Well, this update’s been a long time coming. You’d be forgiven for assuming that we just decided to call it quits without telling anyone – after all, it’s been well over a year since we played our last show!
The truth is, after our last gig in September 2012, we all got busy in various projects: Dan was working up in Dublin (which meant mid-week jamming was out for him); Eoin started another year of college, where it wasn’t long before the project deadlines were coming thick and fast (making him also unavailable most of the time); and Dave and I both ended up having lots of overtime to do at our jobs, as well as being busy raising our families. Basically, life happened 😛
And so, over 3 months went by before we had another jam (we were all around over the Christmas holidays, so we took the opportunity to meet up and make some noise). Then another 3 months, and another…
Between January and August we managed a total of 2 jams – 4 hours altogether. We were pretty happy that everyone remembered how to play all the old songs (although I’m starting to forget a lot of the lyrics), but we weren’t getting much time to work on any new material (I had recorded a few demos for us to start moulding into new songs – they’re on our soundcloud page if you fancy a listen). My biggest fear at this point was that the months of inactivity would cause apathy to take root leading to our eventual dissolution.
Then, at the end of August, the worst happened: Eoin came to me to say that since he was about to start his final year in college, he didn’t feel that he would be able to devote enough time to the band to keep us going. He also plans to get out and see the world a bit once college is over so he suggested we find another drummer (he in fact started putting out feelers himself to see if there were any drummers available to take over his position). This was pretty tough for me to take for a while, since when we started this band it was just the two of us: in fact we’ve been playing music together since 1997. But I always felt this band was about being friends first and bandmates second, so I didn’t feel right demanding that he put his life plans on hold just to stay and so we started pondering the question of who to ask to play drums for us.
Actually, strike that: first we had to decide whether we should even keep going – a decision that didn’t really take that long to make, thankfully…
So I was mulling over the various drummers that I know about in Cork when I suddenly remembered that before playing bass with Slugbait, Eoin Costello used to play drums in Fat Actress (back when they were known as Ephialtes). I figured a) he plays drums, b) he’s sound and c) he actually likes our music! I asked the lads what they thought and we all agreed he’d be an asset, so I texted him to see if he’d be interested in having a jam with us. Unfortunately he was in the Sates at the time, so we would have to wait a while to see how things would pan out (and just to show his integrity: before he agreed to jam with us, he wanted to know what the story with Eoin was and to make sure everything was above board).
This all happened several weeks ago. Since then, I’ve had the chance to jam a few times with Costello and he’s already learned several songs. Next week we should be able to arrange a full band jam or two and get ready to start playing shows and writing new songs again!
This beast is stirring; it’s time to rise…
0
STANTON'S GRAVE 