Band On The Run

The Chain

With a bawdy laugh and a shake of the head, Peter just told me, “We’ll start at the beginning. Keely, how did The Spares come into being?”

Blowing out a loud breath, I nodded slowly. If I was ready for it or not, there was no choice in the matter, I was doing this. I fucking hate Mark.

“It was right after NSR broke up,” I began. “I was already demoing songs for my sophomore album that Maureen Jones, the owner of UAE Records and our manager, was pushing for, and she expected Seth Ryan to be doing the same as she wanted a real solo album from him. Well, Seth had never really wanted to be solo. I mean, he put out that EP that everyone knows about, Vaughn.”

As if to confirm the words I was saying, the crowd broke out into a raucous cheer, making me wince slightly. I always wondered if they were really getting told what to do or not, I was so rarely paying attention if I was stuck in a studio audience.

“But,” I continued, “He didn’t want to be a solo artist then. So he had this idea, he wanted to make a band, and he wanted me to be part of it.”

Making an interested sound in the back of his throat, Peter leaned into his palm, staring at me in a captivated fashion, as if engrossed in what I was saying. “Do you think that he’d been thinking about this, before NSR broke up?”

Forcefully I distanced myself from the words; it was easier to speak if I was considering the person saying them a different person. I could get through this; I always got through this stuff. “I think that… he hadn’t really wanted to be in NSR for a long time.” The words were getting difficult, though. “And as is common knowledge, their Sons of Silence album was mostly his work, though I came on as a co-writer then. He felt like he was almost solo in NSR by the end, he was playing half the drums and bass in the studio, as well as the vocals and everything other instrument.

“But had he been thinking of making us into a band? I don’t know, he never told me. I think he had ideas of making another band, because he didn’t expect to NSR to last much longer, which he was obviously right about.

“Anyways, we still weren’t telling Maureen about it. We were spending a lot of time writing music and just thinking about making a band, kind of day dreaming about it. I had always wanted to be in a real band, I’d wanted to be a part of something like that. And he just wanted another band. So we finally decided to make it reality. But there we were; both vocalists and guitarists. We needed other people.

“We had this friend that was hanging around New York at the time; he was thinking of becoming a session bassist since his band The Dynamic had broken up. Jake was almost a hero of mine, I’d worshipped The Dynamic mostly because he was the bassist. That band was so fucking punk rock it was awesome. And the moment we asked him, he said yes.”

“You still didn’t have a drummer though,” Peter pointed out.

Nodding, I found myself grinning even though I was feeling nauseous talking about this. Bitter sweet. “Yeah, we had a lot of trouble finding a drummer that we liked as a person and a musician, it was important for all three of us to have someone we could get along with. This was supposed to be a fun thing we were doing, we didn’t want some dick as our drummer. At one point Seth offered to play the drums for the band, but that would have been stupid. I mean, it’d be like John Bonham quitting Led Zeppelin and going to Jimmy Page, “Hey man, want to play drums? We’ll just put Robert on guitar.” Putting him on the drums would have been a bad idea for the band.”

“Weren’t you living with a drummer at the time, though?” he put in.

Nodding, I sent him a half smile. “Yeah, when I’d moved to New York I was rooming in this apartment with a drummer named William from this band The Cavern Jets. They’d opened for me and NSR on the last tour, and we were really good friends.”