It all began in 1995….or so….
I was drumming in three bands (Noodle, Nipple 5 [alternating with Keith Anderson], Thighmaster) and spending most of my days working, rehearsing, and playing shows….sometimes all in one day. This was in early 1995. I met a guy named Carson Vester, who was a local tattoo artist working at Perfection Tattoo and wanting to play guitar in a band. His only experience, he told me, was two weeks in a band called Double Penetration in Philadelphia. Carson was, and still is, a unique individual. He can make you feel like you’re the most important person in the world, and that your input into it is what makes everything tick. I liked hanging with him. At some point, as we were hashing out who we liked in terms of music, Grand Funk Railroad came up. Carson said “hey, let’s get together and jam some Grand Funk!” Despite my busyness, I was in. At that time, Carson lived in a collection of old warehouses on East Seventh Street, a bit east of Shady Lane, as I recall. He lived there with his girlfriend, Aileen Adler, Jim Chiavaroli (another old friend of mine), and our mutual buddy, Tom King.
We got together in Carson’s warehouse, along with Jim on bass and Aileen on vocals, and started learning some Grand Funk. It came together quickly, and before I knew it, we got a request to play a Valentine’s Day house party with the Nipple 5. Keith was going to drum with the Nipple 5 for that performance, allowing me to concentrate on being as competent as Don Brewer. The show went surprisingly well, with Carson, after admitting to me that he’d taken acid right before we started, especially on fire. (I later learned that one of Carson’s major heroes in the Austin scene was Jukebox….the psychedelics made sense.)
As the days went on following this show, Carson began repeatedly calling my answering machine and leaving guitar riffs as messages and saying “let’s start something!” As it turned out, he had begun working with a band called Skinny Leonard, comprising Jeff Pinkus, Doug Evans (Didjits), Richie Turner (Agony Column), and Frank Garymartin (Pain Teens….and Frank came later, I forget who was first….maybe Jimmy Delp?). And Carson wasn’t totally happy with a lot of the material; too “midwestern” was what he told me one time. So he wanted a situation where he was the only guitarist.
And so, despite my aforementioned busyness in the rock field, I began irregular rehearsals with Carson, as we began to work up some material. I still vividly remember our first time to do this. Carson started playing the opening riff of what became “Honky Jam.” We ran over that a few times, then we stopped, he looked at me and said “okay, you write the next part!” And that explains why the next part is pretty much two notes with a variation on the ending climb in the first riff. I was unprepared to be an equal contributor! But after a while, we had some semblance of something coming together. He also had the opening riffs of what became “Deezy” and “Nice ‘n’ Tastee.”
What I can’t remember is how many times we got together before the third component came into the picture. I’m thinking not many, or we probably would have had more material going into our first three-piece rehearsal. My memories of these are pretty good, though, and I think it’s because it was just one of those magical times. One of the hardest things to do is start a band from scratch, and Carson was the one pushing this, for sure. Being a drummer, a lot of my career has been joining other people’s already-going projects, so starting something is a rare event for me.
Carson wanted to flesh out the band with bass (obviously), and he suggested a guy named Mark, who he claimed was quite the technician (played with his fingers, no pick, etc.) But for whatever reason, Mark didn’t materialize. I had met him once, through Carson, but I cannot remember his last name, or what his pedigree was.
I started to get itchy. I enjoyed the bands I was in, but I really saw a lot of potential in what we were doing, although, at that time, almost nobody was doing anything with a Johnny Winter/James Gang-type vibe. I didn’t want people to think we were a joke, but I didn’t want things too serious, either. For the record, Voltage started around this time, too, so there was other blues-based hard rock being created in our lil’ community. And there was The Burglarz. Great band…..oh, man…...great band.
As early ‘96 rolled around, my wife at the time and I were about to have our second wedding. Yes, second. We’d gotten married in October of ‘95 in Blue Flamingo, but that was a quickly put together deal that didn’t include family, etc. So we decided to have a second wedding, a little more formal affair, and collect some presents, in March of ‘96. Jonathan Toubin was going to host the reception in his backyard, and we hastily handed out flyers to people we’d see at shows and such. A few folks lived out of town, of course, and I needed to call them about the shindig. One was Jeff Pinkus.
It had been leaked to me by Carson that Jeff was going to ask me to join Daddy Longhead, but due to various reasons, I didn’t want to join. And that’s what happened. Jeff asked me, I politely declined, and after a beat pause, I told him about this new project with Carson. Besides Longhead, and Skinny Leonard, and a brand-new Jefferson, he was playing in a trio with Danny Barnes. Busy guy, but I thought “what the hell?” So I asked Jeff if he had any time and would maybe want to jam with us. I was surprised at his enthusiastic “yes!” At the wedding reception, in Mr. Toubin’s backyard, we discussed getting together the next day. My wife and I were heading out to Wimberley for a close-by honeymoon, but I asked her if it was okay if I had a rehearsal with these guys in Jeff’s San Marcos garage on our way out there. She said yes. No wonder the marriage didn’t last.
Other stuff may be foggy, but I do remember that first rehearsal. Carson and I had what became “Deezy,” “Honky Jam,” and “Nice and Tastee.” Jeff brought in “What She Needs” and a blues number we never really did anything with, although I loved the weird, super-effected bridge part he put in the song. Carson was not a fan of medium-tempo white blues, and I think that song touched too much into that realm for his taste. Jeff added parts to what we already had, and we got those early songs shored up nicely.
And the door had opened. We worked weekly on adding more and more songs. Carson brought in “Smokin’ Weed with Helios Creed,” based on a true story, and “Comes A Time,” which I always loved his vocal on. I had been reading the ZZ Top biography “Sharp Dressed Men,” and there was a story in there about how Billy Gibbons would show up at a black blues club in Houston, wearing a jacket with the name “Mellow Larry” on it, and get on stage to play harmonica with the bands there. The regulars would often shout “where’s Mellow Larry? Get Mellow Larry up there!” Carson and Jeff ran with that story.
The strange thing to me was how much singing I ended up doing in those early days. Carson had some issues playing and singing at the same time, and so some of the songs just fell to me to add lyrics and belt out. “Deezy” and “Sancha” come to mind. “Sancha” grew out of a riff Carson and I worked on while Jeff was on tour with Longhead. “Toy Story” was written primarily by Jeff, but I was inspired to write the lyrics as a rewrite of what Jefferson always seemed to be watching then. (We rehearsed in Jeff’s garage the first four full years of the band.) “Mandingdong” was also written primarily by Jeff, but Carson’s slide lines really made the verses of that one stand out. And “Ticketholder?” All Pinkus. Ask him to tell you that story.
While recording the first album, “Honky,” in early ‘97, Carson told me of his plans to move to Houston; I can still picture that conversation in the little apartment my wife and I had at the time. Uh-oh. He insisted he’d rehearse with us regularly, but that didn’t last long. He had a whole different life after moving in with his girlfriend and her child, and we managed to limp through a couple more years with him….even occasionally adding a new gem, such as “Don’t Shoot Baby I Love You” and “I Might Just Shoot Somebody.” Carson formally left the band in May of 1999, after we finished a small run of shows with Dale Crover’s band Altamont.
Carson’s replacement was Gable Barber, who had been the lead guitarist in the Bulemics. Gable set about learning our catalog and contributing to some new material. We debuted Gable on the Red-Eyed Fly’s newly-built outside stage (I was booking the club at the time) in June of ‘99. Gable was a confident performer on stage, which was something we needed. Especially as I continued to do the bulk of our between-song spiel on stage….strange thing for a drummer to do. We had a run of shows with L7 in August and early September of ‘99 (the “Attacked by Lesbians” live recording is from this time). During the trip, I think some cracks in our unity emerged. Gable was quite a bit younger than Jeff and me, and the gap in our humor was pretty obvious. I still got along with Gable great.
Skip ahead to later in ‘99, and we began recording what became “House of Good Tires.” We laid down basic tracks for 13 songs and finished up the album by December. Unfortunately, a big problem loomed. Gable had started a relationship with a woman, and his world was severely changed. He began missing shows, cancelling them for reasons that sounded dubious at best. Now, I had funded the recording of “House of Good Tires’ with my own money and was paying myself back through our gig proceeds. When the shows had to be repeatedly cancelled, I became really irritated. Especially as I noted earlier, the reasons started seeming suspicious. After a “final straw” (for me, anyway) cancellation, I got the idea to ask Carson if he would come back for awhile, and we could look for a new guitarist in that period. Jeff agreed immediately. I called Carson, who happily agreed to come back for a bit. And then I called Gable…….who, I have to say, pretty much took over the phone conversation and fired himself; he knew he’d been failing us. And then, on to the next chapter….
We played some fun shows with Carson, I made my money back, and we were happy again. This is also the time when the song “Good Pipe,” was added...only an instrumental at this time, although Carson named the song. But we still had to find a new guitarist. It was Carson who suggested Bobby Landgraf. Jeff and I both knew Bobby, and he had engineered our version of “Beautiful Girls,” released on a split 7” with Iron Boss, featuring art from both Carson and Iron Boss’ Dave Waugh. I knew Bobby’s addition would probably radically change the sound of the band, but I loved Bobby’s stage persona too much to think about that issue much. I was in, and after trying out a couple of other guitarists to be sure, Jeff was in, too.
Bobby’s first recording with us was for the Aerosmith tribute record Small Stone Records put out in ‘99. We contributed “Adam’s Apple,” a favorite of Jeff’s. Then we set about what to do about “House of Good Tires.” It was decided to keep most of the album, Bobby re-recording the guitar tracks and adding some backing vocals. Gable had sung the original “House of Seven” and “Your Bottom,” so Jeff and I re-recorded those lead vocals, respectively (he and I had written those lyrics, anyway). We also dropped two songs, “Saline Mountains” (also on “Attacked by Lesbians”) and “The Lies You Told.” “Saline” was dropped because the music was largely Gable’s, with my lyrics, and “Lies” was dropped, because…..well….I was embarrassed by the lyrics, which I’d written after divorcing the wife I’d married for the second time when the band started. Or something like that.
And so, “House of Good Tires” was eventually released in early March of 2001.
I decided to leave in October of 2002, but due to the band’s hardship in finding a drummer, I continued to play with them until June of 2003. Kenny Wagner took over at that point. There were many reasons for this decision, and I won’t go into them here. It’s still the toughest decision regarding music I’ve ever had to make, but as time’s gone on, I’ve become convinced it was the right one. Maybe someday I’ll write about that time. It’s more serious.
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