About the Author
| Yep, these are both me. The one on the right is more recent. |
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| Yep, these are both me. The one on the right is more recent. |
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My name is Scott, and I live in Pensacola, Florida. I'm 33 years old and single. For money, I do piece work as a transmission mechanic for a government contractor. For a future, I am in my fourth year of college where I major in Telecommunications and minor in Computer Technology. For fun and attention and an occasional buck, I play music in local rock bands. Though I do occasional sit-in gigs (as either drummer or bass player) with such popular local acts as The Kee Creek Band, my current current project is an all original band called Sunday@three where I play bass and sing some lead vocals. We play a variety of styles and are still waiting to see what our own signature style will become. Only time will tell, but I'm rooting for a heavier blues based rock sound. I also like to write and record my own music. I put this site together because I remembered just how hard it was for me to learn all this stuff, and I thought I might be able to make the process a little easier for someone else out there.
In 1966, I was born near a small town located right on the Ohio River in southeast Ohio called Pomeroy. I don't know what the population was, but suffice it to say that it was very small. I think it was over an hour's drive to even reach an interstate highway. It was the kind of place where you knew the names and faces of all your neighbors, and could even leave your doors unlocked when you were sleeping.
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In that rural area, I learned and absorbed many of the old fashioned values that are more typical of my parents generation than of my own. I went to church on Sundays, attended countless extended family picnics, learned to fish, learned I didn't like hunting, played Little League baseball, played in marching band and concert band in high school, and generally did all the things associated with a Norman Rockwell vision of the world. |
Out of that world, somehow I ended up growing my hair to unthinkable lengths and playing Rock-n-Roll. I'm not sure how that happened. I wasn't ever one of those kids who dreamed of becoming a rock star or anything. In fact, I don't remember ever really considering becoming any kind of real musician. I just happened to get in the band and learn to play drums in high school instead of playing football or some other sport. From there, it was natural to want to get an actual drum set so I could play in the school's "Jazz Band". I think that was the real deciding moment. My Grandma Bailey is probably more responsible for me being a musician than anyone else. She's the one who actually bought the drum kit for me.
We didn't even know it at the time, but it was probably the best musical deal I ever got. The coach of the football team had an old set that someone had given him, and apparently he didn't know what it was worth either, because he sold it to my Grandma for one hundred dollars. The punch line here is that it was a classic Slingerland set with Zildjian cymbals, one of which was a 20" ride. That cymbal alone was worth a couple of hundred bucks even way back then (1983). Not bad for a kid who didn't even know how to "boom tap" yet. |
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After that first drum lesson, I went home and practiced and practiced and practiced. Then, much to my parents' chagrin, I practiced some more. I'm very grateful for my Mom's patience. It takes a lot of willpower to let your kid bang on drums for hours on end. Then, it was time to join Jazz Band. It was okay, but it wasn't the awesome experience I was hoping for. For one thing, I was probably the worse drummer of the three of us that had made it into the Jazz Band. That meant I got stuck with "auxiliary percussion" most of the time. In other words, I got to play a lot of shakers, cowbells, tambourines, and wind chimes. That wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but it was still fun, so I stuck with it. I think I messed around with some friends trying to play some old AC/DC stuff before that, but things didn't really get started for me until some guy named Kevin was trying to put a band together and asked me if I'd play with them. Being a small town, there wasn't a really large pool of people to ask, but I didn't really think of that. I just thought it would be really cool. Within a couple of weeks, he had gathered enough budding young musicians together to actually get together and practice.
When we finally cranked up those little amps and started banging out those slightly out of tune chords, it was AWESOME. Looking back now, I can say for sure that we were terrible, but at the time we didn't know it. We were just experiencing the thrill of actually making music for the very first time. It's nothing that you can explain to someone who hasn't experienced it, but it definitely passed what I call the goosebump test. I call it that because sometimes when I hear or play a particularly moving piece of music, it gives me chills or goosebumps. Okay, here is the funny part. The very first rock-n-roll song I ever played in a band that could get all the way through it was........ Ummmmm Livin' After Midnight by Judas Priest. I think the next one was Metal Health by Quiet Riot. It's hard now for me to imagine getting chills from playing any songs like that, but I guess we all go through stages. I remember that we didn't even have a PA. The singer just had to sing really really loud. I'm sure we probably had a name for that band, but for the life of me, I can't remember it. It didn't last too long anyway. Practice with those guys sort of got me started, but for the most part, that band was just an excuse to stay over at someone else's house and play with his Commodore 64.
After that band fell apart, I teamed up with some of its former members to start my first band that actually felt like a band. We called it Thunderhead for a while, but sometime later we changed the name to Dirty White Boys (What can I say? It was the '80s). We weren't very good, but we had heart. We practiced every Sunday all afternoon in my Grandparents' basement for a couple of years, but we just didn't seem to get anywhere. Our song list ranged from Pink Houses by John Cougar, to Iron Man by Ozzy, to Working Man by Rush. Looking back, I can say it was a combination of things that held us up. For one thing, we were learning in a sort of vacuum. Keith had moved to Florida, and there weren't really any other musicians around to show us the ropes. There wasn't even a local music store to hang out in. I also think we just sort of lacked the collective talent to really make things work. That band lasted a very long time, but we never really played any gigs except for a few parties that we planned and arranged ourselves. Over time, we even upgraded our equipment to the point where we actually had a PA System to sing through, but at that time, I had no interest at all in learning how to use it. It was the bass player's stuff, and we just let him run all the sound. |
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Eventually, that band split up, and I didn't play anything for quite some time. I was too busy with life. I was going to college for a while, but I wasn't really ready for that, so I quit. Then about six months later, I got married to my high school sweetheart. As it turns out I wasn't ready for that either, but I'll get to that in a second. Sometime soon after we got married, my wife and I decided we should get out of that one horse town and go somewhere to try to find a better life, so we started saving up our money to move somewhere, anywhere. So....through a bizarre non-musical series of events, we ended up moving to Pensacola, Florida where my Uncle Keith was living. Not too terribly long after that, through another non-musical (and painful) series of events, my wife and I split up. She went to live with her new boyfriend, and I moved into Keith's place. I didn't know it at the time, but phase II of my musical life was about to start.
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This section was last updated on March 21, 2000
Mail me at Bassist@Spydee.net.
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