Afterthoughts

Jimmy Skelly: “Been bangin’ the drums since 1991 at the age of 10, recording tunes since I was 15. I’ve been in all different types of bands through the years. Part of my goal in life is to conquer all songs good and bad and to make new beats and sounds on the drums that no one has heard yet. My drums are my voice. I am a drummer for life.”

Phil Laudin: “Long winded is me all over: Although I thought we would have been taxiing the music-release runway long ago, better late than never. I started self-teaching myself guitar at age 14, and started jamming with Mr. Skelly shortly after. If Nirvana influenced me to start playing guitar, Jimmy most certainly inspired me to pick up the drum sticks for the first time – shout out to our childhood friend, Bobby Schmidt, for introducing Jimmy and I when we were only 12 years old. Bobby actually got me into Nirvana in the first place, and was his uncle’s bass that was the first instrument I ever picked up with the intentions of playing a full song (“In Bloom” on one string). In those days, naturally being curious of how [bad] I sounded, would “track” recordings using a tape recorder, a stereo, and two cassette tapes: First I would tape-record a guitar track with the tape recorder. Then I would insert the tape with the guitar track into the stereo, and press ‘PLAY’ while I hit ‘REC.’ on the second tape in the tape recorder to record a bass track with the guitar blasting through the stereo speakers in the background. The guitar/bass tape got switched back to the stereo, and the original tape is back in the tape recorder, ready to record over the guitar with my padded drum set, of course with the guitar/bass tape blasting through the stereo speakers – the guitar sound was reduced to mud by that point, but hey, this was apparently a very popular way of doing things for musical whippersnappers.  Fun fact, Dave Grohl was doing this long before I was much taller than a guitar… My first 4-track was purchased at the age of 15, and a whole slew of Nirvana cover recordings followed (speaking of Dave Grohl), along with a bunch of early song ideas… by the time “Sodden” had disbanded, I was 19, but owned a 16-track digital Porta-Studio at that point. Rather than put a new band together, Jimmy and I started [SLOWLY] recording our album, just the two of us. It took us 5 years and an average of 50 tracks per song to complete, but when the shit hit the fan and our tracks CRASHED in 2005, it was either we start tracking the various instruments/vocal tracks from scratch or find a new hobby – we chose the former… Another 5 years later in 2010, the recording is once again complete. I sometimes feel silly telling this story, but then I remind myself that we were sustaining day jobs the whole time this was going on – I’m sure there was a whole lot else we were doing during that time that didn’t help our cause, but the video games and TV had to be swept to the side for a while until we finished again, just the same… As the bio sort of points out, the next 3 years lead Jimmy and I down a frustrating path to revolving-door musicians, which is what lead us to decide to be a duo – I guess there are only so many times you can watch the door keep revolving before you eventually get dizzy and slam it shut. For now, it’s full steam ahead with what we got. Who knows what the future will bring, but for now we’re carrying the day with just the two of us.  Perhaps the future will see us with a full band again, but either way in this world we live in, the road ahead is ripe for new music – with or without a full band…”