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 I
spent the car trips of my youth in the back of a gold Buick station
wagon.
My dad was a career Marine, so my family was constantly moving
or
visiting relatives in far-off states. I whittled away the travel
hours
by staging elaborate G.I. Joe battles on the backward-facing seat.
Mom ruled the cassette player with an iron fist, and I screamed
my head off to every Carpenters, Anne Murray, and Elton John tune
she played. For
revenge, my older brothers would pin me down and fart on my head.
Dad retired when I was nine, and we settled in Birmingham. That
first summer, my family crashed in my grandparent’s cobwebby
old house while
my parents searched for a permanent residence. There weren’t
enough beds
for everyone, so I slept at night on a stack of oriental rugs.
Most of my waking time was spent watching golden era MTV and drawing
animals. Before school started we moved into a home in the suburbs.
Around the age of 12, I developed a painful fixation with U2.
I pulled the tiny guitar that I had so desperately wanted but
never played out of the closet and decided to become a rock star.
My girlfriends and I formed a band that lasted about a week. During
our brief but fabled career we wrote a single song that tackled
the sensitive issue of abortion from a preteen virgin’s
perspective. I’m going to remind Chrissie of that when I
see her tonight.
My high school years were a thing of beauty. I often wore my Velvet
Underground shirt and Doc Martens, because that was how I thought
coolness was measured in the early nineties in our area. By that
time I was playing lead guitar with Pangaea the Supercontinent,
Inc. We were technically little more than a Pixies cover band,
but our singer wore a trench coat and our bassist had a very impressive
white boy afro. Our live show involved a rubber chicken and a
giant screwdriver.
In college, I bounced around from band to band. I met Craig during
my freshman year. He is a good person to watch t.v. with. Lester
was also around then, but I had known him since he dated my friend
Susan in the seventh grade. A couple of years later, Reed and
Hunter came to school. Reed and I played together in his band
Soda Pop, and Hunter joined my band Three Finger Cowboy during
our Fleetwood Mac Love Triangle Moment in History.
So, at some point Three Finger Cowboy wasn’t really working
out anymore.
Hunter and I reconfigured as Nineteen Forty-Five, which we believe
is still functional today. And after swearing off songwriting
for several years, I finally sat behind the piano and thought
up some new tunes. According to my lyrics, I am a much sadder
person than I used to be. I think my mother started worrying about
me more after hearing these songs.
These days, Hunter and I spend most of our time hanging out in
our little home with our dogs. Our house is made of brick and
lies near a fancy outdoor mall in Birmingham. We sometimes record
local bands in our basement studio. Recently, Amy Ray came over
to record some songs for her new record. Hunter played her a couple
of my new songs, and she told me that she wanted to release my
recordings. I thought that was awfully nice of her. So I said
thank you, and I named my band Snow Machine.
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Snow
Machine - self-titled
The
debut album for bassist of Nineteen Forty-Five. Listen to
a sample Now!
 Birmingham
(MP3)
Camel
Lights (MP3)
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