Chapter 2: Confusion

There are no shortages of lead guitarists in the world, and we found a couple with decent resumes and some clear talent that we thought 'would do'. The problem was, none of them were especially crazy about us and didn't want to be in a "Prog band". That was 'too 70's and went out with platform shoes'. I couldn't say that I blamed them — neither did I. We were missing something from our sound and I kept hoping the next guitarist or singer we interviewed would provide at least something new to the puzzle. We put out all of the usual contacts within the local and not-so local world of musicians but found nothing definite, and then we put more ads in the local alternative newspapers. Still nothing seemed to materialize.

We soon realized that we had another problem to consider. Songs; none of us was a natural songwriter. Irv could definitely create parts of a melody, as could Simon and I, but our first round of group lyric writing was utter rubbish. I had a few things that didn't completely suck that I'd written over the years (I only come up with about one good 'B' side quality song a year on average) and Simon offered up for good natured ridicule his own equally small batch of mixed treasures. We tossed everything we had into a pile of index cards, shuffled them around randomly and tried to make a few things fit. Using this 'demented jigsaw puzzle' method of song-writing we ending up with four solid new songs that were if nothing else rather perversely original, and even one or two that we weren't totally ashamed of, so that we wouldn't be just another pathetic cover band. We tossed the remaining lyric index cards back into a box to await future inspiration someday later on.

At length, a friend of a friend contacted us about their friend, a guitarist in his late thirties that was 'pretty good and taught guitar lessons locally, but had never before been in a band. Discouraged with our luck so far, we agreed to meet with him. His name was David and he liked our sound and agreed to perform with us for local gigs, but he preferred not to travel on the road away from home for more than a night. He and his wife, a very sweet lady named Virginia, had just started their family recently and they had a young toddler with another bun in the oven set to come out by mid-summer. He was certainly better than nothing, and was very reasonable in the split of the band's take he requested, as he was with us more for the fun, than the babes and glory.

That left only our new singer to find. We had one fairly likeable short young guy named Byron interview for the job, and he sang a few nights for us at local gigs. He was ok, but not quite the right sound and just didn't have any 'stage presence' whatsoever, however, he was young, enthusiastic and he wanted the experience, so we offered to keep him as a temp until the right person came along. He took the failure much better than we would have predicted; he was a bit too young and he did need more experience (and didn't quite have nearly enough of a vocal range) for a lead 'singers job ... even for Prog-Metal. He was however, a genius behind the mixing board and great at making deals with people, and before anyone realized it we now had our Booking Manager and Sound Editor rolled into one small, inexperienced (and very inexpensive) package. He would often sing hidden backup vocals for us off-stage at his mixing board from then on, but he soon never missed being out in front, onstage where we were. He did make some mistakes in the early days, but never the same ones twice, and I think our road to success would have been twice as hard without him. Hurray for Lord Byron!

We were still stuck looking for our vocal sound when far too early one morning I received a phone call from a young lady saying that she had seen our ad for a singer in the local University newspaper that morning, and when could she interview with us for the job? Obviously she didn't realize most working musicians keep very late hours and are not normally morning people. She sounded very earnest and almost pleading in her tone. When I did wake up enough to make a little bit of sense, I asked her if she could meet us at a local Montrose area restaurant that evening at 6 p.m., and we'd then take her to our rehearsal hall. We actually did have a pretty good place to hangout and practice, which we did nearly every non-gig night. Simon's father was the CFO for a very large commercial real estate company that was buying up all of the old commercial warehouses downtown near where the new baseball park was likely going to be built, and he gave us the use of one to use semi-indefinitely until the property value of it had arisen enough about four years later to resell for redevelopment at an obscenely fat profit.

Our young would-be songbird did not inspire instant confidence upon our first glimpse of her. She was of good stature and very slim, probably too thin to be entirely healthy at her age. Her hair was cut quite short in bangs around her eyes and just above her shoulders. It was dyed raven black, but her roots hinted that she might be a natural redhead (wow, four gingers in one band - Simon, Irv and I were all redheads of varying shades). She was dressed from head to toe in black leather, with more black (a corset?) underneath and a black velvet collar around her neck. Her shoes were black patent leather platforms, that I could tell were not easy to walk around in and she tended to control her movements extremely carefully. Her makeup? Heavy black, of course. Every inch of her screamed out "Gothic". This was still sort of a new trend and mostly just in the fashion underground in those days, and not yet as common as it would become in a few more years. To us the look was new and fairly exotic.

We all collectively shook our heads over her and thought that she'd never work out, but we had promised her an audition and we took her over to our rehearsal hall, right after dinner (which she looked like she had desperately needed).

Talking with me on the short drive over there I found out that she was not a total music rube. She had been a music student at the University for about six years and was working on her Masters. She knew all the theory, probably better than we working blokes did. She asked for a lyric sheet and for us to play the first piece through as we would normally. Ok, we played our first number through for her and she seemed interested. She asked us to repeat a certain part that seemed like it was a bit tricky to play, and would probably be even harder to sing correctly, and we watched her work out the phrasing in her head. When she finished considered our song, she jumped up and announced that she was ready and ordered us to, "Take it once again from the top, guys". We did, and she started to sing ... and how!

Her voice was a mezzo-soprano that soared and filled the entire warehouse. She could hold a note pitch perfect, seemingly forever. She sang our song in a way we had never even before considered, and it was lovely. It seemed that our pretty dark angel songbird was a would-be opera singer. We spent the rest of the evening teaching her our other three completed songs, and she got each of them note perfect on the first try, albeit also in wondrously different ways than we had imagined the songs would be sung. We didn't by that point even try offering suggestions for how each song could be sung, why screw with perfection.

To this day no one remembers who actually offered Erin, our Goth wonderette, the job, or if in fact anyone actually ever formally did. From the moment she joined us for a late night snack at a local 24-hour greasy spoon she was 'Our singer.'

She was in a relationship already, she announced right from the start, which felt like I had been dunked into cold water. From the moment I'd met her, I felt some connection with her that seemed more than just plain simple sexual attraction, but knowing well how romances screw up band dynamics, I screwed my mouth tightly shut and forced my brain to filter every word that came out of my mouth at least four or five times before I uttered anything to her. If I couldn't be her lover, then at least I decided that I'd try to become her favorite big brother, instead.

I drove her home that first night about midnight, as she didn't have a car and normally took the bus to University. It was late spring and nearly the end of term. She hoped to be available most evenings soon, but she had to check with her partner first. We lightly discussed future plans and I made arrangements to pick her up from her flat at 7 p.m. the next evening, which I did, and received a great surprise. Erin, dressed head to toe in her usual black, was sporting a large shiner than even swabs of black makeup couldn't hide, and from the way she was holding herself I could have placed any bet that more bruises could be found on her arms and elsewhere else.

I was livid, and ready to go upstairs and have a few ungentle words with anyone who would lay a hand in anger against a young pretty woman. Erin pleaded with me not to make more trouble for her, until I agreed (unhappily) not to interfere... "Only for right now..." I muttered.

The story it seemed was that Erin's 'partner' was an older woman that she had been in a lesbian relationship with for quite awhile, and was to put it mildly, very controlling. If Erin could be home no later than 10 p.m. that night, there would probably be no problems, she insisted. Erin's sudden decision to join a band had been a rather sudden shock for her partner, and her temper had flared 'just a little bit'.

"It was entirely my fault anyway," Erin kept repeating over and over again as if it were almost a mantra.

I was barely mollified, and when I dropped her home at the dot of 10 p.m. that evening, I gave her a card to keep in her purse with my home phone number on it, and ordered her in the firmest voice that I dared to use, to call me at even the slightest hint of trouble, and I would come running! She accepted it and hugged me. There was no trouble that night, nor for the rest of the month.

For working purposes, we became "The Blackbirds" and everyone tried dressing up in as dark and brooding a manner as we could get, but none of us took to the style anywhere near the extent that Erin could manage. Any trying a few costumed that just look silly on me, I settled for just a pair of black cowboy boots, black jeans and a black long-sleeved shirt. That's about as dark and brooding as I could manage, at least for the time being. We began to work as steadily as we wanted to, and our erstwhile new Manager Byron began to fill up the booking calendar for a series of allegedly short, out-of-town late spring/early summer gigs mostly at or near college campuses. When we finally saw the completed list, we all just about flipped. This 'short tour' managed to encompass twenty-five cities in just 30 days, eventually ending up with a booking at an alternative music festival in New York. Our Lord Byron had been far more productive and enterprising than we had ever imagined, or were even ready for.

Dave of course just about had a near heart attack. There was no way, he exclaimed to everyone and anyone that would listen, that he could be gone that long from his wife and family. At length, he agreed to accompany us as far as the New Orleans show, but then he positively and absolutely would have to return home. Having some of Dave was better than getting none of him at all, and we grudgingly agreed to this. We started to hunt desperately again for another replacement guitarist, but finding the right one still continued to elude us.

By the end of May, we started to do a few overnight gigs in College Station, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas, to start running dress rehearsals to iron out the logistical kinks of traveling a few hundred miles, setting up our own gear, doing a show, then doing a breakdown and reloading the truck for another long nights drive to another show. Most of us had some experience with doing all this before in other bands, but we were a bit rusty. During the last ill-fated MR tour the promoter had arranged a small crew for us that had handled nearly everything as part of the contract. He had done most of the work — and earned most of the profits. We were now on our own and learning that part of the business from the ground up. There were plenty of mistakes, bad screw-up's and shows from hell that I'd never want to relive, but we tried to keep a humor about things and chalked everything up to a learning experience.