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(note: this is a bio of Pezz written from the perspective of Christian, who was not always in the band, but was always close to the band, even when not a member. There may be some events that should be duly noted that are not, or some facts that are wrong, or just opinions.)
The Past, Present and Future of Pezz....
I wasn't in the band in the beginning, but i was around from the start. A young twelve year old who, when hanging out with my older brother and his friends unknowingly witnessed the birth of what would become on of his favorite bands, and eventually a band he would call himself a member of. My older brother and Marv's younger brother were best friends for as long as i can remember and I first heard punk music through them. always an independant thinker, i immediately fell in love with the ideas that punk rock expressed, and the adrenaline, anger and sincerity that it expressed them with. I quickly sought after and absorbed all things punk. No one at my private school knew anything about it, which was fine with me....it made it better really, more personal. I went to my first punk show at the world famous antenna club with Marv and my brother at the tender age of 12. I was amazed that real people were making music locally, with ideas that mirrored the ones my young, independant mind was just starting to form.
I heard the beginnings of Pezz at one of their practices at drummer Nic's house, but it was when i heard the first songs they recorded, a five song session at Easley studios, that i fell in love with what they were doing. These were real people....accessable and sincere, making music. It was a far cry from the Vanilla Ice and hair bands my friends at school listened to. I missed their first show, in july of '90 at singleton community center, but i caught the second one, in Sep '90 at the antenna. After that, i made every Pezz show i could. When they released their demo tape "kite eating tree" I would lay in my bed at night, with headphones on and imagine myself on stage, in the band. I knew every word to that demo, and played it until the sticker wore off. i still have it to this day. Some standouts were "Mattress", which also made it on the Bombpop flexi that Marv and Nic released with truant fanzine #4 and became their most popular song at the time, "Escape" was a great one. The quality of the Easley songs were great, but the rest were recorded with Hans Faulhaber, and were lacking. i loved them just the same. Basic punk/hardcore with Scott Bomars funk influenced bass lines and nic's all-over-the-place drumming style. In the beginning they even tried their hand at ska punk, in the totally silly "hamster hoedown". I believe it was this silliness that would eventually cause people to give Pezz alot of shit over, but in those days, half the local scene was dominated by overly serious Hardline and straight edge bands, and we see where all that seriousness got them.
Eventually, Ceylon picked up the guitar, and they recorded the Jalopy 7" at Easley studios once again. at this point pezz rode the line between being fun, silly and innocent, and having a meloncholy, serious tone evident in songs like "Potlatch" and "Short on Heroes".
At this point, the musical landscape in Memphis began to change. Bands like copout started playing thrash, and people like William Harris of Copout, who at one time would be seen sitting on stage at pezz shows, singing along and taking pictures, found themselves too big for their britches. Pezz became unpopular in the elitist "hardcore scene". It became uncool to be light hearted, or to take time to craft songs. 30 second thrash tunes became the rule. Pezz continued on, recording the "free ride" 7". The song, Surge is a haunting lament of people abandening the punk scene, growing up and forgetting what we were all there for.
Scott Bomar left(Scott later formed Impala, The Bo Keys and scored Craig Brewer movies), and Roy Isaksen, former singer of Memphis Hardcore band Sobering Consequenses picked up the bass duties. Pezz lost it funky edge, and became more straightforward punk, and also a little bit more serious. People always mistakenly lumped Pezz in with the pop punk genre....and i guess a name like Pezz conjures up images of sugary sweetness. But there was a dark side of Pezz evident in songs like "Sugarpill" , "#13, The Last ounce of Joy", "Candlesticks" and "Haunted". These songs appeared on their first full length on Truant records, "Livin' the Life of Riley". Roy did one more recording session with Pezz, recording "Mohunker", "Crucifiction" and "In the Briar Patch".
The next big change was the addition of Joey Mullnix to the band, taking over bass duties from Roy. Joey, formerly of Copout, gave Pezz a harder edge. They recorded songs for a Split LP with Canada's Two Line Filler. "Hey Man", "Hey You" and "bollard" are standouts from this release. That release however, would be the Last thing recorded with drummer Nic. This would probably cause of of the biggest transformations in Pezz's sound.
The next Pezz drummer was Chris Coble, formerly of Car Crash. Chris was a rock solid, heavy hitting drummer, with a playing style very different from Nic's erratic "all fills" approach. Chris's rythm provided a back bone that would make Pezz a more solid rock band. They recorded a demo, that showcased the strength of the three singing songwriters. It was this tradeoff singing, dual guitars and rock solid rythm section that landed Pezz on BYO records.
Pezz's "One Last Look" on BYO records was their most accesible album. They had honed their sound, to create a record that, to me, lacks a bad moment. Recorded at Westbeach studios by Steve Kravac, the record is, in alot of people's opinion's, Pezz's best. Joey's songwriting and singing fights for dominance on the record. Joey is a great songwriter, heavily Jawbreaker influenced. This record is unique to Pezz, because on the way back to Memphis from the recording session Joey quit, which pared the band back down to Cey and Marv as the singer/ songwriters. I believe that "one last look" suffered from bad art direction. Pezz was already lumped into the "just another pop punk" band section. upon leaving the band, Joey took with him the original artwork idea for the albums cover. Scrambling to find a new cover, BYO chose a ridiculous old picture of little kids boxing, with silly, zany lettering for the band name. The cover little represents the intensity and depth of the record, and i think many people probably overlooked it for this reason.
Pezz began to tour to support the record, briefly adding Ben Nichols of Lucero as bass player and Brad Jackson. With Brad, they demoed some songs that would evntually appear on their next BYO record "Warmth and Sincerity".
This was where I came in. Summer '98, Brad couldn't go on tour and I had become a capable enough bass player to take the bass helm. My very first punk rock tour, we covered the whole U.S. in two months, then did a short two week stint in the southeast with the Bouncing Souls. we made alot of lasting friendships on this tour, most notably, with Joe from the Unit Breed, Chad Martin from Sam the Butcher, who would eventually be our tour drummer and All the answers from Montreal. I was thrilled to play with Pezz, but with pressure from my then live in girlfriend and a desire to continue with my own band, Greaseland i quit after a few months. I was replaced by J.D. Reager who would play on Warmth and Sincerity.
Warmth and Sincerity was a more mature record, with the majority of the vocal duties taken over by Marv, who really found his voice on this record. Alot of the songs were more mid-tempo, and the sound of the record was courtesy of Steve Albini, who made the guitars and the drums sound larger than God. "False Prophets" is by far my favorite song on the record. written by Ceylon, it is a calling out of rock star elitist scene types who complain about the world, but do nothing but play in their bands, collect records and talk shit. "You're preaching to the converted, but offer no solution" says it all....
Pezz set out on several ball busting tours to support this record....touring with At the Drive In and 7 Seconds....One tour ending with several members catching pneumonia...the next tour jd quit, and then, as a final blow to the spirit of the band, Marvin had and accident.
Pezz was on tour in Canada with dbs, JD had already left the tour. Marv decided to walk down to the beach with a beer in his hand. He tripped and broke the bottle, slicing his hand. He had cut an artery and his ulnar nerve. the tour was over.
Pezz went home, and Marv went about the healing process, having to go through physical therepy to be able to use his hand again. Pezz had to figure out what their future held. Chris Coble said that, partially due to financial reasons, that he would be unable to tour any longer and that he was unwilling to play local shows. he basically resigned from the band without quitting. Unable to stop moving forward, Ceylon talked to me about rejoining the band, and i was happy to. We had been dealt several blows, but were determined to continue on. We recorded songs for the split 7" with Remus and the Romulus nation with Ceylon doing triple duty on drums and both guitars, i played bass and marv just sang. We planned another tour, going back through canada. We flew our friend Chad Martin in from Phoenix, grabbed Grant Miller as a roadie and set out for tour with Marv as the lead singer, still unable to use his hand to play guitar. Like any tour it was hard as hell and fun as hell. Every day was an 8 to 10 hour drive. We evn drove 30 hours straight at one point. with little to no money, we struggled through the tour.
We did another tour early the next year with Allen Jones (Pure Fire Project, An End To October, Malamute) on drums. That tour was with Little Rock's Go Fast and Chicago's Muchacha. Marv had regained use of his hand.
The next tour was in the fall with Wesley Willis. We flew Chad back in for drum duties. This was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. If you don't know who Wes is, there's too much to say. Look him up immediately. in a nutshell, he was a 6' 5" Paranoid Schizophrenic man from chicago. He played the keyboard (sorta...not really, he played the prerecorded keyboard music) and belted out song he wrote either about Someone or some band that he liked, some crazy story he made up, or about licking some kind of animals dick with some kind of condiment. He was hilarious and tragic. we basically had to take care of him for a month, and we got to open for him, playing to good crowds every night. Dealing with a schizophrenic and their episodes is not easy,but Wes was a beautiful soul and we all grew to love him. he even wrote songs for each member of pezz, and the song "pezz can rock, pezz can roll". We were all very sad when wes died a few years ago. he was our buddy.
The following fall Pezz toured with England's Leatherface...with many of those dates shared with Samiam and Hot water music. Ceylon played drums on this tour and Grant Miller played second guitar. During this tour we honed many of the songs that would end up on Pezz's 4th full length titled "With Everything We Got".
"With Everything We Got" is not Pezz's most accessible record, but it is the most varied musically, the most mature, and it is the record where Pezz truly solidified as a unit. On that record, it is just Ceylon, Marv and I, with Cey playing both drums and second guitar. BYO decided that it was not a good idea finacially to put out a third Pezz record, so the record was released on local Memphis label Soul Is Cheap. Recorded at Easley studios by stuart sikes, and at House of Blues by Kyle Johnson, this record features a straight up reggae tune, "voices in the wilderness" about economic sanctions on Iraq between the two wars there, A seven minute epic "What if someday never comes" , a straight up hardcore song "one foot on the step", a country influenced rocker "broke in two" and a six and a half minute epic "drifting away" featuring our friend Kay France on violin. This is by far my favorite Pezz record, not because i played on it, but because it showcases the varied influnces, both musically and topically that make up this tight group of musicians and friends. The record received a few critical jabs from reviewers for lyric content that deals with spirituality, but obviously those reviwers didn't listen too closely for while "broke in two" deals with marvins views on christianity, "drifting away", who lyrics were written by Christian, deals with his lack of faith in religion.
Marvin made the desicion that he would be moving to Dekalb Illinois while his wife attended grad school after on final Pezz tour. We did a two week U.S. leg of the tour, leaving just days after September 11th...playing New York City just two weeks later. We left for Europe at the end of September, with Grant Miller once again on second guitar. Europe was an amazing experience. Alot of shows got canceled, and we ended up supporting much of the tour out of our own pockets, after all, we were an unknown band touring by themselves.
Upon returning to Memphis Pezz played what alot of people billed as "Pezz's last show", but over the next few years Pezz got together and played several shows, at least once a year, even flying Chad Martin in for one show. Marvin and Sara had a baby in Dekalb, Ceylon briefly moved to Chicago to continue his activist work with Voices in the Wilderness and Christian stayed in Memphis and continued other music projects. He played in the band Samsa where he met Anthony Siracusa, and they eventually formed the band Akasha. Upon returning from Chicago, Ceylon joined akasha and it became more Pezz-like at times. Cey, Christian and Anthony all played in Bury the Living as well.
It wasn't too long before we could no longer resist and had to all get together and play more shows and work on new material. Anthony played a few Pezz shows on drums, but finally took 2nd guitar duties while Ceylon moved to drums. We are currently writing new material for upcoming releases. thanks.
-Christian Walker
5/ 20/ 07
 | Currently listening:
One Last Look
By Pezz
Release date: 30 September, 1997 |
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