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Honey White



Last Updated: 7/15/2009

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Status: Single
State: California
Country: US
Signup Date: 1/29/2005

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Friday, June 13, 2008 
Those of you who followed Honey White in our active, ass-kicking Rock Days of Yore know that a year ago, Graduate School claimed Brian and took him (and his indispensable lead guitar skills) away from us, indirectly paving the way for my egomaniacal plunge into fiction writing and instrumental bass guitar ambient wankery.

And now this- look how happy and smug Bryn has become since being accepted to UCI's Education department:



Our frontmanly singer-guitarist knows, however, that he's merely traded one monkey house for another. Unprofessional behavior from his ex-Ocean Institute colleagues will look like a day at the beach compared to a classroom full of rampaging high schoolers. Surely.

Well, maybe not. We shall see. In the meantime, let's everyone congratulate Bryn on his fantastic achievement. His future students have no idea what's in store for them.
5:20 AM 
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Tuesday, July 03, 2007 
So yeah, I've belatedly finished work on Honey White's 4th live album, with tracks from selected 2005/2006 shows. I plan to press some CDs, about 50 like the last 3 live discs, but for now you can listen to the mp3s:



And yes, they snap, crackle, and pop like vinyl, but really more like the last 3 unprofessionally made live albums. Don't believe me? Listen for yourself:

Live And Unprofessional (January 28, 2003)

Epic Noise Now (June 13, 2003)

Saturated Songs (June 24, 2004)


All linked files, as always, courtesy of the Live Music Archive's Open Source Audio section. I'll have more on Deluge (and the 3rd disc, Saturated Songs) in a new History Mix essay soon, so stay tuned.

4:52 AM 
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Thursday, June 21, 2007 
Okay, for Round 2 of the archive-trawl through these things, I've found some of my very favorite stuff. Skip to the audio or endure my blather. Fatal Flaws, here from a Seville St., Isla Vista rehearsal on 4/17/04 (where Brian and Bill are in the photo above), is an impromptu instrumental jam (though you can hear my voice waaaay in the back) that Bryn got to go crazy on with the guitar again, and it's even got the terrible butt-rock ending. On the other end of the spectrum, there's an instrumental jam of Sweet Oblivion from the very next night that is one of the goddam sweetest things we've ever improvised. I liked it so much I tacked it onto the end of our third live album as a bonus hidden track. For these two songs, and the speedy take of Heart On A Platter that follows, we were practicing for our second appearance at the Wildcat Lounge in downtown Santa Barbara. We pulled thirty people on a Monday night and, as surely everyone knows by now, it was the most-documented HW show ever, with video, photos, and audio recordings.

We were recording in San Francisco for most of the rest of 2004, but we did find time to get together at Table Salt on November 20 and 21 for some shambling affairs. At one point, we blasted through a series of Mojo Wire songs, and after a brutal take of Long Black Leather Boots, Bryn had no choice but to tell the rest of us to SHUT UP. We then did exactly that, pulling off a good version of our new quiet-arranged One Last Hallelujah. Well, not really- Hallelujah was from our first practice at the Milpas St. art gallery of Bill's parents. It's a great place to play, just as inspiring as Table Salt in terms of being surrounded by visuals, but at the gallery, the exhibits change, of course, so our mood often switched with them too (one time, Bill, Brian and I were surrounded by abstract works, and spend three hours making all sorts of weird sounds with the instruments). The take of Blacking Out here is from 3/27/05, as we practiced for our Ventura debut at Nicholby's.

The next three tunes are sort of a continuation down the line we'd started when we rearranged Hallelujah and Lightning Rod into slower and/or mellower versions. In fact, the take here of Lightning Rod, from 7/3/05, is one of my absolute favorite versions of the song- but Bryn's not even on it! Brian, Bill, and I eased out a cool quiet-surf instrumental of the song that day. Bryn was there on 10/23/05, however, for our similar initial re-workings of both So Cold (here as a strutting, slow funk take) and Shivering Sand (a reggae-ska take!), and though they're both mostly unformed and jammy, they're worth a listen to see how Honey White improvises together to change songs we've played a million times into newer, fresher things. After a small show in Santa Barbara, a big one in LA, and a canceled LA repeat, we sort of lay low for most of 2006 until resurfacing for a small show in the OC. We did manage to meet up in Ventura at the Lounge Pop studio on March 18, though, and I've taken versions of Nightfall, Let Go, and Green Hills from that session. Both Nightfall and Green Hills were new tunes of Bryn's (the former having been well received at gigs for months) and we pulled them off pretty well that night.

After that, there was the Dana Point gig, and...not much, until a few weeks ago when we met at the gallery again to see Brian off to D.C. Bryn, Brian and I played at Table Salt the night before (5/26/07), and the semi-acoustic take of Island Fever is from that practice. For the final gallery stuff, I'm gonna be selfish here and add one of my new ones called Hold Still, which obviously needs work, but has potential. Last but not least is a Queens of the Stone Age cover, This Lullaby, which Bryn had taught me when we played as the Scuppers on the deck of his ship.

There's much, much more where all this stuff came from, but I figured it would be overkill to subject everyone to more than 30 songs, so that's it for the HW practice tapes. I'll be back... sometime... with maybe some more interesting audio/video/writing. We shall see. Til then, thanks again for listening, everybody.

Audio:
5:20 AM 
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Sunday, June 17, 2007 
The major reason Honey White was a creative and artistic success for Bryn, Brian, Bill and myself was that we practiced like mad for almost all of the first year of the band's existence (that would be 2002). We got together at Earl's Table Salt room in downtown Santa Barbara usually twice a week, and did this pretty much straight from March until December. We drove each other crazy by the end of that run, but the great advantage of that first year of frenzied rehearsal was the fact that we had not only got along well personally and musically right from the start, but had also become so used to the unique characteristics of each other's playing styles that we were easily able to go out and play a gig with relatively little practice. Most of our shows from then on were spaced further apart, but we could get it together pretty well in preparation for them because of how much we practiced together at the beginning. I recorded lots of these practices (in addition to most of the shows as well, obviously), and I've had fun in the past few days collecting what I think are some of the more unique and/or representative songs from our rehearsal tapes into two relatively concise volumes for posterity's sake. Some are messy, some are funny, and some I don't know what the fuck we were thinking, but I think it's all worth a listen, especially since there's so goddam much of it that got left out. So, lemme splain (or you can skip my blather and go right to the audio player):

The first two songs here, Wayfaring Stranger and My Second Shipwreck, were recorded very badly by me on two 4-tracks wired together, hence the mono and overloaded sound. I included them here because they date from the first recorded practices I made of Honey White, 3/8/02 and 3/14/02 respectively. Well, I'm guessing those songs go with those dates. I can't be sure, actually, because of the conflicting info I get from the different CDs they were on, but whatever- they're the beginning. I put Wayfaring Stranger at the front because it was the first song Bryn did solo that got lots of people interested (indeed, he and Brian and I once opened a Mojo Wire show back in 2000 with this cover). When Billy answered our want ad for a drummer, he loved it right away too, so off we went.

Shipwreck and the next tune, Windward Mark (this version from 5/20/02), were both Mermen-inspired surf instrumentals Bryn had recorded with ten other songs for his solo album of instrumentals, also from 2000, and also called My Second Shipwreck. Honey White needed tunes to pad our short sets, so we were more than happy to take a shot at both of these. This take of Windward was also actually used by a guy I used to work with named Keith Kie as a soundtrack for his "Hi, I'm traveling in New Zealand and you're not!" video email not long after we recorded it. The Lightning Rod is also from the May 20 tape, which was one of our first attempts at it, I think. We used it as a reference when recording our debut My Band Rocks CD later that summer.

For guys who disliked jam bands, we did a lot of jamming. Inevitably, songs emerged from those jams that we solidified and made into real compositions, and a perfect example of that was this early version (9/23/02) of a song that became Let Go, my favorite Bryn-written Honey White tune. The other track included from that date never got lyrics added, but it changed titles from "The Happy Stoner Song" to Polarity (because of the shifting moods). The version here is about a minute longer, I think, then the one we ended up recording two years later in the studio.

The next two songs on the list, You Let Me Fall and Water Into Wine, come from one of the burned-out practices (specifically 12/12/02) where we still played well, but it seemed pretty clear that something needed to change, so we decided after this to only practice when we needed to, such as for upcoming gigs. Water Into Wine was actually an old Mojo Wire song that we tried to learn to give the gig setlist some fresh tunes, but it never turned out as well as we'd hoped, so we bailed on it. We still hadn't really shaken the general funk by April '03, though (despite one great gig at UCSB) and still sounded sorta exhausted on the take of Fatal Flaws from 4/9/03 included here. I used to do this thing in this song where I'd sing lyrics from another more famous song in the open 12-bar; I'd tossed in lyrics from BRMC, U2, and Wilco during shows, and here on this take I guess I tried to pick everybody up by being funny and sang some lines from Strong Bad's immortal anthem about Trogdor.

Honey White was pretty much inactive for the latter half of 2003, what with Bryn jetting off to Europe for three months and Bill drumming and recording in Texas with the punkers of Futureman, but we did get together twice, and naturally I recorded it. Before that, though, Bryn, Brian, and I had a jam session on 8/15/03 with erstwhile Mojo Wire frontman Adam Hill, and the four-piece we made (with Bryn on drums as in Mojo days) bashed out some fun takes of the Mojo Wire songs Long Black Leather Boots and Margarita, with Adam here taking on vocals and guitar. The next Honey White practice, from 9/12/03, was the first we had at the Seville Street practice rooms in Isla Vista, where Billy also did double duty with Futureman. That room was small and could get suffocatingly hot, but we managed to squeeze in some good work there, and I've highlighted that first date with takes of Wayfaring Stranger (here with Bryn on keyboards) and Dead Man.

The last two songs I've got for Volume 1 are also from the Seville St. room. We were often unable to record vocals using the P.A. system there, and in the take of So Cold I've included here, it's hard to hear Bryn's vocals over the noise of the band, but this take is pure gold for his absolutely blistering guitar solo that charges in halfway through the song. It's really fantastic- one of Bryn's finest musical moments in my opinion. Finally, there's an early version of Bottlerocket from 1/24/04, quieter and surfier and actually without Brian (he was in Tokyo at the time).

So that's Volume 1. I'll be back in a few days with a collection of our more recent practices (i.e. 2004-2007) in a few days. As always, thanks for listening.

Audio:

2:34 AM 
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Monday, June 11, 2007 
I'm inagurating a new way of going about this sort of thing (which will be retroactive, too): instead of simply listing the tracklisting and making it exclusive to MySpace, why not let everyone hear it? Well, duh. Here we go, then...

Honey White concert from the vaults: Giovanni's '04
So in light of the recent enforced hiatus that Honey White will have to endure, for this week's concert from the vaults (yes, it's baaaack) I thought I'd be optimistic and post our first concert of 2004, the last time that we came back after a significant hiatus (which had been the latter half of 2003). I think instead of commentary, I'll just re-post what I said of the show at the time:

"Hang on- did I say the show would go from "9:30-11pm"? Ah- well, turns out that translates as "whenever the Lakers/Kings game is over" until "closing". Brian said post-show that this was the weirdest gig we've ever played and I think I have to agree with him. Having the NBA as an opening act was only the beginning. "Mercy Rule" was a good, high-energy, LOUD thing to start the set with, and I think "Oblivion" went well too. We debuted 4 new songs tonight: "Sean Goes To Africa", "Bottlerocket", "Let Go", and "Keep Moving", and for the most part they went over great. Things were kind of claustrophobic and sometimes there were some nasty vibes, but surly basketball dudes were matched pound for pound by our legions of fans, and the place was quite packed. Thanks so much to everyone who came to see us. Conversely, a big middle finger goes to the drunk guy who kept yelling at us to play Zeppelin. Hey man, this note's for you."

Here's the audio:


Mojo Wire Archive:The Mojo Wire material I've got this time is sort of Barrel-Scraping, Part 2. The rare stuff here is from the looooong stretch between the April '99 release of "Seaside Hamlet Skids" and when the band fell apart at the end of 2001. Again, proceed with caution, or else with a patient sense of humor.


Random Bedrock Recordings, 1999
The last gasp of the Mojo Wire at the Bedrock was two rehearsals in June '99, with one recorded as the Adam/Bryn/Keir trio, one recorded as the full lineup with Joe. "The Worst Way" comes from the trio, and "Joe's 2nd" (I don't think he ever gave it a name) came from the full lineup session ("Joe's 1st" being the tune that ended up as "You're On Your Own"). "Bleak" was Bryn's first stab at the song which would become Honey White's version of "So Cold", but this version is notable as Joe's first appearance on a Mojo Wire recording, with his guitar solo. "Jetski" is the abomination of me playing guitar and bass, and Bryn playing drums, and its boring G-C chord changes never went anywhere special. "Breathe" is a song of Adam's that he recorded at the same time as "Blue Lantern Cove", "Happy Birthday", and "Anywhere But Here", the first two of which ended up on the "You're On Your Own" album.

Random Penthouse Recordings, 1999-2000
Bryn and I did lots of work at the Penthouse, where we all lived as next-door neighbors (Bryn and I in #24, Adam and Joe in #25) after leaving the Bedrock building. "Happy Birthday Part 2" is actually a tune from the last Bedrock gasp, but Adam's, erm, "vocals" are from later that year on Bryn's birthday, when we'd all moved to the Penthouse. "Water Into Wine", "You're On Your Own", and "Heart On A Platter" are all demos of the songs that ended up on the final Mojo Wire album, but here it's only Bryn and I playing on them. The versions here of "Shivering Sand", "Margaritaville", and "Margarita" are from the same early 2000 practice that the B side "Broken Nail Blues" comes from, played by the Adam/Bryn/Keir trio. The last two songs are Bryn's first demos of "Sandman" and "You Let Me Fall" which saw belated release on the first Honey White disc, "My Band Rocks".

Random "House of the Lord" Recordings, 2000-2001
I spent most of the summer of 2000 taking over Bryn's room for recording demos, at the house where he lived on Sabado with Adam, Joe, Brian, Sean, and Owen. Sean named this place, for some unknown reason, "The House Of The Lord", and it was known as such forever after. "The Peak Of My Career" is a demo of mine that was built off yet another instrumental track from back in June '99 at the Bedrock (and was also used in a track called "Saturation" for the Low Tide side project). The live takes of "How Far Away" and "Hallelujah" are from the Mojo comeback gig of December 2000, and are thus appropriately messy. "Mercy Rule" and "Bleak" are from a late 2001 session at Earl's Table Salt room with only Joe, Bryn and I. No idea how they would have ended up as Mojo Wire songs, but of course "Mercy Rule" went on to be a big Honey White song. The take here of "Sunset Down" was a solo take of mine, begun in 2001 when Bryn and I were plowing through a remake project, and I finished it a year later, right before Honey White began.

...and the audio:



So that's it for the Mojo Wire barrel-scraping stuff. That's all for now. Thanks again for listening...

-Keir
1:37 AM 
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Wednesday, May 30, 2007 
Yeah, did that get your attention? Bryn sure looks surprised. Well...I lied. Mostly. Fear not, your favorite epic garage rockers are not "breaking up" at all. However, Brian (who will now be known as The Genius) did have the gall to go get himself accepted to a Neuroscience PhD program at Georgetown in Washington DC, and since it will last about 5 years, that puts the kibosh on any Honey White activity in the near future as far as live shows and even rehearsals. Not like we've exactly been out there tearing the world in half, of course (1 show in the past year? Yikes), but hey, do you want us to be sane, or to be big fat mega rich egomaniacal rock star assholes?

I thought so. Therefore, I will still continue to post all sorts of rare mp3 from the long Mojo Wire & Honey White history of rockitude (wow, that's weird- both the Mojos and HW lasted about 5 "active" years- 1996-2001 and 2002-2007) and may further test everyone's patience with other sorts of audiovitualtextual observations on things rock. Should any of us take part in any extra-curricular activities, you will hear about them here as well.

So anyway, Brian insisted that we all get together to make glorious noise for not one, but two last times this past holiday weekend, and even though I was half-dead from moving into my new house, I joined up with the guys in Santa Barbara, first at Earl's Table Salt shop on Saturday, and then at Billy's parents' art gallery on Milpas. Owen came along for the ride too, and took some photos that you may peruse below. Note how hairy our frontmanly singer has become since he's run away to sea. Yaar matey.


..







I guess this is the part where I should thank everyone for all your support over the years, so Thanks Everyone. You've helped made us the maimed-by-music men we are today, so I hope you're proud of yourselves. Stay tuned- things might still be interesting for some time. How, you say? Well, we rehearsed at least four unrecorded (in the studio, that is) songs this weekend. Yep, you've been warned.
6:12 AM 
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Sunday, May 06, 2007 

Well, for a variety of brain-dulling, totally irrelevant reasons, I'm kind of exhausted, so this entry's gonna be a bit short- let me get right to the music. Honey White's MySpace page is showcasing our Nicholby's show in Ventura on April 20, 2005. This was a few days before our How Far Is The Fall album was released. The recording is straight from the soundboard, so it's mixed for the venue and not necessarily for optimal listening pleasure (i.e. big bass and kick drum, small guitars), but this show was so much fun for us to do that it's worth another public airing. Read more about it here. Basically this was one of the rare instances that I relaxed onstage- we were kind of on bonus time for this show, and the whole band played loose and without stress, though not without mistakes (but we ignored them). I really, really enjoyed playing this one and for me it is one of the best experiences I've ever had in a band onstage.

Nicholby's '05 Setlist:
01 Nightfall
02 Let Go
03 Island Fever
04 Blacking Out
05 Bottlerocket
06 Sean Goes To Africa
07 Keep Moving
08 The Lightning Rod
09 Mercy Rule
10 Famous Last Words
11 Wayfaring Stranger

For the Mojo Wire page, this week we have 2001's mixed bag swansong You're On Your Own, the final Mojo Wire album. This particular disc couldn't decide between being a showcase for new material, live stuff, or a space for re-recorded tunes to sound better. The fresh songs underwent constant tinkering, the retreads finally saw the band, in recording terms, enter the year 1992 with digital multitracking, and the live stuff is probably an accurate representation of the overall messy chaos of Mojo Wire shows. The sum end result is more like an out-takes compilation. I wrote more about this album here. Some notes on the bonus tracks: "Helium Pussywillow" is a random jam topped by Bryn's best South Park impression, "Broken Nail Blues" is yet another in Adam's long string of improvised 12-bar turns of genius, "Too Much To Think" is an acoustic Adam-ballad circa 2000 that unfortunately never saw the light of day, "You're On Your Own" is an unfinished studio take of the title track, with Joe's acoustic guitar in there for a change, and "My Second Shipwreck" is a partial recording (only 2/3 of the 7-minute instrumental was actually finished) of one of Bryn's more epic surf songs that eventually got wider exposure in Honey White's shows.


Tracklist:
01 How Far Away (2001)
02 One Last Hallelujah
03 Heart On A Platter
04 The Shivering Sand (2001)
05 You're On Your Own (Live)
06 Water Into Wine
07 Fatal Flaws (Live)
08 Happy Birthday
09 The Peak Of My Career
10 Blue Lantern Cove
11 Stuck On Chapter Nine

Bonus Tracks:
12 Helium Pussywillow
13 Broken Nail Blues
14 Too Much To Think
15 You're On Your Own (Acoustic)
16 My Second Shipwreck (Partial)

This week's video is Honey White (again on Musical Cafe TV, April '03) doing the Mojo Wire song "Heart On A Platter", which first appeared on the On Your Own album. Next time I'll also have the 2nd installment in the Mojo Wire barrel-scraping series of super-rare stuff. Thanks again for listening... and a happy cinco de Mayo birthday to Billy!

-Keir
5:00 AM 
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Monday, April 30, 2007 

UCSB's fetid student ghetto once again takes center stage on Honey White's MySpace page, with our I.V. Live show in Embarcadero Hall from back in January 2005. This show saw us shift, pretty much permanently, into promoting our brand-new How Far Is The Fall album, which we'd just finished mixing in San Francisco. In fact, two of the songs in this set, "Island Fever" and "Blacking Out" got their live debuts at this gig, which isn't bad considering we only had 2 hours of practice before showtime. Other than that I don't think we'd rehearsed at all since the previous November, so getting a great performance like this under the circumstances was slightly miraculous. The venue itself, as many of you no doubt know, was the site of the Isla Vista Brewing Company (from the good old days when I was in school) and before that, the Anaconda (another great place to see bands in the '80s). Most notoriously, of course, it is the site of the old Bank of America that was burned down in 1970 by anti-war protesters. Anyway, the recording is top notch- my favorite of all Honey White live recordings- it's crisp, clear, and gives a great sense of the space of the hall. The set was sort of concave- going from uptempo stuff to the slower, longer songs for a bit before getting faster again at the end. We played these songs:

I.V. Live '05 Setlist:
01 Mercy Rule
02 Island Fever
03 Sweet Oblivion
04 Let Go
05 Blacking Out
06 Keep Moving
07 Famous Last Words
08 Bottlerocket
09 Sean Goes To Africa
10 (Bonus track!) Nightfall- soundcheck version minus Bryn's vocals

This round's material for the Mojo Wire's MySpace page is the extended version of the third Mojo album: Seaside Hamlet Skids from 1999. We sort of explored escapism on this disc, and it's kind of become my favorite Mojo Wire recording for that reason (which I wrote about more here). The recording itself is pretty poor- the 4-track tapes were mastered in mono, so it still sounds like we're playing in 1962, but I think on this CD we all sort of came into our own as songwriters: Adam had two great pop songs in "Key West Tapwater" and "Baja Blues", Bryn kept pace with "I Fly Free" and "So Cold", and so did I with "The Shivering Sand". What's more, some of those songs and a few more, like "How Far Away" and "Pisces Lullabye" (after some re-writes for both) went on to longer life, first in the crunchier Mojo Wire of 2000/2001, and then in Honey White's setlists during 2002-03, where they reached their streamlined peak. Still, the prototypical versions here on Seaside, as well as all the other songs here, are really special for another reason- we were able to (mostly) shift away from the 12-bar blues and get into some major reverby surf (and at the end of the album, surf-noir). Kevin Nerison's drums helped power four tracks, including a definitive version of "Wipeout" that still sounds ready to punch you in the face.

Sadly, much of the extra stuff we recorded from that period (fall '98 to summer '99) is lost, so there isn't much for me to work with here, and I decided to include music that fits the vibe of the album in one way or another. "Pipeline" is actually from the initial Seaside sessions, and Bryn snagged it later to put on his own all-instrumental album of low-fi surf music. "Dive" is another echo-bass song from me, from about the same time, though it didn't see release until July '99, when Bryn and I put out a mini-album of the same name under our one-off side project Low Tide. "Drunken Asshole Bitch Blues" is Adam's hilariously crazed reaction to getting harassed by the cops in August '98, and "Anywhere But Here" is a breezy, acoustic island tune he recorded almost a year later, right as we moved from the Bedrock on Sabado to the Penthouse on Abrego.

Tracklist:
01 Key West Tapwater
02 How Far Away
03 I Fly Free
04 Rocked By The Magnum
05 Baja Blues
06 Run Back To Me
07 Wipeout
08 The Ratlands
09 The Shivering Sand
10 So Cold
11 Pisces Lullabye
12 Sunset Down

Bonus Tracks:
13 Pipeline
14 Dive
15 Drunken Asshole Bitch Blues
16 Anywhere But Here

This week's video is Honey White's take on the Seaside tune "Shivering Sand", from the appearance on local TV's "Musical Cafe" program. That's all for now- see you next week, and thanks again for listening.

-Keir
5:59 AM 
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Saturday, April 21, 2007 
This week's Honey White concert on our MySpace page is actually the most recent show we played- at the Ocean Institute in the OC town of Dana Point for Bryn's work party in August 2006. Among other things, it includes my favorite take of "Lightning Rod" when we do the quiet version, as well as a speedy "Island Fever" and a nice and sloppy "Unprofessional" (the way it's supposed to be done!). There was also a decent take of "Sweet Oblivion", naturally punctuated by the dulcet tones of Screamin' Steve Foster in the audience. Bryn debuted a new song, "Green Hills", and even closed things off with a short sea chantey. It was sort of a homecoming show for Bryn and I, since we grew up in Dana Point, but not officially, really, because of the whole private-party thing. Anyway, a nice low-key, stressless gig, and we got a pretty good recording out of it, too.

Ocean Institute '06 Setlist:
01 Blacking Out
02 Nightfall
03 The Lightning Rod
04 Island Fever
05 Mercy Rule
06 Let Go
07 Sweet Oblivion
08 Unprofessional
09 Keep Moving
10 Green Hills
11 Captain, Wake Up

Now, for the real meat: the Mojo Wire MySpace page stuff- what I like to call Barrel-Scraping, Part 1. This week I've got some unique mp3- random stuff from the 1996-98 period when we were just starting out. I'll jump back to the extended albums next week with Seaside Hamlet Skids from '98, but until then, here's the really, really old stuff. Proceed with caution, or else with a patient sense of humor- remember that this is how it all began, deep behind the Orange Curtain, and then with the exodus to Isla Vista for the Year of Decadence, 1997/98.

The Clap in Mono, 1996
01 Wipeout
02 Your Mama's A Ho
03 Rocket Fuel Malt Liquor (Kinky Version)
04 FM Blues
05 12:15 Blues

These are taken from some of the earliest-ever recordings we did, back when The Mojo Wire was called The Clap. I believe it was at 2 or 3 separate practices at Kevin's parents' living room in summer '96. Adam had this one Radio Shack microphone and a tape recorder- I can't remember what kind- and all the amplifiers were these teeny itty bitty 15-watt toys. We had to put the mic close to Kevin's drum kit and then cluster the amps around it to get something even close to a balanced "mix". Also, since it was mono, and amateurly recorded mono at that, we actually sound like we were doing this session in like 1961 or so, given the 12-bar blues and surf pieces we staggered through.

Drumless & Drum Machine Demos, 1997
06 Long Black Leather Boots
07 Whitecap
08 FM Blues
09 Can't Keep Warm
10 Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out (Drumless)
11 12:15 Blues (Drumless)
12 Your Mama's A Ho (Drumless)
13 Wishing Well Blues
14 El Nido Thunder
15 Margarita (Instrumental Version)

After we got ahold of the Tascam 4-track, we immediately used it to make multitrack demos in conjunction with Bryn's cheesy drum machine from his keyboard sound effects. Since Bryn had it at home with him for most of his senior year of high school, this is mostly his work, but the resf of us obviously did get together to do overdubs before fleeing to Isla Vista. It's only slightly better than the mono recordings, but there's some stuff in here that's still pretty cool to hear, like Adam's guitar on "Can't Keep Warm" or Bryn's blistering take on "El Nido Thunder" or the psychedelic-country early version of Adam's "Margarita".

Random Bedrock Recordings, 1998
16 Margaritaville (Demo)
17 Spitcan (Instrumental Version)
18 Run From Me (Instrumental Version)
19 Kid Icarus (Instrumental Version)
20 Under The Sun (Instrumental Version)

"Margaritaville" is simply the first, live stab we took at that song (about Feb '98) before overdubs, etc made it the version heard on the Rocket Fuel album. The other four are live practice versions from later in April with only me, Bryn, and Brandon playing on them. Sort of an idea of how we sounded live, but of course it's not really because these versions lack Adam's frontmanly presence. Brandon caught these takes on his computer's mic as we blasted them out in his apartment at the Bedrock, which was actually next door to our apartment at the Bedrock, and Brandon's later became Brian and Sean's apartment at the Bedrock the very next year.

That's all for now. Thanks again for listening...

-Keir
8:41 AM 
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Sunday, April 15, 2007 
For this round of musical archaeology on Honey White's MySpace page, you can listen to our Wildcat Lounge show from April 30, 2003. This was the first time any band I'd been in got to play a downtown Santa Barbara venue, so while a little tense at times it's still an energetic set of songs. It was a memorable occasion for many reasons large and small: juiced by a great opening band called the Invisible 3, we rocked harder than ever on "Unprofessional", "Shivering Sand" and "So Cold" (I was standing next to a 600-watt additional bass amp that probably gloriously and permanently damaged my eardrums), enjoyed the attention of the Honey White groupies (pictured), and played the epic "Sweet Oblivion" for the first time. The recording itself is a combination of my Roland digital 8-track and the live feed from the soundboard, so it's not really in stereo and not really in mono. Sub-stereo, I guess, would be the word for it. Anyway, the guitars are mixed in crazy loud, so Bryn and Brian outdo themselves, and Billy once again proves he is the reason "Lightning Rod" can close a show with earth-shaking power. I know a good many of you were there, cause it was a big deal for us, and it helped us get asked back again in '04, so thanks again.

Wildcat '03 setlist:
01 Unprofessional
02 Heart On A Platter
03 Mercy Rule
04 Sweet Oblivion
05 Polarity
06 The Shivering Sand
07 So Cold
08 Pisces Lullabye
09 You Let Me Fall
10 Distorchestra
11 Fatal Flaws
12 Lover, You Should've Come Over
13 The Lightning Rod

As for the Mojo Wire's MySpace page, I put up the sophomore Mojo album, Rocket Fuel Malt Liquor (originally released April 8, 1998). Rocket Fuel, in a nutshell, was a little rushed and undercooked. It was long on atmospheric feel and short on actual finished songs. What was finished was good, but that wasn't enough to carry a whole album, which none of us really realized at the time. We were still basically amateurs as far as recording skill and general "how to be in a band" knowledge, and unfortunately this disc suffered a bit for that. Read more about this album here. Anyway, I added a few extra tracks, just like with the last album: two covers and two originals. The covers, "Margaritaville" and "Wonderful Tonight", always received a grittier Mojo Wire treatment at live shows, but they didn't translate well when we recorded them, so these two takes ended up having a short life on the initial pressings of Rocket Fuel before they were dropped. "This Is The Chorus" is another dirty/silly song that Adam and Bryn came up with while I was stuck watching "The English Patient" with three girls, and "Monsoon" is just me doing another of my many echo-bass freakouts (which doesn't necessarily mean it's a "song"). That's it for now- next time I'll offer up lots of other random stuff we did in the '96-'98 period worth airing in a bonanza of rarities.

Tracklist:
01 Rocket Fuel Malt Liquor
02 Run From Me
03 Trash And Trouble
04 Margarita
05 Jackson Hammer's Theme
06 Evil Train
07 Kid Icarus
08 Under The Sun
09 Blackout Baby
10 Drown The Heart
11 Wound Down
12 The Worst Way

Bonus Tracks:
13 Margaritaville
14 Wonderful Tonight
15 This Is The Chorus
16 Monsoon

Also on display for Honey White is a video clip from our 2nd Wildcat appearance in 2004, playing "Sweet Oblivion". If you've missed any of these archive-trawling posts, and want to see them all, I'll soon have an archive posted somewhere easy to find on mybandrocks.com. Oh, and as you might have noticed, we now have a Snocap account that lets you buy mp3 from both our studio CDs right there on the MySpace page. Tell all your friends and spread the Honey White-itude far and wide. Thanks again for listening, everybody.

-Keir
4:33 AM 
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