And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes
Posted: 01.20.2009 Filed under: 2001, of interest, Tequila Mockingbird 3 Comments »This post is more or less a collection of the music that I’ve done or been involved with over the years. Lately, I’ve been feeling like I want to start playing the drums again, and be in a band of some sort – nothing professional, of course, but something to do in my spare time and have some fun with again. But it’s been years since I’ve played the drums, and I’m in no shape – physically or financially – to just be able to pick up my drums and join the first band I find. First off, my drum set needs some major reconstruction: new heads, a new snare drum, new sticks … and probably a new bass drum, if it hasn’t rotted out completely yet. Physically, my arms and wrists just aren’t in any condition to endure the strain of drumming for hours on end.
But, I might just dust off those old skins and start hitting them again, see what happens. I’ve heard of crazier things than playing in a non-professional band at the age of 25.
Enough rambling. Here is my account of the one major musical project I’ve been involved with so far in my life.
Tequila Mockingbird
Note: The following text has been reproduced from something I wrote nearly four years ago. I do this not because I’m particularly proud of what I wrote, but because I’d pretty much say the same exact thing nowadays. I’ve left any errors or tense switches (which would be errors themselves, I suppose) intact … mostly because I’m lazy. Warning: this is a long entry.
I’m going to take you back to my junior year in high school, which would be around May or June 2000. I was picked up by Matt to go to a friend’s house for a party, and he just happened to have his guitar with him. I think he always carried that thing around in case someone asked him to jam with him (last time I checked, the possibility of a stranger walking up to another stranger in a supermarket and asking him if he wanted to jam, and not mean Smuckers, is highly unlikely). Anyway, when we got there, we noticed a drum set in the basement and a bass guitar that just happened to be sitting there. Matt and I looked at each other, and he ran out to his car to get his guitar.
Tim T also happened to be there, and I’d known him for a few years and knew him to be a really talented musician – he played tuba, trumpet, piano, and apparently guitar. The three of us went down to the basement, and Matt plugged in his guitar, Tim picked up the bass, and I sat down at the drums, and we just started to jam. Ten, eleven minutes go by, and we’re still whaling away on the same blues scale, but we’re having a good time. Then Matt and Tim switch instruments, and we start on another jam, lasting longer than the previous one. The entire party, we just stayed down in the basement and jammed, and then went upstairs when it was getting late, sat at the kitchen table, and wondered where we should go from there.
My memories following this are a bit vague, but a week or so later, the three of us met up again, this time in Matt’s basement. We jammed some more, and discussed the possibility of starting a band. I can’t remember exactly what we played, but I know that Tim started playing a song that he thought he’d found in a guitar instruction book, as it was called ‘Funk #49′; Tim and I then worked on writing a set of lyrics to the music, and we ended up calling it ‘Bus Station Girl’. It was a pretty bad song, and we didn’t realize it was actually a song written by James Gang back in 1971.
After we finished jamming, we sat around and discussed band names. I think I came up with a few random things that didn’t work, but Matt started saying a bunch of things: Electric Breeze, Ace In The Hole, and so forth. Tim turned to him and asked, “Are you just spouting out John Lee Hooker album names?” We decided on Electric Breeze, the reasoning of which escaped me then and still eludes me now.
The only problem was that we didn’t have a bass player. Neither Tim nor Matt owned a bass, and we couldn’t just hijack the one they’d used at the party, so they decided between them who would play rhythm guitar on a particular song, which would also double as bass, and who would play lead. I know we rehearsed ‘Bus Station Girl’, ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’, and ‘Sympathy For The Devil’, but we didn’t have a gig yet – I think we just liked jamming to have a bit of fun. We didn’t take it very seriously, that’s for sure.
A few days later, I get a call from Matt telling me he managed to get us to play live at Thunderbird Lanes on Street Toad. This was it – our first live performance! We quickly rehearsed a few more numbers, including a specially altered one called ‘(Brent Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, which is obviously a play on the Rolling Stones’ song, except with a set of lyrics about how Matt’s one friend, Brent Kopenhaver, couldn’t get any action from his then girlfriend, Steph Larson. I don’t remember a whole lot about the gig, including the songs that we played, but I do remember Tim standing on a table playing the solo for ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ and him turning around to me, shouting, “This is fun!”.
Things seemed to fizzle out after that, but we weren’t really a serious band and were just doing it for fun. Tim and I started marching band again that summer, which really ate up a whole lot of our time, and Matt went on his way for now. But I think the desire to play music was still there.
In October, during a night rehearsal for marching band, a new kid was introduced to the pit, and was placed right between me and Steve McClure. He was a tall, lanky, goofy-looking kid, but he played an instrument that we had sorely needed (both in Electric Breeze and marching band): the bass guitar. I didn’t really say much to him, but I did take notice of his shirt, which had “Led Zeppelin” emblazened on it, and a picture of the item in question underneath. I said to him, “Hey, cool shirt,” and introduced myself. He said something along the lines of, “Thanks – they’re awesome, but I really like The Who.” He introduced himself, and that’s where it all started.
Over the past few weeks, I would talk to Gorzo every now and then, usually at marching band, and realized we had a lot in common when it came to music. I told him about the band that I was in, and mentioned the guitarists I’d jammed with. Apparently, he knew Matt through a mutual friend of his, but didn’t really know Tim. A jam session was organized, and on that Saturday night, Gorzo arrived with something that we didn’t even think of before: a tape recorder.
We played a handful of songs that night: ‘Mainline Shuffle’, which was a ten minute, harmonica-driven song that just went on and on, even though Gorzo and I got off beat every now and then; ‘Rock and Roll’, that old classic by Led Zeppelin, in which I got a chance to show off my drum skills; ‘Latin Thing’, as it was originally known, which then became ‘Tequila Mockingbird’ and finally ‘Medicine Man’; Pearl Jam’s ‘Yellow Ledbetter’, which I mistook for Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Little Wing’; ‘Voodoo Chile’, and then a few more blues and rock jams.
Suddenly, the feeling that something was happening came back, and we scheduled rehearsals for every weekend or so (basically, whenever we had time). One time in January 2001, I passed Gorzo in the hallways of school and handed him a CD, telling him to learn the first song for that night’s rehearsal. The song in question was ‘Dance Pt. 1′ by the Rolling Stones, and much to my delight, Gorzo had learned it! Tim wasn’t there, but Gorzo and I ‘premiered’ the song for Matt, who was a little confused (rightly so) by this song that we had created. It was one of those songs that we would play endlessly, even though we all grew sick of it fairly quickly; Gorzo and Matt wouldn’t take it very seriously, of course, because who the hell writes a disco song called ‘Dance’ in 2001? The bridge originally featured Gorzo doing a slow run up the bass, which we all liked, but when we actually recorded it definitively, there was a horrible slap bass solo that he always felt embarrassed about.
Around this time, we started debating on a band name again. Gorzo wanted Sunshine Space Tweezers, which I thought was horrible; I suggested Black Sheep, which was equally bad. Then, I thought Tequila Mockingbird would be a good name, as it sort of summed up the music we were playing rather well. When I thought of Gorzo’s suggestion, I thought of a burnt out, flower power hippie group (who knows what anyone thought of Black Sheep). Electric Breeze wasn’t even a possibility, as we all hated that too much.
Anyway, we built up a large repertoire of music, and Gorzo even submitted a song, which was really just one verse of lyrics. It was called ‘Boo Radley Takes Off His Clothes’, which fit in nicely with our band name, and Tim started to put it to music while Matt and I wrote a few more verses for it. It was also around this time that Tim had told us he wanted to record a CD, as it turned out to be his graduation project. This seemed to be a good opportunity, so we were collecting all our songs together, and when Gorzo came up with his, Tim was less than thrilled about putting it on the CD. I remember him crying, “I don’t want my parents to hear this! I’m going to be giving these out to the people at my church! We can’t put this song on there!”
Tim had booked us a recording session for March 18th at Menagerie Studios, and we were all ecstatic. We continued to rehearse for the next few months, trying to work out our song list and decide what would be good for the CD and what wouldn’t. One song that unfortunately didn’t make the grade was something called ‘Bow Chicka Wow Wow’, which Gorzo helpfully introduced as “our porno song”. It was about ten minutes of Tim fiddling on a wah-wah guitar while I’m playing the hi-hat. It’s on a rehearsal tape somewhere – I think Gorzo has it, the bastard – which we always did (tape our rehearsals, that is) so that we could go back and listen to the great amounts of suck flowing through our speakers that night. I’m kidding, of course, but it’s fun to just go back and listen to the stuff that we did.
When the recording session date came, we only had six songs we were going to record: ‘Mainline Shuffle’, ‘Medicine Man’, ‘Dance’, ‘Supermarket Song’, ‘Miracle’, and ‘Boo Radley’. ‘Supermarket Song’ was one that Tim and I had heard in band class one day; Mr. Lamar was sick, and this big black Jamaican guy by the name of Bill Bloom was substituting, and instead of making us play, he let us do what we pleased. He sat down at the piano as everyone else was mingling and started playing this song, which had a fairly amusing set of lyrics about a guy who went to the supermarket and tried to pick up women but failed miserably; Tim took notice and suggested we record it. We weren’t very keen on recording other people’s material, what with royalties and all, but Tim covered it: he gave Mr. Bloom twenty bucks for use of the song.
‘Miracle’ was probably one of the worst songs that any of us could’ve written, and that’s being charitable. Imagine the most clichéd set of lyrics put to a generic, sappy ballad backing, and you’ve got ‘Miracle’. It wasn’t that bad when we did it at my house once, when it was played on guitar, but… ugh. Anyway, we only had six songs, and one of them Tim refused to use on the actual album itself, so the day of the session, Matt sat down with me and Gorzo and taught us a standard blues jam, and I think his title was ‘Minor Blues’. I said that the other day I was trying to come up with the most ridiculous song titles ever, and spouted off the winner: ‘Sitting On My Front Porch Sipping A Glass Of Iced Tea Wondering Which Soap Opera To Watch Next’. Matt promptly hijacked that title as the one for his song, and he also premiered a set of lyrics for ‘Dance’ (up until then, it was just an instrumental; when it came time for the drum solo, which I insisted upon, and a cowbell feature, both Matts would jump around the room screaming “Cowbell! Cut a rug Matt! Cowbell!”), which I hated, but I hadn’t come up with my own, so we used them.
We took three cars up to the studio in Straussburg (I think?): Matt and I rode in my Buick, Gorzo and Joe DeNoble rode with Tim, and Tim’s parents followed us to make sure we got there ok. The studio itself was nice, but the sessions lasted forever (I think we finally got down to business at 2 30, and finished up just after midnight, having recorded and mixed six songs). Our enthusiasm is noticeable in the first four songs, but really died off when we recorded ‘Miracle’, but was resurrected for ‘Sitting On My Front Porch’. I think ‘Miracle’ just sucked that much that we didn’t really want to record it.
We really did every song in two takes or less, but there were some overdubs. I think Tim’s harmonica on ‘Mainline Shuffle’ and ‘Front Porch’ were added after Matt, Gorzo and I did our parts, and I also recall the piano on ‘Supermarket Song’ being added later. The backing vocals for that song, interestingly enough, were done by Matt, Gorzo, and me. Now, if you know Gorzo and myself at all, you’ll know that we’re not singers of any stretch of the imagination, but I think we pulled it off rather well for this song (Tim had actually asked me to harmonize with him on ‘Miracle’, but I think he came to his senses at some point, because this never happened). There is something that I won’t ever shut up on, and it’s painfully obvious when you hear my nasal backing vocals on ‘Supermarket’: the last verse was supposed to be, “Everybody goes to the supermarket, everybody I know goes”, which the others managed to sing, but I had a brain fart and instead sang “Everybody goes to the supermarket, everybody has to be fed”, and I said “Shit!’ quite clearly afterwards, which made Gorzo and Matt laugh (you can kind of hear their reaction, but my “Shit” is masked by a monkey noise Joe DeNoble made – he was sitting at the desk with the producer, and Tim kept trying to get him to come in to sing with us). I’m proud of that vocal flub, for the record.
That song was unusual to record, because I don’t think there’s any bass on there, and it’s mainly done on ukelele (played by Matt), piano (played by Tim), and percussion (played by Joe). The reason Joe came along was to document the sessions, and I think there may be a video of us recording somewhere, but I’m not too certain. When it came time to do ‘Supermarket Song’, we weren’t really sure what to do with it, percussion-wise: I was going to play tambourine, but Joe sat down at the drum set and started tapping on a muted snare drum, which Tim liked better. Instead of me trying to learn the part, Joe played it, which I was never too happy about.
When it came time for me to do my cowbell solo on ‘Dance’, I was standing in the middle of the studio with a pair of headphones on and a cowbell in my hand, listening to the playback while the others stared at me from behind the window. Gorzo and Tim were trying to make me laugh, but I did not give in! I recorded the cowbell in one take, but I was never pleased with the result, because I actually didn’t know they were recording it; I was just doing it once to get the feel for the song, but I guess we were too pressed for time to really do it again.
Tim had overdubbed a second vocal onto ‘Medicine Man’ for the middle eight, which sounded great – I likened it to an amalgamation of Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa. I asked Gorzo a while back who wrote the bassline, and he said he did. I was really impressed with it, and then he told me he made it up on the spot, and that when the song goes into the trippy, psychedelic part, he was surprised that he managed to finish the bass run on cue.
‘Miracle’ was a bitch to record, because Tim kept messing up the piano. I think we did this in seven or eight takes, each one worse than the previous one. Earlier in the day, I had been yelled at by the producer for taking off plastic rings he had on the drums, so I tried not to get on his bad side again. When Gorzo, Tim and I did the rhythm track for ‘Miracle’, the producer (his name was Jeff, I believe) told me he needed a steady beat from me – no flourishes. I wasn’t happy about this, and you can hear that all I’m doing is playing a standard drum beat, which probably adds to the overall feeling of boredom. The song lasted for five minutes, and we really couldn’t bother with an ending, so it concluded by coming to an unsure finish.
Gorzo was having difficulty with the bass part for some reason (I think he knows better), and we were all tired by this point, so Gorzo, Joe and I went down the street to pick up pizza and wings. I kept joking along the way that Matt was going to re-record Gorzo’s bass part because he kept screwing up, but that didn’t phase him too much. When we came back, we did ‘Front Porch’, and I’m really pleased with the attack that Gorzo and I managed, especially considering it was a first take and we hadn’t even learned the song.
The last thing we recorded was ‘Boo Radley’, which was done with Tim on guitar, Gorzo on bass, and me on hi-hats. I really wanted to sing the song, because it was so funny and I thought I could do the voice really well, but Matt did instead. He did a good job, but didn’t too it sinister enough – it really should’ve been a whole lot sleazier, and, besides, he already sang on ‘Dance’. But Gorzo and I were in the vocal booth when he did his vocals; the plan for the song was to include it after ‘Front Porch’, but with ten minutes of silence between (a sort of hidden track, if you will). When we recorded it, there was the sounds of Gorzo, Matt and I whispering into the microphone, “Is this thing on? I think we’re ok. No one’s around. Ok, let’s go.” Unfortunately, the producer, who didn’t like us, unknowingly cut that out, thinking it was just random chatter.
When we finally finished the sessions, we all drove home, with Matt driving my station wagon (I was too tired to drive), and Tim and company piled into his Explorer. Matt and I managed to finagle the copy of the CD we had made and listened to it all the way home, relatively pleased with the results, though I thought we could’ve done better. Still, it was gratifying knowing that we managed to record some of our stuff in a professional studio, even though we were essentially a garage band.
People bought the CD, surprisingly, though they were all friends of ours. I remember being embarrassed when, on the bus ride home from Wildwood in May 2001, the entire back of the bus started listening to the CD on a portable boombox, and sang along really loud when ‘Supermarket Song’ came on; but I was particularly proud when, at senior prom, Matt and I asked the DJ if he could play ‘Dance’. The DJ agreed, and we ran out to his car to get the CD, and up until that point, nobody was on the dance floor, but when the song started, people started to get up and dance.
Tequila Mockingbird failed to exist come August, as we were all getting ready for college and Matt was moving to Indiana. I did jam a few more times with Gorzo and Matt, but we really didn’t find it necessary, as there was no provision of recording anything else in the forseeable future.
I still threaten Gorzo every now and then that I want to record again, and I hope one day we find a guitarist who can fulfill that threat. In my eyes, there really isn’t any other bassist i’d rather play with than Gorzo, but I think we’re both treating it as a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
And what an experience it was!
Postscript (2010): Gorzo is married and now lives in Texas. Matt is still playing music, and has become the Jack White of blues-band bar bands. Tim is in his final year at the University of the Arts and is doing very well. Me? I’m still plugging away.
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