrete that was no longer together so he offered them up, the only thing was, the set had no snare so everything i played was tom based. I always figured the harder it is on you to learn something the better you will learn it...i hadn't been to impressed with my vocal duties in the last band, it was fun but i just wasn't that great at it so it was cool when i finally heard Paul sing, i thought ok, now were onto something. We learned and recorded 2 songs, and then kinda lost interest in the whole thing, i think this was due to everyone's newness to their instruments except Brance, and i was ready to get back to playing guitar anyway.
At this point in time, Jay Walters, a long time friend and novice drummer who caught the creative spark watching Chad play during the Ultraviolet Dawn days, came in to the musical picture...this was perfect for me because i needed a fresh start...start all over, having someone new to their instrument as Jay was, it helped me start over. So, by the end of 1992 and early 1993 was spent seasoning Jay and trying different things...bluesy, funky, jazzy, grungy, reggae/ska, anything and everything to try and broaden ourselves, we spent the early winter loosely writing songs and riffing on songs by our favorite bands. During this time we had the chance to record a video to document our progress, it's amazing how fast Jay progressed, definitely a natural. As an early Christmas present my parents bout me my first store bought guitar, the Musicians Shop (formerly 3 Guys Music...for all you old school Hampton nerds) was running their annual half price weekend and i found a right handed Fender Strat imitation i really liked and bought it, i was into Jimi Hendrix at the time and the idea of playing a right handed Strat looking guitar left handed seemed pretty cool to me, my good friend at the time David Morin adopted the same practice so that rubbed on to me as well.
A few months later Paul came back into the fold and we started the band Channel One...this opened up a good opportunity for me because up until this time i had to carry the band(s) in the guitar area, so for the most part all i learned and played was rhythm guitar, with Paul joining in and playing rhythm guitar it gave me a chance to grow as a lead guitarist, inspired by guitarists like Robert Smith and John Squire, i tried to emulate them as much as i possibly could. We spent many a day in Paul's Garage practicing much to the chagrin of me and Jay's girlfriends who thought the prospect of us being in a band was kinda stupid (fun times huh), Paul's dad was a former musician and would check us out every once in awhile and offer advice, he taught us how to play "Hey Joe" and was generally just a nice fellow. In what we knew was a long shot, me and Paul were pushing for the band to be a part of our school's talent show, we even attended an after school meeting with the talent show committee to screen a short video we shot at a practice, unfortunately we never got the chance to play under the guise that all the members didn't go to our school. The only problem (and i mean this as a good thing) we ever had in this band is that it was hard to have a proper full productive practice, we were goofballs who were very good friends and fun and hi-jinxs definitely took precedence over music making. One other good thing to come out of this band though was the chance to share the writing duties with people who were into the same music as i was, Paul happened to be just as big of fan of The Cure and The Smiths and Jay was a fan of the Smiths. We all contributed equally to the lyrics down to the individual instrumentation. Strange indeed. In the end i think we just kinda drifted apart as people tend to do, you change, get into different things, become brainwashed by girls, hehe. (fun times huh)
During this time i had also recorded a few songs on my own, using a crude form of 2 track manipulation, i would record a rhythm and drum track on a cassette with one boom box, then play the track back and at the same time record a lead track over top of it using another boombox, i only recorded a few songs and the results varied between ok sounding and really bad sounding, this method was not going to work on permanent basis for multi-tracking which i was just discovering the joys of. When i was playing in Ultraviolet Dawn i had the chance to record on one of my brothers four tracks one night at his house and had absolutely no idea what i was doing or really how to form everything together into a coherent piece of music and it was frustrating, so getting back into and learning this process was really fun.
Brance and Paul went their separate ways, did well for themselves and enjoyed stints in other bands, me and Jay decided to keep going though, we had just started and had much left to accomplish.......
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