The Strange World of Davidh - Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN (Originally Posted Sunday, December 03, 2006)
"Like a Fish Out of Water"
So, in February of 2002 off we went, heading to a house off of Newtown Rd. in Virginia Beach. Butterflies in my stomach as we talked, we sat and discussed what we were looking for, what they were looking for and it seemed that we would be a perfect fit. We left with a cd to listen to and to use to learn a few of the songs so we would have something to do on the first day of practice...we climbed into Tony's car and we broke down right around the corner, we waited for what seemed like hours for my wife to pick us up, on the way home it hit me like a ton of bricks, we were in a band again.
Ocali Flash, a new band, a new city, it felt great to feel alive again, Mike Gentry (Gregorian enthusiast and vocal stylist) and Scott Callan (guitard extraordinaire) were the two fellows we met that day, them along with recruited drummer Adrian (drums and bank greeter) rounded out the band. A funny thing happened the first day, apparently a fellow who had tried out for keyboards was coming by to get his gear and the guys had been very vague about his inclusion in the band, when he came to get his stuff it had to seem like we weren't there...so there we were, me, Tony, Scott and Adrian sitting in the dark of the garage trying to be silent as possible and holding back giggles whenever anyone made a sound. Mike and Scott had mentioned to me that this was like the last chance band, which i agreed with, we were all a little older and we were all coming from the same place, kinda bottomed out and climbing up that proverbial ladder again. They had many songs written so it was just a case of us coming in and learning them, i was having no problem...i would record practice and then go home and practice playing along to the tapes to get better, Tony on the other hand was having trouble, i kinda knew in the back of my mind that this might happen because i knew outside of practice he wasn't going to work on learning these songs. I decided to get him over to my house and we would play along with the tapes, record it and play it back to see what we needed to work on...this was very helpful, we needed to learn the songs and learn them fast. I didn't want it to seem we couldn't hang.
Talk arose of a show, a show at Cogan's in Norfolk, Cogan's to me was the mecca of art rock, it had been around for decades and was even a place my brother's band BabyFarm had played about 15 years earlier, this was going to be great. So we rehearsed and rehearsed, rehearsed till we were a well oiled machine, we sounded great and we were ready. The show was a success, we never sounded better, we had a great time as a band and we packed the place to the rafters, i was on top of the world. I had even managed to sneak in one of my own songs into the set, the song was "Bottle Caps" and had really cool lyrics, actually i really enjoyed all of Mike's lyrics, very smart guy and it showed in his writing. Scott as well was a gifted guitarist who weirdly enough taught me the importance of the ballad. Adrian on the other hand was a different story, i never had a problem with him, to me he was a super sharp drummer and a cool guy, he had too much love for the Hardy Boys (wrestlers) and the WWF (WWE now) in general but that's a different story altogether, but Tony, poor poor Tony, these guys never saw eye to eye and with good reason i guess, Adrian's thing was timing and Tony was always having problems keeping rhythm, to quote Adrian "Tony couldn't tell time if he had a watch", i always hated to hear that but there was nothing i could do, it wasn't my band to call the shots. On the rides home after practices Tony would always come up with good comebacks but never had them ready when they were needed. I really wanted this band to work so i just kept quiet and helped Tony on the off days when we weren't practicing.
We had talked of playing a show in my neck of the woods and even doing a session at Braxton's House but neither of those things ever happened. We tried to do some 4 tracking as well but if i remember correctly, it didn't come out very well because we were doing everything live as opposed to doing it one track at a time.
A second show was booked for Cogan's, this show didn't go off as well as the first due to technical problems, this unfortunately marked the beginning of the end for this band which left me very disappointed, i was just starting to have fun. Tony just wasn't holding up his end of the deal and i couldn't face it, Scott terminated the band and it sucked we had to go...i emailed Scott and told him what i thought of all this and came across as a complete jerk, i'm glad were we able to forget about that down the road and mend what my stupidity had caused, so now this band was over and we didn't know what in the world we were going to do. The only thing i regret from this time is that we didn't socialize enough outside of the band, i think if we had of it might have turned out differently in the end.
As always, i was recording my solo stuff...i recorded various sessions during this time, "The Sunday Sessions" (songs that were written and recorded only on Sundays, just a wacky gimmick i thought i would try), the other songs i recorded were scattered through 2002 and 2003. These would be last songs i would record at my apartment before moving into my house.
At the first Cogan's show i met up with Mike and we buried the hatchet, i even went to check out his band at the time, Mike confided in me his unhappiness with his new band and that he wanted to get up and try playing again, see if it would work. We gave Marc a call and asked him the same thing and he agreed, so the four of us for the first time in 2 years got together and just played, the magic was still there...at the first practice we wrote a new BLISS song and from there we just kept going. A few new songs were written and others resurrected but made to sound different than the originals, we recorded one Braxton Session, never played any shows in this form, although i wish we had, we were writing some good songs that were showing our growth as musicians...we went on a trip to Ocracoke Island for a weekend and holed up in a cottage and just acoustically recorded new songs, old favorites and some of our favorite songs by the bands we liked, the only catch was that we had people with us on the trip and it turned into one big sing along on the night we recorded, this was definitely one of the most heartfelt and family like moments in my life as a band, it was awesome to hear people singing along to the songs we had wrote. Another thing i remember about this trip was us jumping a fence and rummaging around a graveyard very late at night and being super scared...good times.
We carried on for almost a year, well into 2003 and it just got to the point again where we were before, just spinning our wheels, kind of like we had hit a wall, we weren't playing shows, no demos, it had just come to a standstill. BLISS was our band, the one we had all grown together with so it was hard to let go, one of the toughest decisions i have ever been a part of.
I also around this time decided on a whim to try out for another band in my area but nothing come of it, besides a guitarist they needed a bass player and with no bass player there wasn't going to be a full band and this time i was doing it alone without Tony, they called me back, i had made the band but my heart just wasn't in it...so i never went back. During this time me, Mike and Tony also wrote and recorded 2 new instrumentals as a three piece under the band name "The Montgomery Burns Project", one which evolved into the Sons of Godzilla song "Monsters Everywhere".
Mike and i also offered our services to our friend Mike Braxton for a show for his dad's birthday. We were going to play all Elvis Presley songs, all of us were going to dress as Elvis it was going to be fun but Braxton saw it another way, he started slipping in originals and talking about "the band" as in us three. We were different musicians than Braxton with totally different styles as well, it would have never worked. Because of this we kinda disappeared and the show never happened, i really did want to dress as Elvis though!
Again we were in a situation where we had no idea what we were going to do next, i didn't want to sing for it would just turn into a vanity project like the last time, we needed a singer and fast. Mike's neighbor worked with a guy who was a singer and was looking for a band to front...he also had a demo!
We figured if he had a demo he was serious about this, so we got the tape and gave it a listen. In the next few weeks that followed we listened to the demo over and over and decided we would invite him over and see if we felt it as a band. Would this work though, bringing in an outsider to the band? All we could do was give it a shot.......
CHAPTER SEVEN (Originally Posted Sunday, December 03, 2006)
"Like a Fish Out of Water"
So, in February of 2002 off we went, heading to a house off of Newtown Rd. in Virginia Beach. Butterflies in my stomach as we talked, we sat and discussed what we were looking for, what they were looking for and it seemed that we would be a perfect fit. We left with a cd to listen to and to use to learn a few of the songs so we would have something to do on the first day of practice...we climbed into Tony's car and we broke down right around the corner, we waited for what seemed like hours for my wife to pick us up, on the way home it hit me like a ton of bricks, we were in a band again.
Ocali Flash, a new band, a new city, it felt great to feel alive again, Mike Gentry (Gregorian enthusiast and vocal stylist) and Scott Callan (guitard extraordinaire) were the two fellows we met that day, them along with recruited drummer Adrian (drums and bank greeter) rounded out the band. A funny thing happened the first day, apparently a fellow who had tried out for keyboards was coming by to get his gear and the guys had been very vague about his inclusion in the band, when he came to get his stuff it had to seem like we weren't there...so there we were, me, Tony, Scott and Adrian sitting in the dark of the garage trying to be silent as possible and holding back giggles whenever anyone made a sound. Mike and Scott had mentioned to me that this was like the last chance band, which i agreed with, we were all a little older and we were all coming from the same place, kinda bottomed out and climbing up that proverbial ladder again. They had many songs written so it was just a case of us coming in and learning them, i was having no problem...i would record practice and then go home and practice playing along to the tapes to get better, Tony on the other hand was having trouble, i kinda knew in the back of my mind that this might happen because i knew outside of practice he wasn't going to work on learning these songs. I decided to get him over to my house and we would play along with the tapes, record it and play it back to see what we needed to work on...this was very helpful, we needed to learn the songs and learn them fast. I didn't want it to seem we couldn't hang.
Talk arose of a show, a show at Cogan's in Norfolk, Cogan's to me was the mecca of art rock, it had been around for decades and was even a place my brother's band BabyFarm had played about 15 years earlier, this was going to be great. So we rehearsed and rehearsed, rehearsed till we were a well oiled machine, we sounded great and we were ready. The show was a success, we never sounded better, we had a great time as a band and we packed the place to the rafters, i was on top of the world. I had even managed to sneak in one of my own songs into the set, the song was "Bottle Caps" and had really cool lyrics, actually i really enjoyed all of Mike's lyrics, very smart guy and it showed in his writing. Scott as well was a gifted guitarist who weirdly enough taught me the importance of the ballad. Adrian on the other hand was a different story, i never had a problem with him, to me he was a super sharp drummer and a cool guy, he had too much love for the Hardy Boys (wrestlers) and the WWF (WWE now) in general but that's a different story altogether, but Tony, poor poor Tony, these guys never saw eye to eye and with good reason i guess, Adrian's thing was timing and Tony was always having problems keeping rhythm, to quote Adrian "Tony couldn't tell time if he had a watch", i always hated to hear that but there was nothing i could do, it wasn't my band to call the shots. On the rides home after practices Tony would always come up with good comebacks but never had them ready when they were needed. I really wanted this band to work so i just kept quiet and helped Tony on the off days when we weren't practicing.
We had talked of playing a show in my neck of the woods and even doing a session at Braxton's House but neither of those things ever happened. We tried to do some 4 tracking as well but if i remember correctly, it didn't come out very well because we were doing everything live as opposed to doing it one track at a time.
A second show was booked for Cogan's, this show didn't go off as well as the first due to technical problems, this unfortunately marked the beginning of the end for this band which left me very disappointed, i was just starting to have fun. Tony just wasn't holding up his end of the deal and i couldn't face it, Scott terminated the band and it sucked we had to go...i emailed Scott and told him what i thought of all this and came across as a complete jerk, i'm glad were we able to forget about that down the road and mend what my stupidity had caused, so now this band was over and we didn't know what in the world we were going to do. The only thing i regret from this time is that we didn't socialize enough outside of the band, i think if we had of it might have turned out differently in the end.
As always, i was recording my solo stuff...i recorded various sessions during this time, "The Sunday Sessions" (songs that were written and recorded only on Sundays, just a wacky gimmick i thought i would try), the other songs i recorded were scattered through 2002 and 2003. These would be last songs i would record at my apartment before moving into my house.
At the first Cogan's show i met up with Mike and we buried the hatchet, i even went to check out his band at the time, Mike confided in me his unhappiness with his new band and that he wanted to get up and try playing again, see if it would work. We gave Marc a call and asked him the same thing and he agreed, so the four of us for the first time in 2 years got together and just played, the magic was still there...at the first practice we wrote a new BLISS song and from there we just kept going. A few new songs were written and others resurrected but made to sound different than the originals, we recorded one Braxton Session, never played any shows in this form, although i wish we had, we were writing some good songs that were showing our growth as musicians...we went on a trip to Ocracoke Island for a weekend and holed up in a cottage and just acoustically recorded new songs, old favorites and some of our favorite songs by the bands we liked, the only catch was that we had people with us on the trip and it turned into one big sing along on the night we recorded, this was definitely one of the most heartfelt and family like moments in my life as a band, it was awesome to hear people singing along to the songs we had wrote. Another thing i remember about this trip was us jumping a fence and rummaging around a graveyard very late at night and being super scared...good times.
We carried on for almost a year, well into 2003 and it just got to the point again where we were before, just spinning our wheels, kind of like we had hit a wall, we weren't playing shows, no demos, it had just come to a standstill. BLISS was our band, the one we had all grown together with so it was hard to let go, one of the toughest decisions i have ever been a part of.
I also around this time decided on a whim to try out for another band in my area but nothing come of it, besides a guitarist they needed a bass player and with no bass player there wasn't going to be a full band and this time i was doing it alone without Tony, they called me back, i had made the band but my heart just wasn't in it...so i never went back. During this time me, Mike and Tony also wrote and recorded 2 new instrumentals as a three piece under the band name "The Montgomery Burns Project", one which evolved into the Sons of Godzilla song "Monsters Everywhere".
Mike and i also offered our services to our friend Mike Braxton for a show for his dad's birthday. We were going to play all Elvis Presley songs, all of us were going to dress as Elvis it was going to be fun but Braxton saw it another way, he started slipping in originals and talking about "the band" as in us three. We were different musicians than Braxton with totally different styles as well, it would have never worked. Because of this we kinda disappeared and the show never happened, i really did want to dress as Elvis though!
Again we were in a situation where we had no idea what we were going to do next, i didn't want to sing for it would just turn into a vanity project like the last time, we needed a singer and fast. Mike's neighbor worked with a guy who was a singer and was looking for a band to front...he also had a demo!
We figured if he had a demo he was serious about this, so we got the tape and gave it a listen. In the next few weeks that followed we listened to the demo over and over and decided we would invite him over and see if we felt it as a band. Would this work though, bringing in an outsider to the band? All we could do was give it a shot.......
"Like a Fish Out of Water"
So, in February of 2002 off we went, heading to a house off of Newtown Rd. in Virginia Beach. Butterflies in my stomach as we talked, we sat and discussed what we were looking for, what they were looking for and it seemed that we would be a perfect fit. We left with a cd to listen to and to use to learn a few of the songs so we would have something to do on the first day of practice...we climbed into Tony's car and we broke down right around the corner, we waited for what seemed like hours for my wife to pick us up, on the way home it hit me like a ton of bricks, we were in a band again.
Ocali Flash, a new band, a new city, it felt great to feel alive again, Mike Gentry (Gregorian enthusiast and vocal stylist) and Scott Callan (guitard extraordinaire) were the two fellows we met that day, them along with recruited drummer Adrian (drums and bank greeter) rounded out the band. A funny thing happened the first day, apparently a fellow who had tried out for keyboards was coming by to get his gear and the guys had been very vague about his inclusion in the band, when he came to get his stuff it had to seem like we weren't there...so there we were, me, Tony, Scott and Adrian sitting in the dark of the garage trying to be silent as possible and holding back giggles whenever anyone made a sound. Mike and Scott had mentioned to me that this was like the last chance band, which i agreed with, we were all a little older and we were all coming from the same place, kinda bottomed out and climbing up that proverbial ladder again. They had many songs written so it was just a case of us coming in and learning them, i was having no problem...i would record practice and then go home and practice playing along to the tapes to get better, Tony on the other hand was having trouble, i kinda knew in the back of my mind that this might happen because i knew outside of practice he wasn't going to work on learning these songs. I decided to get him over to my house and we would play along with the tapes, record it and play it back to see what we needed to work on...this was very helpful, we needed to learn the songs and learn them fast. I didn't want it to seem we couldn't hang.
Talk arose of a show, a show at Cogan's in Norfolk, Cogan's to me was the mecca of art rock, it had been around for decades and was even a place my brother's band BabyFarm had played about 15 years earlier, this was going to be great. So we rehearsed and rehearsed, rehearsed till we were a well oiled machine, we sounded great and we were ready. The show was a success, we never sounded better, we had a great time as a band and we packed the place to the rafters, i was on top of the world. I had even managed to sneak in one of my own songs into the set, the song was "Bottle Caps" and had really cool lyrics, actually i really enjoyed all of Mike's lyrics, very smart guy and it showed in his writing. Scott as well was a gifted guitarist who weirdly enough taught me the importance of the ballad. Adrian on the other hand was a different story, i never had a problem with him, to me he was a super sharp drummer and a cool guy, he had too much love for the Hardy Boys (wrestlers) and the WWF (WWE now) in general but that's a different story altogether, but Tony, poor poor Tony, these guys never saw eye to eye and with good reason i guess, Adrian's thing was timing and Tony was always having problems keeping rhythm, to quote Adrian "Tony couldn't tell time if he had a watch", i always hated to hear that but there was nothing i could do, it wasn't my band to call the shots. On the rides home after practices Tony would always come up with good comebacks but never had them ready when they were needed. I really wanted this band to work so i just kept quiet and helped Tony on the off days when we weren't practicing.
We had talked of playing a show in my neck of the woods and even doing a session at Braxton's House but neither of those things ever happened. We tried to do some 4 tracking as well but if i remember correctly, it didn't come out very well because we were doing everything live as opposed to doing it one track at a time.
A second show was booked for Cogan's, this show didn't go off as well as the first due to technical problems, this unfortunately marked the beginning of the end for this band which left me very disappointed, i was just starting to have fun. Tony just wasn't holding up his end of the deal and i couldn't face it, Scott terminated the band and it sucked we had to go...i emailed Scott and told him what i thought of all this and came across as a complete jerk, i'm glad were we able to forget about that down the road and mend what my stupidity had caused, so now this band was over and we didn't know what in the world we were going to do. The only thing i regret from this time is that we didn't socialize enough outside of the band, i think if we had of it might have turned out differently in the end.
As always, i was recording my solo stuff...i recorded various sessions during this time, "The Sunday Sessions" (songs that were written and recorded only on Sundays, just a wacky gimmick i thought i would try), the other songs i recorded were scattered through 2002 and 2003. These would be last songs i would record at my apartment before moving into my house.
At the first Cogan's show i met up with Mike and we buried the hatchet, i even went to check out his band at the time, Mike confided in me his unhappiness with his new band and that he wanted to get up and try playing again, see if it would work. We gave Marc a call and asked him the same thing and he agreed, so the four of us for the first time in 2 years got together and just played, the magic was still there...at the first practice we wrote a new BLISS song and from there we just kept going. A few new songs were written and others resurrected but made to sound different than the originals, we recorded one Braxton Session, never played any shows in this form, although i wish we had, we were writing some good songs that were showing our growth as musicians...we went on a trip to Ocracoke Island for a weekend and holed up in a cottage and just acoustically recorded new songs, old favorites and some of our favorite songs by the bands we liked, the only catch was that we had people with us on the trip and it turned into one big sing along on the night we recorded, this was definitely one of the most heartfelt and family like moments in my life as a band, it was awesome to hear people singing along to the songs we had wrote. Another thing i remember about this trip was us jumping a fence and rummaging around a graveyard very late at night and being super scared...good times.
We carried on for almost a year, well into 2003 and it just got to the point again where we were before, just spinning our wheels, kind of like we had hit a wall, we weren't playing shows, no demos, it had just come to a standstill. BLISS was our band, the one we had all grown together with so it was hard to let go, one of the toughest decisions i have ever been a part of.
I also around this time decided on a whim to try out for another band in my area but nothing come of it, besides a guitarist they needed a bass player and with no bass player there wasn't going to be a full band and this time i was doing it alone without Tony, they called me back, i had made the band but my heart just wasn't in it...so i never went back. During this time me, Mike and Tony also wrote and recorded 2 new instrumentals as a three piece under the band name "The Montgomery Burns Project", one which evolved into the Sons of Godzilla song "Monsters Everywhere".
Mike and i also offered our services to our friend Mike Braxton for a show for his dad's birthday. We were going to play all Elvis Presley songs, all of us were going to dress as Elvis it was going to be fun but Braxton saw it another way, he started slipping in originals and talking about "the band" as in us three. We were different musicians than Braxton with totally different styles as well, it would have never worked. Because of this we kinda disappeared and the show never happened, i really did want to dress as Elvis though!
Again we were in a situation where we had no idea what we were going to do next, i didn't want to sing for it would just turn into a vanity project like the last time, we needed a singer and fast. Mike's neighbor worked with a guy who was a singer and was looking for a band to front...he also had a demo!
We figured if he had a demo he was serious about this, so we got the tape and gave it a listen. In the next few weeks that followed we listened to the demo over and over and decided we would invite him over and see if we felt it as a band. Would this work though, bringing in an outsider to the band? All we could do was give it a shot.......
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