I’m in the Band: Part 1

Hello good reader, I hope today finds you well.

It has been awhile since I published my last short story, but today I was watching a movie and it inspired me to put pen to paper, as it were.

The movie in question was That Thing You Do staring Tom Hanks. If you haven’t seen it, then I guess Spoilers Ahead…

In the movie, a small time band from Eerie Pennsylvania finds themselves in need of a drummer while their regular one heals after breaking his arm. Enter the character referred to nominally as ‘Shades’ in the movie. He’s a much more practiced drummer, with a particular interest in Jazz, which is odd because him joining the band causes their feature song “That Thing You Do” to turn from a melancholy slow song, to a fast paced rock and roll bop.

The song becomes a bit of a local hit, and the group quickly record a record (see what I did there?) and begin selling it at their shows. Eventually, a local promoter picks up on the songs popularity, and signs a contract with the guys to get their song played on local radio stations. Of course they eventually become famous, begin to have problems internally, and break up before they even get to produce their first official LP.

So what does this have to do with me you ask? Well, beyond being a good movie, the experiences shown in the movie (especially the early third or so) are something I myself experienced while in a band with my brother and a good friend of ours.

Music has always been a big part of my family’s lives. My dad was in a band when he was younger, and eventually became part of the band Spark Parks and The Aardvarks (look them up on Spotify or Apple Music). My parents encouraged us kids to do things like join band, learn to play instruments and the sort, likely at great financial hardship to themselves.

When my brother and friend and I decided to form a band, we didn’t even know how to play any of the instruments well. Okay, actually my brother was already pretty good at playing the drums, but I was a novice at playing bass and our friend had only recently picked up a guitar. We initially called ourselves Metallic Roadkill (yep, spelled just like that) and set about writing a new song every time we learned how to play a new chord. It… was… something, to say the least.

Conveniently, my father had a small 4 track mixer, and eventually, we set about creating a record of 8 songs for an album we called Yellow Snow, so named for the best song on the record. We thought we were pretty cool. The tape however was a bit grainy, had lots of parts where it was either really loud, or really quiet, and of course the songs were, overall, not very good.

But it did help us get shows, and it gave us the experience of recording actual tracks for an album. About a year later, we pooled our money, took a brand new batch of songs we had written (which were decidedly better), and went to an actual studio a few towns over, to record an actual album. We even changed our name from Mettalic Roadkill to Sylt.

These 8 songs made what one could consider a proper album. We took our master CD’s (we only got like 5 of them because they were so expensive back then) our Master reel to reel tape, and began producing cassette tapes to sell at our shows. As luck would have it, a new radio station had popped up in our small hometown, so we marched down to it, hoping to get a chance to talk with the station manager.

He was a pretty laid back guy who actually talked to me for awhile. We didn’t really think much would come of the meeting, but our goal was to at least try. About 2 weeks later, I had driven to a record store in a nearby town to check our display of tapes that were on sale there (they were a really cool store that did a great job trying to help local musicians). After talking with the owner for a bit, I went back out and got in my car. As the radio fired up, I couldn’t believe my ears.

One of OUR songs was playing on the local station! For a second I was confused, because I didn’t think I even had our tape in my tape player, and I wasn’t sure how the song was playing. As our song faded out, Under The Bridge by The Red Hot Chili Peppers started playing. I probably looked like a maniac screaming in my car! I was so excited. I had to rush home, but I first stopped at my dad’s insurance office to tell him what had happened.

That day our song played two more times. We were all bouncing off the walls.

The even better part came a day or two later, when the station manager invited us to come and play a live set on air the following Friday night. I don’t know that any set of words can ever truly describe the excitement this brought to our small, still mostly raw in talent, group.

The station wasn’t a big one. I don’t know that it reached much beyond the 20 or 30 miles. It certainly wasn’t as big as some of the major media stations in Boise. But our song was playing, on a radio station, that had DJ’s and commercials and the whole nine yards!

There is certainly more to this story and I’ll be bringing you at least one more part down the road. Until then good reader, take care.