Whiskey Metal

Well, I am back in a band again. Boy, it feels great after my last band Sciatica disbanded well over a year ago(the longest period of time I've ever gone without being in a band since I started playing music almost 17 years ago). The band is called The John Wayne Whiskey Experiment and we formed a little over 2 years ago, but went on hiatus a year ago and just decided to start playing again. The band did consist of myself on drums/vocals, Joey on guitar/vocals and chris on vocals. The new lineup thus far is myself and Joey, and Chris is up in the air. He wants to switch over to playing bass for the band, but we've yet to hear from him and have had two practices so far without him, so time will tell if it remains a 2-piece(like it originally started), or as the 3-piece that we were before we took a little time off. The beauty of it is that I'm finally getting to play music with other people, and it's metal(which I love more than any other style of music). We have a lot of fun, and there's no pressure in the band...just friends having fun, playing cool music, and letting off some steam. We should be ready to play shows in a couple of months, followed by a demo, merch, and more shows.... We've been polishing up the old songs, and working on some new material. Our sound is a variety of hardcore/metal/comedy... we take inspiration when writing from bands like Obituary, Madball, Terror, Killswitch Engage, Cannibal Corpse, Converge, S.O.D., Hatebreed, Slayer, and many other kickass heavy fucking bands. It really started as a joke one night when me and Joey were getting drunk and talking about starting a side band while he was in Diverge and I was in Sciatica. Somehow we actually ended up getting together a few months later and writing some songs really quickly, making some funny ass song titles and then we just kept practicing, got a website up, then believe it or not started playing some shows. Since I'm a guitar player, it really shouldn't have been that good with me on drums, but somehow I'm an ok drummer and the songs Joey wrote were actually really good, and after a few months we actually sounded like a halfway decent band, and started getting some fans not only for the comedy aspect of it, but the music as well. We make fun of anything we can think of, and probably offend a lot of people who hear us, but we don't give a shit. It's good fun, and I'm glad to be in a band again and who knows, we could keep this band alive for many years to come since there's no goals or aspirations for us other than hanging out, having fun, and playing some heavy music.
The painful part of it would obviously be that I'm a classically trained guitarist and I'm instead playing drums in a half-serious/half-joke metal band called The John Wayne Whiskey Experiment. Obviously I always wanted to play guitar in a killer metal band for a living(and I tried for nearly 16 years straight and just fell short), so being the drummer in a band that's probably not really that great is a little bit of a downer. So there you go again, the beauty and the pain of it. Music...what a bitch!

The Second Stage Turbine Blade

I've been listening to 'The Second Stage Turbine Blade' by Coheed and Cambria the past couple of days. This album and the band and specifically the song "Everything Evil" brings up beautiful and painful memories. The first time I ever heard this band and that particular song was on a Hellfest DVD and I was definitely a fan of the song, but wasn't quite sure if the bands other material sounded like "Everything Evil". Needless to say I picked up this album and overall it was a good choice. Most of the cuts on this album have that same feel, sort of a technical/indie rock vibe kind of like if Rush were an indie rock band with more simplified drumming and less guitar solos. That's the beauty of it, the band has some great songs and beautiful melodies and certainly tremendous talent from the drummer to the vocalist/guitarist to the bassist... The painful part comes to play here: I watched that DVD and that song constantly before gigs/tours with my old band(Sciatica) and any time I watch that DVD or listen to this album it brings back those memories....tours and a failed music career. Fuckin' A!

Music Is Beauty, but it's also Pain

Welcome to the first installment of my music blog. This is mostly a place for me to vent frustrations about music and my path to a career in music that fell a little short. I'm sure I'll probably have about 2 people read this blog, so it doesn't really matter. Music has been a part of my life as long as I can remember. I've definitely had my share of wonderful experiences as well as heartbreaking experiences concerning the painful and beautiful world of music. It wasn't until I was about 12 years old(that was about 18 years ago)that I really discovered music and fell in love. I started playing guitar at that time on a purple yamaha rgx-110 and taking lessons from my first formal instructor Dave Trammell in South Texas. Unfortunately I didn't take the lessons seriously and hardly practiced, so needless to say I sucked for awhile. It's really too bad because Dave was a great guitarist and teacher and I did somehow learn a few things from him that I've taken with me as a musician. He would teach me how to read music a bit and taught me how to play songs by his favorite group The Ventures(all instrumental surf/rock group), The Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Quiet Riot, Bachman Turner Overdrive, John Denver, and many other great classic artists. The first band I started was back then in Mcallen,Tx and we changed names, we were at one point Amnesty and then finally the Black Cheese. It consisted of me playing guitar and singing very poorly, a friend named Randy on "lead" guitar playing very poorly, Jesse attempting to play keyboards poorly, and another guy(I forgot his name) playing upright bass poorly. We were horrible and mostly just played crappy riffs and sort of "jammed" never really writing any songs or covering anyone elses material, but we were passionate and had fun from what I can remember. I was listening to a lot of Metallica, AC/DC, Black Sabbath(Dio era), Alice In Chains, Joe Satriani, Exodus, Albert King, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Danzig, Cannibal Corpse, Savatage, Megadeth, Body Count, etc... at the time and none of my attempts at music sounded like any of those great musicians/bands. I learned my first taste of "beauty" in that first year of playing guitar and my first band in that I could have so much fun playing music badly and also sitting around for countless hours hearing great music that was fresh and new to me that blew me away like Albert King, Metallica, and Joe Satriani. And I also experienced my first "painful" experience in music when we moved away from south texas the following summer and the band had to break up and I had to lay the mighty "black cheese" to rest(hell, we were this close to signing a major label deal.....yeah, right). Until the next segment, enjoy music for what it is and remember music is beauty & pain.