Beginnings (From TPR's Worth Repeating: When It Breaks)
I was 18 years old when I helped form a ska band called Spies Like Us. We were a bunch of
kids fresh outta high school, obsessed with ska and living in San Antonio, a city with zero ska
bands. So we did what we everyone else around the country did: we formed our own. And this
is the story of our first big break.
We played our first show at some club called Castle Rock on Gardendale road in the medical
center. It’s not there anymore so no need to plan that pilgrimage. Now, most first shows of 18
year old kids are populated mainly by close family and friends, and ours was most certainly that.
But when we looked out into the crowd when we were just about to hit that stage, we saw a sea
of people that we’d never seen before. This room was filled with a bunch of randoms.
Punkrockers, ska kids, wow. We never expected this. Why are all these people here? How did
they hear about his? Oh, that’s right, we printed flyers with big letters proclaiming “ska” on them.
The sound guy then called us up to the stage. I, was incredibly nervous. My legs were shaking. I
felt my palms sweating. We all looked out to the crowd and looked at each other with the same
nervous energy. Then we heard an intimidating call out from the audience. “LET’S HEAR THIS
‘SKA BAND’”.
I looked over and saw the biggest scariest punk rocker with a shaved head, doc martin boots
and a spiked leather jacket staring at us, smiling, like he was just waiting for us to suck so he
could pounce on us just to teach us a lesson. Then the drums came in. Oh no. We’re starting.
After the drums, my instrument, the guitar, was the next to come in to cue the rest of the band. I
hesitated and missed my cue which lead the drums to have to continue on alone for another two
measures. I then launched into my surf riff which lead the rest of the band in and we took off.
And in those first few seconds things seemed so comfortable. All the anxiety of being on stage
for the first time seemed to melt away and I felt oddly at home. I felt like this was what I was
supposed to be doing. Maybe not with my whole life but at least with my life right now. This was
good and I’ve found myself. And then I remembered there was a crowd out there. So I picked
up my head and looked up and what I saw surprised me. Everybody was dancing!
I could not believe it. People were bouncing up and down. I saw smiles on faces. I looked over
to my bandmates and they looked over at me and each other with smiles of disbelief. It seemed
almost too easy. Place an ad at a record store. Jam in the garage. Write some songs. And then
boom. Success. So we played a few more songs and before we knew it our time was up and the
show was over.
We had all just played our first show and people went nuts. One dude came up to us after the
show with his friends and said “Let us know when you play again. We’ll be there. You have a
crowd now.” Unbelievable. Every subsequent show was a bigger success than the last. Bigger
venues. More people. And eventually regional tours. We released our first EP on cassette. It
was a smash and people gobbled it up. We released our first full length album on CD the next
year. It was a bigger smash and people gobbled it up. If you can imagine that movie about that young musician of 18 years old that had a dream of making it big. And they did all those things
that they were supposed to do and then they became big. And the movie had that big happy
ending. Dreams do come true.
Well about 4 years later the band broke up.
I wasn’t upset about it because I had formed a new band with the singer from Spies called the
Bombardiers. And because of our experiences with Spies Like Us, we had great expectations
for this band. We would be just as big, if not bigger.
After all, we found the formula with Spies Like Us. Write some songs. Put out a flyer. People
come. We spent months writing and rehearsing for our first show and when it finally came, we
did whatever anybody else would’ve done. We put out a flyer with big letters proclaiming
“Featuring members of Spies Like Us”. It worked the first time with the letters SKA so why
wouldn’t they work this time.
And I’ll tell ya it didn’t.
Oh, a few people came out but also a lot of crickets came as well. See this was the venue that
Spies played regularly up until the end. The White Rabbit which is now the Paper Tiger. It’s a
huge room that we used to fill and now it was pretty empty. We heard a voice from the crowd
yell out something just like during the first Spies Like Us show. Except that voice said “PLAY
SOME SPIES LIKE US”. But we didn’t and we couldn’t. That chapter was closed.
So we played the set. And it was great. Though people weren’t dancing. People stood and
stared. Some people walked out. And I came to find out that this is what being a musician was
really about. It was then that a realization came to me. The overnight success of Spies Like Us
was a fluke. A product of the perfect time and place. And this type of success would never be
duplicated again. At least not by me. And everything from this point forward I would have to
work for. Really work for. Being a musician playing original songs, especially in San Antonio is
not about trying once and having success handed to you. It’s about pouring your heart and soul
into something for the sake of the process and not the reward. You have to love the process.
And so here I am 25 years and about 4 or 5 bands later, still chasing the dream and in love with
the process. Still pushing that boulder up the hill and having it slip back down and with each
new climb, a new band and a new set of challenges, with one challenge being a mainstay: Age.
There’s a great verse in the Bread song “The Guitar Man” that describes the feeling of an aging
musician still playing the young man’s game. “Then the lights begin to flicker and the sound is
getting dim. The voice begins to falter and the crowds are getting thin but he never seems to notice
he's just got to find another place to play.” So if you know of another place to play,
