It was probably late 2000 (October/November) when Evan invited me over to his house. We finally got around to watching the 1979 AC/DC concert video "Let There Be Rock" that his brother bought for him. It may have been the best concert video of all time and immediately inspired us to start a band. The original format was me on lead guitar and Evan lead vocals. But since his brother was already such a great guitarist and could teach him and had two guitars already, we decided to changed up the format. By this time is was April and Evan just got his SG fixed at Pierce Music. We decided that we'd put Mike on Rhythym guitar because we were all best friends. we all went to Thompson's Music (now B&B) in Salisbury and he got a red Fender Strat and a Fender 1x12 combo amp. It was now the summer of 2001 and our new name was 21 guns. We practice just the three of us for the whole summer with the intentions of recruiting a bassist and drummer when we got to High School.
We knew of two bassists Matt Smith and John Wist that were in our grade. We asked about Matt but we heard that he was playing with another really shitty band so we looked to John Wist. We asked him to join so he did. Now we had a bassist but now we needed a drummer. We asked about Joe Enste and wanted him to play with us but after several practices I ended up punching him in the stomach and so he was out. I was talking to J.D. Record one day in Math about a drumset he was selling and so we bought it from him for $65. We asked Jason Hamilton to play drums with us (never played before) and so he did. It was a really beat up drumset but for $65 and a band with no experience, it just right.
Now it was Christmas of 2001 and we actually had a full band practice. We sounded okay for playing together just once but the band wasn't mixing together well with Jason Hamilton, so after practicing with Leron Taylor we decided to kick Jason out. In about March we changed our practice location from Mike's Dad's garage to his Dad's work which was a house in rural Berlin. It was coming up on the time of Battle of the Bands and we were really hammering it out. Mike just got his B.C. Rich Warlock and Evan just got his flying V. We went and played at Battle of the Bands and got People's Choice Award which kicked ass. After that, Mistake asked us to play with them at H20 which was fucking great but when we did the gig exactly one month later to the day barely anyone came. But, it was great just to play with such a great band. Soon after Mike's Warlock was run over by a car so he got a Les Paul and a Marshall amp. Now it was summmer of 2002 and we had to kick out our bassist John, because he had missed lots of practice due to his busy schedule. He was a very nice person, but we had to go on and get a replacement so we asked Matt Smith to join our band after we found out that he never did play with that other shitty band. So now we are pretty happy with the band's line up. Now it's just a matter of upgrading some of our equpiment...
Or was it.
In late August of 2002, Leron was fed up with playing the music he did not love as much as punk. He quit, and so did Mike McAlister, for unrelated reasons that to this day still arent very clear. We then decided to turn the band into a quartet, and leave out rythm guitar, unless someone really cool comes along. We shortly found drummer Matt Emmerick and hes doing just fine. Now its just a matter of teaching Matt our songs.... |
