8/24/08-A new beginning

When I first put up this website, one of the first things that I decided I wanted on here was a journal of sorts or blog if that's what they're calling it these days which would be my way of connecting with people through who visit this website, and post news that was not necessarily newsworthy enough to send out in an email, but just day to day stuff that may be of curiosity to anyone who would happen to be visiting the site.  Also, it's a great way to excersise my writing skills in a format other than an homework assignment essay!  Alas, a year and a half at least has passed since my last post!  It's not like I haven't had much to talk about either.  Countless potential blog topics were passed by in favor of...whatever else I happened to be doing that day/night besides journaling on my website.  So here I am a year an a half after my last posting, vowing once again to keep this thing up!  But this time at least I'll have help...!

Where to begin....  Back in fourth grade when I was ten (it's weird to have memories that I can say were over a decade ago...totally not used to that yet!) and still living in Franklin, TN, I remember going table to table in the lunch room at Harpeth Academy asking each and every person whether or not they wanted to be in my band.  Most kids just gave me dirty looks and went back to eating lunch (I was never very popular in elementary school to say the least!).  Others would look at me dumbfoundedly and then kind of mumble, "Well I took piano lessons for a little while..." to which I replied, "Great you're in my band!" and moved on.  By the end of the day I had about 9 people in my "band"!  Three of them ended up sticking it out enough to play with me at the annual school talent show a few weeks later.  We were called the Wave Riders.  Later in middle school, I got together with a couple of musician friends of mine I knew from church (one of whom was my life long and counting friend Robby Mogan--check out his music at myspace.com/theisabellaorchestra) and we actually got it together enough to practice about once a week and play the every so often school or church picnic or talent show or any other sort of event.  I played the drums in the band and sang lead and even in those days was a bit of a slave driver when it came to getting the arrangements and chord charts to my songs down perfectly.  When I moved back to Sacramento just in time to start high school, one of the first things I set about doing was putting a band together.  I was attending a performing arts charter school so I figured finding bandmates wouldn't be too difficult.  Unfortunately it proved to be very difficult and aside from a few short lived projects here and there (the best of these being a Crosby Stills and Nash styled trio of singer/songwriters called the Gathering) I grimly accepted the likely future of being a solo artist, at least for the time being.  I think my initial reluctance to that path was that in all of my songs, I always heard in my head complex arrangements that I didn't feel like could be translated efficiently by a solo artist.  My dad reminded me that despite whatever I felt like I was missing, the audience only heard the song as it was presented to them and, if it was a good song, would be able to enjoy it without feeling like it was missing anything.  So that's what I did for the remaider of high school: lugged my acoustic guitar and my less than trusty keyboard to coffeeshop after coffeeshop and played alone.  Over that time, I built up a very large repertoire of original songs and got comfortable with the stage (or lack thereof at most venues), but still there was that gnawing feeling that it just wasn't all that it could be.  Most of my biggest influences were and are bands or at least singer/songwriters backed by a regular group of players (a la Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, etc) and the one man show just wasn't cutting it for me as far as what I wanted for my music.  In the meantime I was in the process of making my album; at least in the context of the studio, I could flesh out all my ideas for the full band arrangement I had always intended for my songs.  The album ended up being something I was very happy with but it increased my longing even further to be able to perform those songs in their full arrangements live.  Finally upon moving to San Francisco a year ago, I plunged full force into the task of assembling a band.  My primary strategy?  Craigslist!  My secondary strategy?  Craigslist!  All romantic ideas of meeting my ideal artistic soulmate at some equivalent of the Wooten Church Fete were put aside, as I posted ad after ad on that venerable list of Craig.  The wording changed, the tone changed, the requirements changed....I don't even know how many people I ended up auditioning. 

And then all of a sudden, after about eight months of this, it just sort of happened...I had a band!  One after another they just sort of filed in...first this quiet 18 year old kid with rings on his fingers, driving a mercedes benz, and whose idea of a guitar audition was to play "Perfect Day" by Lou Reed...then this enthusiastic, energetic guy with blonde not quite dreadlocks who first showed up at my house with a flute and really strange looking and sounding drum which I soon learned was a brand new acoustic instrument from Switzerland called a Hang drum...then a girl, fresh into town from Grass Valley to study animation at the Academy of Art who set about looking for a band before even finding a job and who once bought herself a pony completely with busking money....and finally a drummer, the sixth one we tried out and who believe it or not was actually learned the songs before coming to his audition!  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Jimmy Niven, Daniel Tucker, Nicole Ridgwell, Josh McBee, and yours truly, collectively henceforth known as the Coincidence!

All that is to say I feel like things can really begin now.  I feel like everything in my musical life has led up to this point where I now have a band that is fully capable of translating my ideas into performable realities and that can take on an identity of its own.  We're definitely still growing as a group and getting our feet on the ground--obviously that's expected at this stage in the game and hopefully will never stop--but the band really is sounding great, certainly beyond what you would expect from a group of young adults who've only been playing all together for a little over a month and who all found each other on Craigslist.  Perhaps most importantly, the personal dynamic is amazing in this band.  We couldn't be more different from another and probably wouldn't have thought to have anything to do with each other had it not been for music, but we've managed to really bond over the time we've been together and are quickly figuring out that it's the differences between us that make this band truly something special.

This space is for you to get to know us.  Sure I'll send out emails to let you know about all our upcoming gigs and releases and whatever other "headline news" we may have going on.  But check here if you want to find out what happens to us in real life when we're not onstage pretending to be rock stars.  For example, those of you who get my emails will know that we just played Hotel Utah two nights ago.  Those of you who frequent this journal page would then find out that after the gig got out around 1:30am Daniel, Nicole, Nicole's mom, and one of Nicole's housemates actually spent the next two hours wandering around downtown trying to find a bus or a taxi to take us home!  No taxi wanted to put five people and lots of instruments into their vehicles so we eventually had to call one in.  Or...I sent out an email a few weeks ago announcing our first out of California gig, the Off the Grid Festival in Eugene, OR.  The journal entry would have then gone into great detail into getting lost in Wolf Creek in the middle of the night looking for a gas station and Daniel mistaking a statue of a man with an ax as a real person.  Or how after two days of not showering, on the way back from the festival we pulled over to the side of the road and went swimming in the river.  Or the guys we met at the gas station on the way up who gave us free muffins and Gatoraide and prayed over the trip.  Stuff like that.  Also, I'll just ramble, as I'm good at doing, about just current thoughts I'm having about the band, about music, and just about life in general.  Hopefully I can get the others to post from time to time as well so you can get to know them as well.  Anyway, this was a long post to say not too much, but I just thought it was time to officially announce the new band, and promise that this space will be from this point on kept up to date.  Alright well that will do it for now...
  Peace,
    Adrian

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