15. SHHH (2003)
The next six months of my life were wild. I didn’t stay in any one spot longer than a week or two. The insanity started when Duane and I were listening to The Rasmus at his condo in Manhattan one afternoon. They had a very popular song overseas that we heard all summer long so we were curious to hear what their other songs sounded like. I was surprised how much I liked them and was really getting into it when the power went out.
The entire city was without power. My very first thought was, “terrorists.” Our reaction was to walk to Central Park. The atmosphere was eerie as people were out in the street frantically directing traffic. Duane was able to use his cell phone and after a few hours we found out that it was just a technical error that knocked out power all over the Northeast.
The next day I helped Dan move out of his apartment in Queens. I had left my van in a cul-de-sac in Queens all summer and someone wasn’t happy about that; one of my tires had been slashed. I put on the spare and drove up to Syracuse to hang out with Ross until the Def Leppard concert at the New York State Fair on the 21st of August.
After the amazing concert I went on a date with a girl named Traci that I had met at a bar in Syracuse a few days before. It wasn’t that amazing but I liked her quite a bit. When dropping her off at the end of the night I nervously and sarcastically put out my hand for her to shake. She said, “You want to shake my hand?” then rolled her eyes and quickly went into her apartment. I lowered my rejected hand and drove back to Ross’ place cursing at “God” for making me so damn awkward.
On August 22nd, as I was cruising along the thruway, heading back to pick up Dan for a trip to Nashville, singing along to a Britney Spears song on the radio, one of my back tires popped. My reaction was to hit my breaks. Mistake! That caused my van to fishtail uncontrollably until it was sent flying off the road. I gripped the wheel tight and said, “Here we go,” as the van sped down a grassy embankment toward a tree line. I felt a few big bumps then I blacked out.
A loud, roaring sound woke me up. It was my engine revving because my foot was plastered on the gas pedal. I took off my seatbelt and got out of the van only to discover that it was at an angle a few feet off the ground. Apparently the van had flipped over into the trees taking a few down with it. Several people that saw the van tumble had pulled over to assist. They were shocked that I wasn’t injured and relieved that I was alone as the back half of my van had been flattened by the impact with the ground.
One guy had me lay down on my back and put my head between his knees to find out if I had any spinal damage. When he assessed that I was okay he let me up and another lady let me borrow her cell phone. Someone had already called a tow truck so I called my mom. The first thing I said was “I’m okay” causing her to wonder what had happened then I asked if she could come pick me up. It was a ridiculous request being that I was almost to Albany which would have been about a 9 hour drive from Toledo.
I stayed at a hotel in Schenectady, New York that night then the next day, instead of cancelling my plans, I rented the only available U-Haul truck, which happened to be way bigger than I needed, got my things out of my van at the junkyard, secured it all at the front of the enormous cargo bed, and picked up Dan at his mom’s house. I was loopy with delirium by the end of the long drive to Toledo where I dropped my things off at my parents house, went to the German-American festival with Dan and Brian Ray, returned the U-Haul truck, then drove down to Nashville with Dan in my mom’s car to create some new SHHH music with Duane.
Wayne had moved into a neat little house on the Cumberland River near Opryland Hotel. He let us set up in his basement but, other than a couple brief jam sessions, we spent most of our time partying. A few days later I was partying in Chicago with Wayne where we went to see the Blue Man Group again. About a week after that I was partying with Matt in Portland then we drove down to Carmel, California where he had rented a vacation house near the beach. Duane met us back in Portland where we jammed and recorded at Matt’s piano bar that had changed its name to Wall Bangers.
We finished two new songs, “Hangover Song” and “Apes Rule!” the latter of which was structured around a fast drum pattern I had recently learned from my cousin Scott. Duane flew back to New York and I drove back to Nashville in Matt’s old Geo Metro that he generously let me have at no cost. I was very grateful but that was one long drive by myself. As soon as I got to Nashville three days later, I went straight to the airport and flew to Savannah, Georgia for an Amy-Jayne show with SHHH at Fort Stewart.
The show was on an outdoor stage and it felt good to be playing with the full band again. Luckily the backline was provided so I didn’t have to bring my drums. They forgot to include a keyboard stand though so Dan had to improvise and set the keyboard on a stack of monitors. After the show SHHH partied in downtown Savannah where it was legal to drink alcohol in public as long as it was in a plastic cup.
At the beginning of October I made a pit stop in Toledo for about a week to regroup before heading to Boston to begin recording an album for Amy-Jayne. That gave me time to reflect on what had happened with my van on the New York thruway. Obviously the tire popping was destined to happen, when and where were a result of my experiences and choices and it couldn’t have been more perfect. Perhaps had the night before gone differently, my mindset altered, I may not have been in that exact spot on the thruway. I was alone, no other cars involved, the location provided the van to be totaled while I was fine, insurance covered my loan and gave me the balance of over a thousand dollars.
I could have looked at that and just said, “boy was I lucky,” but as soon as I got out of the van I felt more than just lucky, as if I needed to learn from it, other than to always make sure my tires are in good shape. I immediately thought of my cursing the previous night. At first I thought I should stop being so awkward. I tried. Not possible. So instead, it felt good to think of it as “God” saying, “Calm down, everything is as it should be.”
I loaded up the little white Geo Metro with all of my drums, made a pit stop in Syracuse to see Ross, then set up to record at Amy-Jayne and Patrick’s house in Medford, Massachusetts. Patrick had converted the small upstairs room where we edited the “Broke” video into a makeshift recording studio with foam sound absorbers on each wall and corners, as well as plastic sound diffusors on the ceiling. The engineering room with the giant mixing board was down the steps in their bedroom.
Amy-Jayne had a batch of new songs picked out so Duane, Dan, John, and I set to work learning them. There were also a few songs we already knew in the mix. She wanted to update “The Ride” to have more of “our” sound so we funked it up a bit. We had been playing “Love Is The Answer,” as well as Duane’s song “So Far,” at shows for quite a while but she had never recorded them. Another song we learned was one she hired Duane and Ryan Michaels to write called “USA Cares.” The intention was for it to be the theme song for the military veterans organization of the same name.
After 3 days of trial and error, setbacks and breakthroughs, butting heads and making amends, we had progressed quite a bit but were still not finished when we had to tear down our gear to go perform a final show. It was an Oktoberfest celebration in a large “tennis bubble” on Hanscom Air Force Base not far from Amy-Jayne and Patrick’s house.
The show went over just as well as ever with Amy-Jayne running around getting the audience involved. Military members and their families laughed, danced, and sang as we gave them everything we had. The last song of the night was our new version of “The Ride” that we had been working on. We nailed it and were given a final medallion of appreciation from the ranking officer as we packed up for the last time.
I left my drums in Boston while SHHH made our way down to Baltimore, Maryland for the first of three NACA conventions over the next three weeks. Since Duane had a little luck at NACA with his old band Mr. Flinchy, he felt confident that we would be able to get some bookings at college campuses as well so he signed us up for a booth. Up first was the Mid Atlantic region.
I hated the idea of talking to random people about our band so I made sure to drink a few Long Island Iced Teas before going into the convention center each day. We surely had the reputation as the obnoxious drunk guys. It wasn’t intentional but it went with our homeless theme at first. We didn’t have a sign with our band name so we wrote “SHHH” with long strips of duct tape on the black fabric behind us. Attached to the tape was a cardboard sign that read, “WILL PLAY MUSIC FOR FOOD,” and under that a smaller sign clarifying, “plus $1,800 tip.”
In the booth to our left was a hard rock band called “Top Heavy.” The singer was a super friendly guy with spiky blonde hair named Chris. Across from us was a folk singer from North Carolina with a permanent smile on his face named Eric Meany. He kept on smiling as college students walked past without noticing him or us. Every once in a while someone might stop and talk for a minute but it was understood that if you weren’t part of an agency, it was tough to get noticed.
We had a television on one side of our table showing the “Broke” video on repeat, on the other side a laptop playing a slideshow of performance pictures, and a portable CD player with headphones for people to listen to our three songs. Duane thought that the duct tape might make us look unprofessional and felt it was necessary to go to Kinko’s to have our colorful logo printed as large as possible and laminated. It did look a little more “professional” but I preferred the homeless theme.
During our road trip back to New York after three days in Baltimore, we listened to Eric Meany’s CD on repeat. His song “Groundhog Day” in particular brought us endless entertainment. It had such a peculiar mix of humor and sincerity that it was hard to tell exactly what the original intention of the song was. We just knew that, to us, it was perfect and we had the lyrics ingrained in our memories by the time we got back. “February 2nd’s such a magical time.”
About a week later Duane was in Toledo carving pumpkins with me at my parents house the day before Halloween. I carved our band logo on my pumpkin then brought it with us on our drive to Peoria, Illinois the next day. It was just the two of us at the Mid America NACA convention. The booth was set up exactly the same as before with the addition of the pumpkin and a box of neon stickers we had printed that read “I’m on the SHHH IT LIST” which we would give to people that signed up for our mailing list.
We had better luck mingling with the students in Peoria. A fun group from Eureka College hung out with us quite a bit as did several other groups. I thought there might be a small chance one of them might book our band for an event. I continued my tradition of having a few drinks before going into the convention center in an attempt to be more outgoing. There was a nice lady across from us named Flora who didn’t seem too irritated by our constant blabbering. She took pictures of Duane and I racing on a big, inflatable two-lane bungee thing, and on a big bike swing thing. It was quite an intense workout.
The band was back together less than a week later at John’s parents house in Connecticut. It had been exactly one year since we were there writing and recording our songs. This time we were getting ready for our third and final NACA convention, the Northeast region, that was being held nearby in Hartford. We decided to change our sign again. This time Duane wanted a slogan so it said “A BAND THAT WON’T SHUT UP!” underneath our band name in bold black letters.
The goal was to get selected to perform a “showcase” by having students vote for us. Duane thought we would certainly get bookings if we could just get on stage and show them what we do. I wasn’t as confident. We didn’t really have a show rehearsed other than the cover songs we played with Amy-Jayne. We hadn’t played our own songs in nearly six months and even then we didn’t have them down all that well. There were a few groups of students trying to help us get enough votes for a showcase, but alas, we didn’t get selected so our lack of rehearsal wasn’t an issue.
From Connecticut I drove over to Boston to pick up my drums but decided to leave them there as incentive to come back soon and finish recording Amy-Jayne’s album. I did get my final paycheck from the summer tour while I was there. While partying in Syracuse with Ross the next few days I foolishly felt like I had endless funds at my disposal. It was a lot of fun but extremely irresponsible.
Back in Toledo I got the news that we had been booked by one of the colleges in Connecticut for a show in the spring of 2004! I was shocked and excited at the possibility of more colleges booking us. I really didn’t want to get a job. By the end of November I had been growing out my “neckpit” hair for about a month so it was getting pretty long when I made the drive back east to finish recording my drums. Of course I stopped in Syracuse to play in the snow with Ross.
Dan was also in Boston finishing his keyboards so we got in touch with Rebecca, whom we hadn’t seen since the tour ended in August, which felt like a lifetime ago, and went to see her place. I finished my parts on Amy-Jayne’s songs by adding a fast drum fill to a song that didn’t end up making it on the album when it was eventually completed. To show my gratitude for all they had done for me I told them I would have done the session for free but they insisted on paying us top session player rates for our work. They were way better to me than I deserved.
My last musical endeavor of 2003 was with Matt and Duane in Nashville at the end of December. Matt had written several new songs so I set up my Flats in Wayne’s basement and recorded my parts. I forgot microphone stands so we rigged some out of PVC pipe. Duane was living back in Nashville and was going through a difficult time. Wayne and I tried cheering him up at the Scoreboard, we even went to Opryland and spun around under the Christmas lights, but it didn’t seem to help much. He was so distracted that he lost track of our NACA connections and SHHH lost the one gig we had.
2004 started with a trip to Europe with Chris to give Jogi, the bus driver from last summer, a painting I had made of him for his birthday celebration at the Endstation in Klingenberg, Germany and to attend a Dream Theater concert at Jahrhunderthalle in Frankfurt three weeks later. I had been in regular contact with Saskia from Giessen since last summer but, though she had broken it off with her fiancé, we didn’t make much of an effort to see each other while I was there and our communication faded.
In February I decided I wanted to fix my crooked teeth so my parents agreed to get me braces in Toledo. I was trying to decide where I was going to work and go to school when Duane called and talked me into bringing my drums down to Nashville to help him and Ryan get their new recording studio off the ground. In March I moved in with Wayne on the Cumberland River to see if being a session player was something I’d enjoy.
