I was eleven years old when I snuck into our basement to start watching MTV. Puberty was just beginning to set in and I liked the flesh show on The Grind. But this was back in 1993, when MTV used to play videos, so I’d watch. Salt n Peppa were shooping it up. I’m sure there was some other stuff, but I don’t remember so much. The video I remember was Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box.” It changed the way I looked at the world. The imagery, color saturation, the way the band dressed, the way Kurt Cobain screamed, the growl and whine of his guitar was unlike anything I had experienced in my Ace of Base and DC Talk CDs. It was a scene out of my darkest nightmares, the strongest passions of fear and retribution that crawled in my guts. But rather than cowering from people’s condemnation, Kurt flaunted his insecurties and gained true strength from it.
Of course, at 25 I know that things weren’t all as easy as that. It really sucked that Kurt killed himself: a course I thought I was bound to follow for so many years. But I made different choices, and I’ve got a slightly different outlook on life.
Still, it was Nirvana that inspired me to pick up a guitar two years later and write songs. To this day, the only tab book I ever bought was for Nirvana’s “Nevermind.”
I’m not a complete music freak. I’d consider myself more of a general artist than anything. I go from writing to music to some minor art projects to complement both. During high school, though I played in most any school related music project, I never got into an independent band. I was tempted many times, and some friends and I jammed once in a while. Speech and drama ate up most of my life back then. I had wanted to be an actor. I went to the state championships all four years in three different events. For two of those years, I wrote my own piece. I went to college to become an actor, but soon had different plans.
Acting didn’t offer me enough creative control. I always had to watch what I wore, what I said, and how I acted in case I offended some director or some member of the inner circle. Let’s face it: in real life, I’m mostly crass and I often don’t know when to hold my tongue. Or at least I didn’t back then. I had a teacher who discourage any freshmen from auditioning for plays, and then when confronted about it denied all the charges. I hated being a monkey on a string. Or in economic terms, I hated being part of the large supply of actors in this community. Then I realized that even when not in a play, I was always writing music. So I gave up acting and pursued music in my free time.
My first show I ever played was with a band I formed called “All the King’s Horses” (ATKH). We played a total of four shows before the drummer decided that we weren’t drawing enough of a crowd and left for greener pastures. I tried to find another drummer, but finding drummers in Missoula at that time was like finding a yellow lab on a leash. Anyway, I drifted around fairly dejected for a while, vowing to someday resurrect ATKH, but along came an offer to play for a celtic punk band called “Ceol Rapporrie.” I think it means “music bandits.” I could be spelling it wrong. I had never listened to much Celtic punk, and they tapped me for a bass player. After a while, I had so much fun with the group. I played four or five shows with them, including a St. Paddy’s day show. My future wife actually came to our last show. I sometimes forget that.
I can’t remember why Ceol Rapporrie broke up, but I continued to work with one of the guitarists on her own musical projects. She had recently been asked to audition for a metal band and didn’t feel that she passed muster, or something like that. She gave me a call and asked if I wanted to audition. I went to Wes’ apartment, screamed my throat sore, and was welcomed into the band. It was the first of many sore throats.
In ATKH, I had tried to “sing.” People would approach after the set and say, “Good music. Horrible singing.” I didn’t let it get me too down. I just worked on it during my own time. So, when I became the singer (I refused to play guitar since I wanted to run around on stage, besides, it’s hard to sing and play at the same time) I was ecstatic. I took full advantage to not stay in one place. The stuff I did on stage… I thought it was funny at the time, but apparently it’s become fairly infamous.
Anyway, the sore throats came more frequently. I tried warming up more. I researched which foods to eat and which to avoid. I tried on multiple occasions to buy singing lessons, but couldn’t find anyone to teach me.
The summer of 2005 hit me with a one-two-three punch. One: I had a long cold during July. It was during this time that I realized that warmer weather frequently brought out strep throat, a condition I’d had about twice a year since I was twelve (later I found out it was tonsilitus). I didn’t wait until my throat was healed before I sang again. I will forever remember that one practice was the best my screaming ever sounded. I thought I had reached a new plateau. Instead, I had reached a pinnacle. A couple weeks later we played a festival in Marysville, about an hour outside of Helena. Fire season was in full effect. Screaming into the smoke for an hour further strained an already weakened voice. AS was my custom at the time, I thought I did the right thing by nursing it with Coca Cola (caffeine is a no no!) A week after that, we played a bar show in Great Falls. Our gimmick involving playing Care Bears along with our set failed when our Goodwill VCR broke down. The static channels picked up Seinfeld, which is a bad thing to play to a bar full of people. The worse thing? My voice also failed. I could barely squeak out a melody, much less scream. That show was the most humiliated I have ever been, but I finished and then beat the hell out of that VCR.
A couple months of vocal rest didn’t help my throat. I got married, honeymooned in Europe, came back, and the throat was still sore. I finally scraped together enough money to see the doctor. Turns out that cold I had back in July never fully recovered. That doctor then informed me of tonsilitus.
My throat got better. I screamed less at first, and built more into it. We played shows again with renewed vigor. For a while our crowds got bigger, and then dropped off. In June, my throat gave out on me again. This time, I had insurance and went to a specialized doctor. He recommended getting the tonsils cut out. I went under the knife last July. Recovery was supposed to happen within a couple of weeks. In fact, my younger brother-in-law underwent the same surgery a few months earlier. He fully recovered in two or three weeks. Six weeks later my throat was still sore. The Missoula Independent profiled my attempts to gain a singing voice again. I played a very rough Metal Mania show and haven’t played a show since.
Now, with a new band, Walking Corpse Syndrome, we have a new singer. However, he joined only a couple weeks ago and isn’t all the way caught up on the songs. A friend of mine was in a pinch for a show (a band canceled without telling him) so I agreed to have WCS play the show. So, this is the last show that I will sing.
It’s been hard to make this decision. I’ve always wanted to sing more than I wanted to play guitar. But, if my voice can’t heal after nearly a year past the surgery, then it probably won’t ever heal enough to sing. I’ve switched over to guitar and have rediscovered my love for the instrument. Still, it’ll be hard to watch someone else writing the lyrics and pumping up the crowd.
Anyway, it feels like the old days, before all the throat problems started and I was just getting into “screaming.” My throat would be sore for a couple of days and then the “scabs” or whatever would gradually flake off. It feels good when they flake away. All of a sudden I can speak better a little at a time.