The Johns Offical Website

Started last august, it has been a long and arduous adventure… ego battles and nit picking our way through what started out as a simple idea… let’s record a few tunes and do another EP… 6 songs or so… but small ideas that are good always get exploited and become bigger. This time though, we were going bigger than we’ve ever gone. With the later addition of a few new songs and new engery in old songs, we have 11 songs to put on the record. A slew of instruments and colors, all over the genre map, seamless from big to small from quite to loud. And for a cherry on top we hire a fantastic pedal steel player Justin brown to give it that extra “je ne se qua” (that’s NOT how it’s spelled… but hey, fuck that. I’m BLOGGING here!)

 

So we plan a show and set a date and hire Justin to play with us that night… the record was not finished when we decided to play this show AND call it our “record release show”. Furthermore we were starting to advertise it as such… the pressure was on to finish the thing, get it printed and ready for consumption…. Fuck, even if just ONE person wanted the album, we had to have it ready or be laughed out of the music scene… or what’s left of it…

 

It was mastered on 3/24 and the supplies needed to hand make each CD package was bought the next day and put together 3/28. Between mixinfg and finishing the record and rehearsing for what promises to be our biggest show so far (and three of the band members moving residences and still trying to maintain day jobs and social lives and obligations to family and loved ones and drug/alcohol habits)…. Saurely I could not have planned a more blatnt “when it rains it pours” situation.

 

But we had a ton of stream and some great fuel in the form of advertising. For one, through a kind friend in a high place, we were able to get a half page advertisement for the show in the Columbia School Newspaper… a market we’ve been trying to tap for awhile now through solo shows on campus. Our AD was featured all through march on the bottom half of a page that was otherwise filled up by a giant R.E.M. article… not only that but the paper had an extra insert of the same ad in full resolution color…. So really.. there were two ads…..

 

Second, we were contacted by Andrew Downing of the Tribune who managed to get a story on us in the 3/28 Chicago Tribune. Full article, three columns PLUS picture (plus sub-headline in some version of the TRIB).

 

The steam was building. The album was finished, sounded as good as we could possibly get it…. We’re super happy with it… super confident… super satisfied with where the band has arrived for the moment… but still in a way, anxious to get beyond the record and the release and start new material, start selling the record… start the machine that will hopefully offer us some side money apart from simply satisfying the need we all share to play shows and write and record and to entertain and sometimes touch an audience.

 

3/31. the show. I’ve been sick all month and now on antibiotics… I know from the start of the day that I wont be my usual self, vocally, but I can make it through. I get off work at 4 and head straight to Mark’s house to pick him up and go to the venue. Mark is vibing the excitement… he’s super cool-headed so when he’s a little geeked… there must be something real cool going on.

 

We get to the venue and mat is there, tim is coming late cause his work is full of douche bags who wont give him leeway on an hour to get to the gig on time… we set up and do line checks, no sound check… Justin arrives shortly after. Everything is coming together…. the addition of pedal steel will give the show a fresh quality… that and we’re playing THE WEIGHT by THE BAND and also a song we’ve never played live but that is on the record “are you still coming”.   For me, this was going to be the highlight of the show… cause we’d have that nervous energy of not having played it before… Brian Carrigan and Eric Dahl are there getting the audio recording together as well as the CD selling booth. I’m a little miffed that we don’t get a full sound check, but I know that the sound guy a schubas is likely a pro and am not too worried about it….

 

Time passes… the music starts… Bautista opens the night with what I felt was their best show since their inception. Hoot and Hellomouth follow with a ton of hillbilly energy, exciting the crowd and making some fans out of The johns fans…. The anticipation is huge. I feel it really heavy as people, friends, fans start rolling in, paying cover, looking around to see a familiar face, a ton of unexpected friends come, people I haven’t seen in awhile, people who have seen us a million times in the past are even excited… I’m completely humbled by the turn out and the good vibes. I get nervous now…. Because I really want to make sure these people, who are coming to see us on a Monday, when they all have to work tomorrow, I want these people to have a good time and get what they paid for in money and time and in support of our music and friendship.

 

930 rolls around and I’m told that the Chicago POET legend THAX DOUGLAS has come to the show and wants to write and read a poem for The johns. He says he’s very inspired by our EP, I meet him and see what he’s written… I like it, I agree to it…. This is cool. Very fucking great…. Thax, whom you can say what you want about his poetry, has come and offered without solicitation to read for us as a gesture. Does this make us officially part of the Chicago scene from which we’ve most certainly been outsiders since we started playing in different bands years ago? I mean, he has read for WILCO and a ton of other huge acts and continues to do so… I think he read for Smashing Pumpkins back in the day too… this is an honor for me personally…. That someone who has done his thing to huge audiences with the support of huge bands, has been inspired by our band…

 

We set up, Thax reads, the crowd goes ape… and we start in with Sun For Days. We plan on playing the album down from top to bottom, in that order.

 

Sun For Days

Defeatist

Love in a Dangerous Place

Compass Rose (with pedal steel)

Bear Hugs

A Snake and Rose

Wake Me up

Can’t Carry no more (with pedal steel)

Green Collar

Translations

Are You Still Coming (with pedal steel)

The Weight (pedal steel)

Encore is Comfortable also with pedal steel…

 

From the get go my voice is a little hard to control and definitely not hitting the high notes like I know I can. But as the set rolls on, my voice gets looser and I’m just about where I should be. During defeatist, the end chorus gets massive cheers that I can hear above the band. Justin gets massive applause. I can hear the crowd singing LIDP and compass rose along with the band. Green Collar, the crowd is almost louder than the band. 

 

Are you still coming comes off better than I expected, Justin, who never rehearsed the song with us, fits in perfectly and we end in a super quiet chant of “are you still coming?”.

 

Then we bust in THE WEIGHT, by the Band with Justin on steel… each of us takes a verse and the crowd is digging it… I’m happy that we have been able to make their Monday worthwhile… and maybe even exciting a tad….

After the weight, we get called to play another tune… and we encore with Comfortable with Justin improvising along with us… people later remark to me how his addition was perfect for that and the other songs… 

 

The crowd is left wanting more…. Which is the way it should be… hoping they will be back for more at the next gig… 4-20 at Double Door.

 

The last few months, preparing the album yada yada yada… all come together in what was for me, a totally humbling experience. What was, for the band, a face melting gig… a gig with a crowd full of believers… people who we thanks profusely for their support.

 

A few days later I get a call from our sound guy Eric Dahl, who tells me he’s listened to some of the audio from the gig… and that my piano playing on sun for days…the first song… was all over the place, wrong notes everywhere….

 

At the time I thought it was great… I hope my perceptions of the whole night aren’t like my perceptions about my own playing…