Based on a true story

Posted on 8 August 2005 | 10 Comments

Filed Under: Blog, Old Posts

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John and Tim first played together in a cover band at a high-school talent show. I met John in a freshman calculus class at the University of Illinois and shortly thereafter we started writing and playing short, fast, pop-punk songs. We played our first show in early 1997 as Phineas Gage but changed our name a few months later to pay homage to Alasdair Gillis (we spelled it differently)from the Canadian TV show You Can’t Do That on Television. During the year we played shows throughout Illinois anywhere we could and recorded a demo tape that we sent to a bunch of different record labels.

In December of 1997 we recorded 5 songs with Phil Bonnet (RIP) at his Solid Sound studios. He had recorded some of our favorite bands such as Screeching Weasel, Slapstick, Smoking Popes, and Apocalypse Hoboken so we figured that he’d make us sound great as well. Phil did his best, and four of the five songs we recorded ended up being released on our first (and only) seven-inch record appropriately entitled You Can’t Do That on Vinyl.

Drive-Thru Records eventually got back to us and said they were interested in distributing our record. We were pretty stoked. The 500 copies of that seven-inch sold pretty quickly and we continued to play shows around the Midwest. Sometime in mid-1998 I moved from bass to guitar when we asked Scottie from The Humdingers (another Chicago pop-punk band) to play bass. The addition of another member, however, made things much more complicated: John was still in school at the University of Illinois, Tim was going to Eastern Illinois, Scottie was in the suburbs of Chicago, and I was living in Indianapolis with Amy.

We flew out to Los Angeles in December of 1998 to record our first full-length called Dead Ends and Girlfriends at Amerycan Studios in North Hollywood, CA and while we were in California we played about a half-dozen shows. The CD was released in the summer of 1999 to coincide with our first national tour.

Shortly before the tour, Amy and I moved back to Chicagoland and I headed west with the band in our shitbox van “Moose.” We played Omaha, Colorado Springs, Las Vegas, and then drove through the desert (with no air-conditioning) on our way to the Drive-Thru Records home base in California. After meeting label mates Last Summer, Caught Inside, and New Found Glory, we circled back through Texas and the south with most of them. After shows in Atlanta and Florida we made our way up to New Jersey, New York, and finally back home.

We continued to play shows after we got back from tour, but sometime in the fall of 1999 I quit being in the band. I could say that I quit because Drive-Thru was becoming too big and “unpunk” because of their major-label ties, but the truth is that my heart just wasn’t in it anymore. The CD was re-released in November 1999 after Drive-Thru inked a deal with MCA records.

I didn’t really keep in touch with the guys for awhile after I quit, but they kept plugging along. While I was solidifying my relationship with Amy, the band was solidifying their new lineup. Tim moved from behind the drums to the guitar in order to fill the role that I vacated. Dave joined to play drums and the band kept touring, played the Warped Tour, and even went to Europe and Japan. They released their second album for Drive-Thru in 2002, but before that was released John left the band and Chris joined to fill his spot. Dave quit shortly after that.

You have got to admire their determination because Tim and Scott wouldn’t let all the personnel changes stop them. Longtime friend Mike joined on to play drums and they added Kyle to play guitar after Showoff broke up.

In early 2005 the band started work on their third full-length. A little over a month ago I saw the guys after a show that Bam (of MTV fame) was supposed to be at but bailed out on at the last minute. We had a few drinks, a few laughs, and even got to watch the Cubs beat up on some hapless opponent. It was really good to see Tim and Mike for the first time in awhile, but when the game was over we all went back to our normal lives.

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