Season of Arrows

Every now and then I like to post something about music, especially when it involves my friends. As most of you know I was in Fall With Me for a long time and most of those chaps are still kicking it today, putting out some amazing tunes. Let me introduce you to Season of Arrows from Nashville, TN.

A lot of you probably think Nashville is a purely country market but it has a kick ass underground music scene and has had a ton of up and coming bands come through there. Season of Arrows consists of all my homies and three ex members of Fall With Me. They've been honing their sound for a while now but recently recorded a record with killer producer and engineer, Mike Allred.... and holy cow does it sound good! If you like heavy stuff with a female singer this is so for you!

Seriously, check out their latest song, The Loved One on bandcamp here: http://seasonofarrows.bandcamp.com/track/the-loved-one

Oh, and like their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/seasonofarrows

January Blog Stats

It's that time again! January was a great moth blog-wise and the results are in with my old band, Fall With Me took the top views last month with my Nashville vs. Washington post coming in second and the Blackout/Wedding post getting the bronze. Of course, last place is solidly owned my this post, ole last place blog stats.

Nashville vs. Washington was so fun that I'm planning a Nashville vs. Washington Part 2 where I will explore general differences between the South and the North West. This one will include beer and more fashion to name a few topics.

In quick other news, I've been talking a lot with Zova Books in preparation for the book releases and with the fabulous Will Routon as he puts the finishing touches on the cover art for Thomas Riley and The Maelstrom.

Fall With Me

I figured I'd take a stroll back in time to talk a little more about music. Our music that is. For those that know me, you know that I was in a band for years, several of them in fact and I'm pretty proud of what we were able to to with those years despite how difficult the music business can be.

Staring at the Sun

It really started to pick up when I was in a band called Staring at the Sun. We played regionally in the South East and gained a decent amount of notoriety playing with bands like Today is the Day, Buzzoven, Brainiac, Love Bucket and Slaphappy Superfly, and Buzzkill. It was always kind of hard for me to define what any of my bands were genre-wise, we always did our own thing but pretty much stayed on the heavy side of things. We put out several demos and played a lot of shows mostly locally but some regionally. Song-wise, I know the song, Dejecta, got a lot of local airplay on the radio. If I had to guess, we were a mix of sort of grunge meets Slayer. It was a good time and I had great friends that I cherish to this day. (BTW this is some of us with Tony Read at what I think was "The Jailhouse" in Manchester, TN.  And yes that's me in the pink skirt. I have no shame.)

Starscream
From there me and a few of the members made a band called Starscream (yes, named after the transformer waaaaayyyy before Michael Bay got his hands on the franchise) that band was a freakier more electronic style of heaviness as we loved Trip-Hop at the time. We never saw the light of day show-wise but we did record an album which I probably have floating around a box someplace.

Chikara
Needing to move forward, we joined up with friends from school and formed Chikara, which was another kooky mix of hardcore and space rock. Chikara was on a "split cassette" with Process is Dead and From Ashes Rise and went on the first leg of a Process is Dead tour that took us from Florida to Georgia, and back into Tennessee and Kentucky. We also played house shows with Dillinger Escape Plan, From Ashes Rise and Trial. That band fell apart a few months after the tour due to certain members that were not impressed by the play anywhere and just have fun philosophy that some of us had. They wanted to play music that would attract girls while we wanted to play whatever made us happy. Funny that not too long later they would be one in the same.

Fall With Me 1.0
So Dave and I (Note that Dave had been with me through all of this.) went out to look for band members that could embrace what we were looking for musically and have the balls to get out and play a ton of shows. Then Dave spoke with Brandon and Jonas from the local band Dragwurm who we all dug and Rick Hanan from the death metal band Embodiment. It seemed an awkward fit to me at first as these guys had very strong and one of a kind personalities but it turns out that these people became some of my best friends to this day. After one demo, we had problems with our drummer and recruited long time friend and Staring at the Sun drummer, Brad Lawson (AKA Granny) to join.

Fall With Me 1.1

With Granny now in the band, Fall With Me put out another demo (Chemical Cathari) and two full length records (The First Days of Forever on Spat! Records) (Rise Phoenix Rise, Spat! Records) and even did a Quicksand cover that sadly never saw the light of day. We traveled extensively in the South East and played with more notable bands than I can name, A few of them including, Dillinger Escape Plan, Jucifer, Mastodon, Shai Hulud, Zao, Milemarker, Buried Inside, Not Waving But Drowning, Converge, Unearth, Blindside, Hopesfall, Nothingface, Norma Jean (which was then called Ludi Kriss), Kylesa, Breather Resist, Drowning Man, and Spitfire. One of the most impressive and nifty things is we hit #14 on the college rock charts and were the #2 most added albums on college radio at some point. Again, it's in a magazine someplace. We had a fire and a swagger and we had some crazy and amazing times all across the East coast. You can hear both albums here on Last FM as well as on Spotify. (Just search Fall With Me) It's really a shame that at our pinnacle we crumbled. After five years of playing around and getting some really fun swagger, some of us wanted to tour and some of didn't... at least not in that "get in the van" sort of way. Half the band had different philosophies on success and shows so we split in half. Dave, Granny and I went on while Beebs and Rick went on to form the metalcore band Nadina Das.

Fall With Me 2.0



 Again, Dave and I continued under the Fall With Me name, adapting a slightly more contained sound and getting a new bass player. (Brad Green AKA Blackberry) We recorded an album, called Only from The Cold, My Friend, Spat! Records) and a 7 Inch Vinyl Record. (Spat! Records/Vacant Cage Records) and went on tour again taking us from Florida, Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, New Orleans to Indiana to Manhattan, and Brooklyn. We hit the stage again with some great bands like Mastodon (again), Horse the Band, Between The Buried and Me, Jucifer (again) and Hermatavore. Much to our dismay, we had to change drummers again as Granny opted to go play with the band, Love Bucket in their second short lived incarnation.







Fall With Me 2.1

We found Charlie (AKA Chuck/Chizzle/), and toured regionally playing with bands like Horse the Band, Officer May and The Detachment Kit.This is where we met Clover who became our official photographer and friend for life. We recorded a much heavier EP called, Stitches named after our trials and tribulations as well as our bass player cutting most of his thumb off. Note that he still played in a cast.


Goodbye My Empress

After the departure of our bass player, Blackberry for personal reasons that didn't include his thumb, we were looking to reinvent ourselves and found another bass player, Justin, from the band No Party and formed Goodbye My Empress. Similar to Fall With Me, Goodbye My Empress took on a more noisy sound incorporating influences like Engine Kid and Drive Like Jehu into the music. You can still hear it here. After playing several shows in the area and recording a demo, we fell apart from my doing. For a while I'd been working on writing a few books in my off time. The drama and stress of being in a band began to get to me. I could see the days of touring were starting to narrow as we were getting married, getting houses and moving in a more sedentary lifestyle. There was also drama as Chuck left for a missed opportunity to go on tour with the band, Bone Pony. I didn't want to start over again. Even if we did, I didn't see us touring like we used to and to me, that nearly eliminated our chances of success.


Books and touring again

So I jumped into writing books in my non-day job time. As twisted as this may sound, I used this to tour on my own. I hit the con circuit like I wanted to with a band. Don't get me wrong. I love everyone that I was ever in a band with, we still share something special that I really can't describe. It was a brotherly comradery, a true second family but I had to go to try other things.

Goodbye Stacy

Eighteen years ago my band, Staring at the Sun, was invited to play a show in Lawrenceberg Tennessee by this guy in a band called Melvin's Headtrip. We showed up and much to my delight this place was huge... and within a few hours was packed. I'll never forget that night because that was the night that I met Stacy Fleeman. While this is incriminating, he wouldn't care that I shared it with you. We were backstage and he had a joint in his hand. He offered it to me and I said "no thank you." He grimaced and said, "What, are you straightedge or something?" I had never hear the word straightedge before, but I instantly knew what it meant.

After this hugely successful show, we kept in touch and not too long after he moved to Nashville where we continued to swap shows, hang out and generally just have fun no matter what we did.

Within this time, we, me, whatever band I was in at the moment seemed to bond with Stacy and his band which had changed names to Dharmakaya. I can't tell you how many times I played with this band, but I can tell you that I have never seen a band play as much as I've seen Dharmakaya. As the years went by I got closer to Stacy, planning our musical futures together and even singing on two songs with his band. (Now called "Into the Pink" and "Synthetic Lies".)

He started Spat! Records with AJ Schafer and as I did my damnedest to support his record store located in the back of The Muse, we spent hours just hanging out and talking about everything and anything that came up. Spat! Records signed my band Fall With Me even though we were a raucous inconsiderate, brutish bunch bent on insulting the rising hardcore/metal scene. Still, Stacey and AJ stood behind us. Giving us most if not all of our accolades as a band. We hit #12 on the college metal charts because of them, our second record "Rise Phoenix Rise" was completely put out by them including studio time, record pressing and expensive cover art and distribution that we could have never achieved on our own.Dare I say that FWM was the first band ever out of Nashville to chart that high on the Metal rankings? Did I mention that they hooked us up with shows with every band we wanted to play with? This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what these guys did for us, but the most important thing they did was believe in us, and what we did. And for that, none of us should ever forget what they did for us under the penalty of barbed lashings.


After the first incarnation of Fall With Me, did Stacey and AJ forget about us? Did they let us go on bad behavior? No. In fact they continued to support the new Fall With Me. Records, shows, preferential treatment... the list could go for pages.

The point is, that Stacey and I and my bandmates were friends. Good friends at that. Friends that supported each other in the best and worst times, personally and musically.

Stacey Fleeman died last night, August 23rd, 2009. My friend is gone forever with a mere 12,296 days of life under his belt, it's a rip off if you ask me. I've been thinking to myself, "Why didn't I say something to him?" "Why didn't I tell him to chill on the drugs?" "Why didn't I pay for him to got to the doctor or get him nourishing food?" "Why didn't I ask him what he really wanted out of life?" You know why? Because he would have said, "Dude, I'm doing exactly what I want to do, and I'm having the time of my life doing it." And that's the truth of it.

Stacey, I'll never forget you. You gave me hope when I had little, you gave me fun and good times when I needed them most. But most of all, you were a great friend that is a model for all other friends in my life. I won't forget, the house show in the basement, the Halloween show in your house, or the other thousands of amazing times we had together. Rest in peace my brother, I swear we are going to give you a sending off party that you will be proud of. I'll miss you and already do. Please enjoy this picture of Mr. Fleeman acting like he has his hand up my bum... or is he acting? Stacy, we'll always love you and life will not be as fun without you man.