Swoon 23

I spent several of the last years of the 20th century with the indy rock band Swoon 23, connecting the dots on the AAA map of America, playing original music into rooms that occasionally held people.

We formed the band as beginners with a vision, to pitch a sleeper at a music industry then dominated by punk/alt rock. We succeeded in a way. We sent two full-length CDs across the plate. The music industry missed them entirely.

We started as a foursome, practicing and jamming in basements and warehouse lofts of Portland, Oregon. After amicably parting ways with original drummer, Kevin Richey (now the mind behind the psychedelic country gig, Bingo), the skins were taken over by Marty Smith, who remained with the band for the rest of the long, strange trip.

While he handled the toms and cymbals, the actual rhythm was a responsibility we all shared. It was kind of like hot potato. We'd all try to figure out who was keeping the best rhythm at the moment and follow them.

Megan Pickerel strummed and sang, and even after years of hearing it, her voice could still give me the creeps. In a good way. Michael Keating played the guitar pedals with immense concentration went on to rock with the band, Television Eye.

Michael, Marty, Megan, Me

I also played guitar and sang when they couldn't stop me. They really really should have stopped me.

I was better at guitar. Now, I will never be anything but an amateur guitarist but I do have two talents: 1) I can find a beautiful tone with any guitar through any amp in any room because 2) I know what I like to hear.

If I do have a choice of axe, I'd have to go with a '59 Fender Jazzmaster through a vintage Fender Super Reverb. No effects pedals needed though I can always have fun with a Big Muff. The best noise I ever made was the last note of the solo on our song, Lunatic. Wanna hear it?

We didn't have a bass player, and the only people who ever commented negatively about it were bass players.

When we started, none of us could play much at all but in open-minded Portland that didn't matter if you could make an original noise. While the media frenzy was devouring pink young grunge bands in Seattle in the mid-90's, Portland was crawling with brilliant unknowns.

The Surf Maggots' Josh Feierman sang like stoned Jonathan Richman, with his pants on fire and a mouthful of 'ludes. The New Bad Things had a 3-year-old percussionist and he was great. They were doing songs about nothing way before Seinfeld had that idea for his show. And I liked Pond better than Nirvana. Don't get me wrong, I loved Nirvana. But Pond was more imaginative and while they made similar complaints about life in their lyrics, Pond's delivery was not so dark and perhaps more meaningful to the average Portland slacker. They continue to avoid innumerable major label offers for some reason.

Photo op at the cemetary

Our cohorts the Dandy Warhols rocked very nicely. We twisted their arms to let us tour with them a couple of times and it was always a lovely lark.

For some reason my primary image of them is this party at one of their parents' house up on a hill. We all dosed on some nice mushrooms and swam naked in the pool. We played a lot of major chords and made up songs and I had a lot of fun wandering around in the forest naked with a candle balanced on my head. That was when Zia had just joined their band and everyone was hot for her. She had a nice habit of whipping off her shirt at shows.

The Dandies were in this love/hate relationship with another band we toured with, the Brian Jonestown Massacre. They heavily influenced each other, and were consequently always accusing each other of plagiarism.

Ultimately, the Dandies win in terms of commercial success, but the BJM have more albums. The Dandies crank out a slickly-produced artwork every couple years. Meanwhile the Brian Jonestown just keep going into the studio with no budget and I think they have at least 15 albums.

Whenever some record label gives BJM singer Anton enough money to get into a studio, he'll rip out three albums in a week. Real mad genius there. Once pointed a gun at my head.

Ondi and Dave Timoner from LA took several years out of their young lives to make a documentary about the BJM and Dandies, called Dig!. They must have had enough digital footage to wrap a string of 1's and 0's twenty times around the sun. Swoon shows were in amongst the footage that hit the virtual cutting-room floor, but we managed to get cameos here and there.

The BJM was a trip to hang around. We toured with that glorious wreck of a band a few times. They were saintly to us, but they got on each other's nerves an awful lot and would break down fighting on stage at the drop of a tambourine. It was hilarious to watch them. One moment they'd be singing, "We are Love," then for some unperceived reason they'd suddenly be swinging guitars at each other's heads. The audience often suffered collateral damage.

The best musician I've ever seen, hands down, is Joel, the BJM's tambourine player. I know, it's just a tambourine. But even when they have a bass, drums and four guitars on stage, the audience watches Joel. He's rivetting, but he doesn't even dance. He just stands there like he's brushing his teeth but I swear it's the coolest thing you'll ever see. Like if Austin Powers had the brain of Stephen Hawking but instead of thinking about math, he thought about tambourine. Joel didn't even work. Tambourine was his job. Once he was put in the hospital because the Long Pigs from England beat the crap out of him. Those Long Pig bastards. I wanted to like their music too.

Gorillas in the mist

Swoon 23 is no more. We had a chance for success but in the music business you really need endurance.

We were great friends, which you have to be, to spend 4 hours a day, 3 days a week practicing. Or more. And you definitely have to be close to spend 2 months in a van driving to every decent-sized dot on the US map.

One time, Michael decided bathing was passe for a couple of months, but we still loved him. Food was a challenge because Megan and I were vegans while Marty was a hamburgitarian. We all drank scads of wine and Megan chased hers with cough syrup. She'd always have a little bottle of it by her wine glass on the keyboards.

Man, I loved touring. Recording was great, and though I really dig the process of mixing five amps, five drums, four cymbals and three vocals so it comes nicely out of two little home stereo speakers, touring is the best.

You wake up, eat something to settle your stomach and hit the road. I usually carried a bag of gorp. I'd munch away and drive or practice guitar in the back of the van.

We only had two drivers for the first couple of tours. Just me and Michael drove that big loop down to California, across to Florida, up to Maine and back through the midwest. Once, when the label forgot to book any shows for us in the midwest, we drove straight across from Virginia to Oregon in 3 days, stopping only once for sleep at Michael's parent's farm in Kansas. Later Jeffrey Wonderful joined us and the driving got a little easier.

There were conflicts sometimes, as there will be among collaborating artists, but we had so much optimism on the road.

Once our van threw a rod in the middle of the Arizona desert at 3am. In a matter of seconds the van went from a mode of transportation to a heap of scrap metal. We sat around on the sand sharing a bottle of Jim Beam and singing "There You Are...Jesus Song No. 7" by the Flaming Lips, with an acoustic guitar and real crickets chirping just like on their album. A trucker finally came by and got us a tow 80 miles back to Yuma (read Nowhere).

After finding out the van was a write-off, we rented a U-Haul and drove it to Phoenix. There we found a used van for $500. The generator was held in place by a broomstick jammed in the engine, but that beautiful beast took us the rest of the way around the US and then some.

Jeffrey Wonderful joined us as roadie and light man on our last two tours. He did a wonderful light show with an overhead projector and a glass plate full of colored oil. He was diabetic so if all of us were drunk after the show, he could always be counted on to drive. I remember stabbing him in the leg with his insulin needle because he didn't want to waste time pulling over.

Hello, Orlando!

When we got to the next town, we'd cruise in, find the venue and unload the equipment. I pretty much liked schlepping gear. Don't ask me why.

We'd usually have some time before sound check so the band would home in on the bar and drink. Eat if the venue offered free food.

I'd usually take a walk around the neighbourhood and check out thrift stores and cafes or whatever else was there. I'd walk for miles sometimes. I usually came back with time to spare but I remember a few times returning just as we were due for sound check. Or slightly after. In San Francisco (maybe LA) I once walked in just as our set started. I knew I would catch hell later but for the moment, I just enjoyed the rockstar experience of stepping onto a prepared stage, picking up my guitar and strumming.

We somehow never had a budget for a hotel room. So after each show, we'd make what we called, The Announcement: "Thank you. And if anyone knows where we can stay tonight, we'll be at the bar." Two or three offers would always come up. On a typical one- or two-month tour, we'd stay in a hotel all of three times. And that was only if the Dandy's or the Jonestown let us crash on their floor. They had real management.

Yet it was just fine with me to crash on a floor in some punk rocker's house. We would get to meet nice people and stay someplace a little more homey than a Super 8 Motel.

There was one problem with this scenario though. Often, after inviting us to stay, they'd then tell their friends, "Dude, the band is coming to our place tonight. Come over for the party!" That was always great fun. We got to be the center of attention a little longer and sometimes I'd get to kiss a pretty girl. But when it's almost every night for six or eight weeks, it can really drain your reserves. Especially if we had to be on the road at 8am the next day.

It's hard living and it takes a toll on health and sanity. Though when you're on tour, it's like you get super powers. You don't need sleep and alcohol doesn't get you drunk.

We're not really eating

You do need food, however, and my personal theory is that was our downfall. We really had no money except what we got from shows, which was usually less than half of what was promised.

A club will rarely feed the band, but alcohol is always free. Booze has sugar in it and it can almost feel like eating food. Do that enough and you develop some pretty serious mood swings. By the time we got to the east coast we had a whole mood playground with mood slides and mood monkeybars.

Our bond was pretty tight, but sometimes that can work against you. A family always knows the absolute meanest things they can say to make you mad.

Anyway, on the fourth tour or so, I just got off the bus in Providence, Rhode Island. I was in love with a super cool girl there and I showed up on her doorstep with my suitcase, amp and guitar. I lived there for a year or two, then moved to Japan.

What do I have to show from my time with Swoon 23? Two CDs that I almost never listen to (though the second one might have been good if they had kept me away from the mic). A tattoo of the number 23 on my left calf that I got in New Hampshire along with Marty and Jeffrey Wonderful. Anything else? Of course a ton of good memories and a huge learning experience. In particular, recording the second album was a blast, at Easley Studios in Memphis, Tennessee.

Would I pursue a career in the music industry? I'd really enjoy being a producer and I know I could take a band, cut away the redundant wanking, bring out their best noise and burn some serious hardcore pop art. But I would never do it for a living.

The music business involves two primary groups. The businessmen make a serious passel of money and care a lot about things like being on time, printing on the cheapest paper and skimping on anything that might cause a musician to have a good time.

Meanwhile the musicians have to sling pizza and skip rent so they can fix their amp and usually they're fine with that because they care a lot about being late or just skipping work if they don't feel like it. And they care most about music because it came from their inner god and you don't go up to the cross and put a comb through Jesus' hair if it looks a little matted, do you? Many musicians firmly believe that if the label is happy with them, then they are selling out.

The traffic porch

No way in hell do I want to put my sensitive self in the middle of this slapfest. So I bagged it all without ceremony for a Jack London gig as an expatriate writer in Asia.

To get songs from the music from the album, The Legendary Ether Pony, you'll have to complain to Tim Kerr Records. It's been out of print forever so I'm sure T/K won't care if I put some songs on here in the future. Our slot at Tower Records in NYC has been empty for ages and it looks as though T/K won't ever get around to putting us up on iTunes. So here's a freebie:

Atom Smasher

If you happen to be one of our three fans, here's a li'l treat: a long lost demo of Pussycat Fingertips with me on drums and Kevin Richey on Wah Bass.

Pussycat Fingertips demo

And yes, we had a Fanclub. A bunch of teenaged girls from Long Island, NY actually created a lovely website for us. I don't think it's around anymore but you can see pics of them at the Fanclub page.

Addendum: It was just brought to my attention that we have a MySpace page and there's some songs on there. Neato.