From left to right: Matt, Nate
These were some fun times let me tell you. I don't know where to begin. We wrote so many tunes, yet we
dumped all but one for our demo. Some of these tunes were really
good except they involved keyboards and solos which were
not possible live. These were the years where we experimented with
progressive rock and had many influences from major progressive bands.
Nate and I wrote some great lyrics and some really powerful tunes which meant
a lot. But once again, we had our problems with drummers.
We just couldn't find a drummer who was willing to play what we wanted or one that could handle what we wanted. It looked like we were back to the ole' drawing board, or 'keyboard' for that matter for drums. We made some interesting 4 track demos with synth drums which didn't sound all that bad. Let me take you back to one of the first songs we wrote, and it has a significant meaning too.
One weekend Nate and Anders came up to visit me at school in Albany. Keep in mind it was during the winter and it snowed a lot. We had our minds set to jam all weekend. Nate, Anders and I just locked ourselves in my dorm room and jammed away. I think we pissed some people off! Fortunately my roommate had gone away for the weekend. I had this wicked Roland Synth from like 1983, the Juno 106. It had some killer early 80's sounds including my all-time favorite synth sound from like a Van Halen, Rush, or Marillion. I sat there with this sound and came up with this one riff that was pretty awesome. Nate worked for like an hour straight without a break on a matching guitar riff. We didn't even stop to look outside. I glanced up and noticed it was snowing like hell and it was like a fucking whiteout. I couldn't believe it because it wasn't forecast. (I was actually studying Meteorolgy and it amazed me even more.) I remember one of us mentioning that it would really SUCK if Nate broke a string because the idiot forgot his Allen Wrench. Well OF COURSE he broke a fucking string and we almost died. Well the idiots that WE were, we decided it would be fun to venture out in the blizzard to see if there was actually a music store open. We finally found one about 2 miles down the road, but it took us like an hour to get there because of the snow. We get in and the fools don't have an Allen Key. A music store without an Allen Key is like a Grocery Store without food! We were like 'what the hell kind of store is this??' They suggested the Hardware store down the road a bit so we ventured on. Sure enough they did have one. We made it home after like 2.5 hours of driving about 4 miles total. It was an incredible experience nonetheless.
We finally dig our way from the car to the dorm room and break out the instruments again. What's this?? The tool is the wrong size?? I thought we were going to jump out the window of a 20 story dorm tower. We like wedged that thing in there so it WOULD work. I think after all that we were so damn hungry that we decided to go eat!