Dropsy
Over the years I'd bump into friend and fellow musician David at various parties. He kept saying, "I'm thinking of forming a band that plays my songs, maybe we'll do a couple of shows and record an album. Wanna play keyboards?" Of course my answer was always yes, and eventually this came to fruition.
In the spring of 2001 we had the first band rehearsal. David on vocals and MIDI vibraphone, me on keyboards, Tom on trombone, Mathias on drums, and Myles on bass. Due to scheduling conflicts, Myles and Tom eventually had to bail, but multi-instrumentalist Garth joined on sax, and Alex on bass. No guitar.
David settled on the name Dropsy early on and established the fancy web site. Rehearsals were fun and the music a total joy to learn and perform. One rehearsal fell on the evening of 9/11. Calls went around wondering if we would maintain plans to work on these tunes that night. I'm glad we ultimately decided to get together and jam out as it helped get through this particularly fucked up time.
Tom was still in the band when we had a "warm up" show of six songs at the Fishtank. As we solidified a full albums' worth of tunes we were playing shows at the Starry Plough with other similar bands. We even did an outdoor gig at a party in Clear Lake of all places. The hostess of that party captured a rattlesnake on the premises. With Alex's help she beheaded it with a shovel, and they plopped the tail down on the grill alongside the other meats.
Before one of the Plough gigs Garth and I ordered burgers and beer at the bar's kitchen and ate and drank as everybody shared my fries. There was a trio of old-school biker types. One guy - tall, skinny, leather vest and no shirt, handle-bar mustache - tapped me on the shoulder while I was eating and asked if I was having a good day. I said, "yes." This answer satisfied him, I guess, and he left me alone.
During soundcheck, that same guy looked at me from offstage and yelled, "nice mustache," which was odd as I shaved that morning. I said, "what?" and he repeated the same. I said I didn't have a mustache. Then, while raising his own middle finger he snapped, "hey! did you just flip me off?!" I snapped back, "No I didn't flip you off!" He was obviously way drunk, and he admitted the alcohol was making him see things. I diplomatically offered that it might have been the stage lights reflecting off my glasses or something. Anyway, that was the end of that confrontation - the bikers left before our set.
By the summer of 2002 we hunkered down and started recording the album at Myles' studio. Despite having no budget (except for whatever was in David's bank account) we tinkered with some interesting "overproduction," mostly in the form of many guest musicians playing brass, percussion, etc.
Since there was no "label pressure" and therefore no deadlines we took months to lay down the tracks, and eventually mix it. David began working on the cover art, and basically all band progress slowed to a crawl. Mathias split to move to LA to further his computer science education. Garth got busy with his solo project, and Alex and I formed a new band, Three Piece Combo.
In the fall of 2002 David made some hints about restarting the band with me, Alex, and Jon on drums (who played percussion on the record) and whomever we could find to play horns at the time. Jon learned all the material, and we had one rehearsal at my house. It went quite well, but that was the last time Dropsy played together in any form. Life basically took over for everybody, and sadly that was that. However Dave's original plan of playing a few shows and recording a CD had already been fulfilled. So.. promises kept
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