The Story of DANOTI - Part III

The Refreshments' First Rehearsal

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Start at the beginning of the Story of DANOTI here.

So far with this article series, we’ve established that:

-Growing up, I associated making a living in the arts and entertainment with being on TV.

-After I moved to Tempe, AZ, in 1990, there was a band called the Gin Blossoms that made a living playing local clubs and were not on TV.

In early 1993, I was in an original threesome called the Hanson Brothers with singer/guitarist Jim Gerke and drummer Dusty Denham. The Hansons rarely gigged. We scheduled rehearsals here and there, but sometimes this or that member didn’t show up, which left the other two to jam alone. During one Jim-less session, Dusty mentioned that the singer of his old band the Mortals had just gotten back from a gap year in Taipei, Taiwan, and was looking to jam.

I knew of Roger Clyne. I’d seen the Mortals maybe a half dozen times from 1990-1992. They played some of the same venues as the Solemines during that era—the Sun Club, Chuy’s, Edcel’s Attic. I remember one summer the Mortals played the Sun Club seemingly every Tuesday night, and I found myself in their small audience here and there. I liked the band. Dusty’s drumming was appealing, and their bass player Greg Cullar—really tall—had a way of moving while he played that was mesmerizing, the low Sun Club stage just above his head. These two alone were worth the two bucks paid at the door.

Roger was more of an enigma. He was handsome, and he sang and played guitar with his eyes closed in a desperate, plaintive way. Something about his delivery was more ‘80s new wave than ‘90s Tempe. I knew from somewhere that Roger was the songwriter of the band, and I liked many of his songs. I can still sing “Monsters” and “Unlisted” in my head. Still, the band tended to play the same parts over and over, making what might’ve been a good three-minute song into a more boring five-minute song. Also, they could’ve used a lead instrument.

I told Dusty we had a lead singer, Jim.

Still, the idea of playing with Roger persisted. Whenever Jim missed a Hansons practice, Dusty suggested we jam with Roger, and every time I quashed the idea. I knew Roger had something more than a typical lead singer—something that might help a band succeed in Tempe—but I also couldn’t quite see myself in a band with him.

In the intervening days and weeks, I churned on the idea of trying Roger out. I’d turned down the opportunity to play with Doug Hopkins. What was I waiting for?

The next time Jim missed a practice, Dusty suggested we call Roger, and I acquiesced. At least we’d jam as a full band that night.

On the day of Roger’s tryout, Dusty and I had a 12-pack of Budweiser on its end in the middle of the room, ready for our greedy hands. It would become a tradition. For the first year or two, I don’t think we ever had a rehearsal that didn’t involve an upturned 12-pack.

Roger arrived to Dusty’s basement with his guitar case in one hand and amp in the other. He was weirdly bashful upon meeting me, avoiding a direct gaze. I knew he was familiar with Dusty’s basement since it was where his and Dusty’s previous band the Mortals had rehearsed. He set his amp down in front of Jim’s Marshall, and I tried to ignore the symbolism.

The three of us managed small talk as we drank and got our equipment ready. I learned that Roger—who’d recently arrived home from an extended stay in southeast Asia—was fluent in Spanish, and he’d spent a semester of his college years in Mexico. I wondered how that happened, why someone would choose southeast Asia. Three years before—as a 21-year-old—I’d taken my first ever plane flight. Solemines guitarist Tim Anthonise and I had flown from Phoenix to Los Angeles to play our first and only non-Arizona show—at Tim’s dad’s house in Orange Country for Tim’s dad’s birthday. My idea of exotic travel to that point had been driving my Omni 024 from my hometown of Moline, IL, to Phoenix. Roger might as well have been from another planet.

Once playing our instruments, our awkwardness translated into a lively vibe. I liked the Mortals tunes we played–-“Psychosis” and “Girly” among them—and a Hanson Brothers song I’d written called “Carefree” had a great feel with these guys. The chorus went:

I can take care of everything.
And I can pick for you the songs that you sing
And the sites you see. No, don’t mind me.
I’m carefree.

And I will always keep the upper hand.
And I can change your angry young man
Into a fashion show, with brand name clothes
And carefree.

There isn’t a ton of logic to those lyrics. They were more or less what had come out when I’d written the song a year or two earlier for the Hanson Brothers. In retrospect, it’s hard for me not to see how this attitude within me—letting someone else drive so long as I could remain carefree—set me up for some of the disappointment I would later feel during the Refreshments’ career. At the time, I was just going along with it.

I definitely sensed our threesome had something—I didn’t know what, but “fresh” is what I wanted to call it. Unfortunately, about an hour into the jam, I broke a bass string, and without a spare set, that pretty much meant the jam was over.

Not as far as Roger was concerned. He took off his guitar, took my bass, uncoiled the broken string and—Leatherman at the ready—went to work. He managed to tie my broken string into a knot at the bridge, getting it to hold tenuously in place.

I was charmed by the gesture. Here was a guy who so dug our first collaboration he was willing to do anything to keep it going, even tie a knot in a broken bass string. It made the event feel special somehow. We weren’t just starting a band, like I had many times before. We were starting a story, a legend: three guys who would do anything to keep playing together, even tie a knot in a broken bass string. I knew the knot wouldn’t hold—it would snap within the first few bars of our next song—but that didn’t matter. The story of that jam was what mattered, the experience of trying to keep the damn thing going no matter what. If a bass string had broken during a Hanson Brothers practice, no one would’ve thought twice about calling it a day.

My bass out of commission, all that was left to do was finish the 12-pack. The three of us chatted in Dusty’s mom’s driveway about music. I discovered Roger and I were both big Camper Van Beethoven fans, and he was interested in playing me songs by the Specials and the Pogues—both bands something of traveling companions from his time in southeast Asia. As our chat wound down, Roger spoke more quickly, seemingly hoping to gain my approval, like he was applying for a job he wanted, which I guess he was. Roger was a talented singer, a compelling songwriter, and a kind of AZ character to boot. Dusty and I would’ve been fools not to ask him aboard.

It’s hard for me not to notice in that first jam a microcosm of the Refreshments’ entire trajectory: Roger’s shyness combined with his need to impress, my curiosity tinged with incredulity, the necessity of alcohol to get past our disconnect, the creation of the best rock music we’d ever made.

Then the breaking of my bass string, Roger’s struggle to fix it, the final unravelling, the plundering of the 12-pack. Everything that would happen in our band over the next five years was right there.

My first memoir My Iliad Odyssey is available now. Order here.