Bands I've played in

Previous Bands

A list of the bands that I've played with:

Burr/Lachrymose (2001-2003)

Humble beginnings with only one band member who had ever played his instrument before we decided to start a band. My friend Sean knew how to drum -- his Dad, like my Dad, played them. Loney picked up bass mostly to round us out, but I recall him telling me that he had a dream with a takeaway that he was destined to play bass.

We took ourselves as seriously as a group of teens playing heavy metal could take themselves. My Dad was freelancing on the weekends as a wedding DJ, which gave us access to all sorts of audio equipment, lighting, fog machines, you name it. We'd put on shows in my parents' basement for my brother's friends (and force my brother to run the light show).

Lachrymose eventually fell apart because our singer and drummer ended up going to high school elsewhere and without that constant contact (in the pre-cell phone era) on top of some adolescent animosity, we never finished our first album. We did win the 2003 Dubuquefest Battle of the Bands, though.

With a Bullet (2004-2005)

After a short break, my friend Werner -- whom I'd bought my first guitar from after he gave up trying to learn because it was "too hard" -- had proposed that the two of us start working on something new. Lachrymose was metal, With a Bullet was going for something a bit groovier. I was big into Corrosion of Conformity at the time and I really wanted to be Pepper Keenan.

Werner and I grew up as neighbors but he moved to a neighboring town when we were in high school. Werner's new friend 'Delli' had joined us on bass. Delli's friend Jack auditioned on drums and I remember thinking very clearly "this dude ain't it."

Werner and I hung fliers up at places like Rondinelli's and Uncle Ike's in search of a drummer. Two guys responded: some super goth guy whose name I don't remember, and Kurt. Kurt was a few years older than us and had 10x the gigging experience we had. I wouldn't call him a mentor, but he had a sense of how things operate that the rest of us did not.

I don't even remember how we got the attention of Aaron at The Busted Lift, who booked us for our first (and only as 'With a Bullet') show in Fall 2004.

I was responsible for writing the songs -- as I was in all of my bands previously. Eventually my heart was not in it anymore. Werner assured me it was cool if I left and that they would continue jamming without me...

Bull Dyke Rodeo (2006-2012)

Werner always said that seeing Lachrymose perform for the first time was a pivotal moment in his life -- that we proved to him that you can write and perform music even if you don't know what you're doing.

The first time I saw Bull Dyke Rodeo play, it became reciprocal.

I was anticipating an evolution of the songs we had writen in With a Bullet. I was not anticipating that Werner had throw ALL of those songs away - replacing the southern groove metal sound I was going for with a Palm Desert sound. He had obviously been listening to a ton of Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age.

I'm pretty sure I begged him to let me back in the band that night. He knew I wasn't ready, but I didn't.

Regardless, he did let me produce their first EP. I had just gotten a POD Pro for myself and forced him to use it for all of his guitars. I don't think he'll ever forgive me for the awful tone he was left with.

The Invitation (2006)

I started college at University of Wisconsin–Platteville in Fall 2006. Werner was also going to school there and his apartment was just across the street from campus, so we started hanging out more and jamming at his place. He was working on songs and transcribing them in-whole in Power Tab Editor. When he sent me the tracks, I was again blown away by his work. The (excessive?) harmonized guitar parts he had written required another guitarist, and he extended an offer to join.

The four of us played pretty consistently from 2006-2009, putting out two albums in that time. A few of the places I remember playing:

• The Busted Lift and Off Minor in Dubuque
• JB's Speakeasy in LaCrosse
• Mixtapes in Moline, IL
• Frequency in Madison

Kurt quit Bull Dyke Rodeo shortly after the release of our 2nd album.

3rd Lineup

I remember jamming a time or two with a dude named Alan before Werner approached Jon Eagle ("Jeagle") about drumming. Jeagle's drumming was considerably less technical than Kurt's. The songs Werner was writing were a lot more about grooves than about intricacy. We were working on a 3rd album based on the movie Kingpin and mostly played those songs with Jeagle.

The end.

Werner and Piranha got into an emotional spat over a girl they both liked. Piranha ended up making plans to move to New Orleans with her. The two of them went without interacting for months before we just stopped playing together. We had been playing

We reunited for one final show featuring BOTH drummers in August 2012.

Bull Dyke Rodeo's final show - YouTube

Broken Crow (2009-2011)

Broken Crow was a side project for me, Werner, and Piranha while we scouted for a new drummer after Kurt left Bull Dyke Rodeo. Piranha switched to drums, I switched to bass. We were playing very sludgy songs and performed a badass doom-style cover of Dangerbird by Neil Young on a few occasions.

Broken Crow died with Bull Dyke Rodeo.

Pilgrem (2011-2013)

I began working on songs in isolation for the first time since Lachrymose and had several written. My friends Bryce and Mathias had played in a band called Inter Aeternus with Loney and their friend Tyler. Bryce lived down the street from me, so our two bands hung out quite a bit. Their band ended when Tyler left for college, and I started jamming with Bryce and Mathias.

Piranha took an interest in playing drums for us and performed on a few very early demos. When Piranha moved, we were without a drummer.

Lucky for us, Kurt (from Bull Dyke Rodeo) was open to jamming, now having taken 2.5 years off from playing. We played several shows with Kurt before Bryce and Mathias eventually finished school and moved away.

High Above The City (2011)

This was an electronic project between Mathias and I. Mostly just learning how to use Ableton and soft synths. We put up several tracks on SoundCloud but really had no intentions of ever performing them. A blip it may have been, I think it changed us both and sent us down a rabbit hole of synths and sequencers.