Here's the first real band that I was ever a part of. The year was 1995. At the time of our formation, I had a broken wrist. My right arm was in a cast that encased my thumb, and ran half way up my bicep. The only thing exposed was my four fingers on that hand. I could barely even play!

Bill's girlfriend at the time, Chrissy, worked at the Munster Animal Hospital, along with her friend Lisa. Lisa was mentioning one day that she wanted to form a band. Her friend Laura was going to sing, and she would play bass. Chrissy immediatly told Lisa about her boyfriend Bill, who was a drummer.

She got to talking to Bill, and when he found out that she was still short a guitar player, he mentioned me. She came buy to listen to Bill, and see what he could do. She was impressed, and rightly so. Bill's a pretty damned good drummer. Then she turned to me and asked me to play guitar.

MY HAND IS IN A CAST! I can't play for shit right now! "That's allright, just give it a try. Do something." So I did. I tried my best to fingerpick without the use of my thumb. You never really know how important an opposable thumb is, until you're left without the use of one!

I tried my best not to sound like shit, but much to my dismay, I failed.... or so I had thought. What apparently sounded like the wrath of a dead cow falling upon 6 guitar strings to me, sounded great to her (factoring in my disability, of course). She was pumped to see what I could do once the cast was off. Quite frankly, so was I!

And so began the saga of "Mire in the Murkey Water". We lost our vocalist, Laura, before we ever had our first practice. That's a shame... She was HOT! Oh well... you win some, you loose some. Despite the lack of a vocalist, we still met regularly, and just made music. We'd work on cover tunes that we all knew. Of course, Bill and I had been jamming for years, so it was more like what we knew, verses what Lisa knew - or could figure out.

In no time flat, we found out that we had this knack for pulling really cool songs out of our collective asses. It would usually go a little something like this: Lisa would start out with a bass line, Bill would throw a beat to it, I'd start fumbling through some guitar licks over top of it, and voila! What we just made up in a matter of minutes was damn near what we would lay down as a final recording! We just seemed to hit this groove where everything fell into place.

In early 1996, we made a 3 song recording with the help of Lisa's friend Matt. It was done in my Mother's garage in one day. Lisa put down the vocals later that evening (Bill and I didn't even know that lyrics existed for any of these songs!) After hearing the final product, despite the lack of good microphones, good recording equipment, and a room with good accoustics, it sounded like gold to us!

We kept writing new material, and later that same year, we decided to try our hand at recording again. This time we went all out. My friend Ben, whom I had met in Lafayette while attempting to go to college, had a friend named Rudy who owned a bunch of recording equipment. Ben borrowed an Alesis digital 8 track recorder, a 16 channel mixer, and a couple of microphones from Rudy.

Ben brought all the eqiupment out on Friday night, and we set up in our friend Jimmy Morgen's basement. By the time we got everything set up, and had done our sound checks, it was kinda late. We layed down the music for the first 2 tracks, Watchdog and Tequila Mockingbird, and decided to pick it back up again in the morning.

Saturday morning rolls around... we're all psyched! We've got all day to finish recording the music, and all of Sunday to put down vocals and polish it up! Unfortunately, this was not the case. We called Jimmy while enroute to his house. We then got the news... we were being kicked out by his dad! Apparently, we were a little to loud for his tastes the night before.

This sucks! Now we have to tear everything down, pack it up, and then find somewhere else to go! Luckily, Bill's parents were out of town on vacation, so we decided to relocate there. Still, we lost half a day's time in the process. It was already well into the afternoon before we had everything set up again, and were ready to start recording agian. This time, we were in a much better sounding environment, as the final recordings certianly show. We set up in their living room, and hung blankets from the drop ceiling. The result was a great sounding recording studio!

We layed down a few more tunes that night, until it was to late to make noise. (Believe it or not, we were considerate of the neighbors!) Back at it again on Sunday, we layed down the rest of the music, put vocals to all the songs, and then started the painfully long mixdown process. Long after everyone else had gone to bed, Ben and I finished the mixdown to cassette tape. It was about 1:30am Monday morning. If you'd care to listen to what we had accomplished, the entire album is available for download in MP3 format here.

Bill and I weren't old enough to play the bars yet, and we were still looking for a vocalist or a bassist so that we could perform our work live. We worked on some new stuff, and we wanted to re-record some of the old stuff in the meantime. Rudy eventually acquired another 8 track and a larger mixer. We forked out some cash, rented the equipment from him, and started working on a new recording. This one was sounding great! We were all set to finish it up, and lay down the vocals. We had made arrangements to do the vocals in Rudy's apartment down in Indianapolis. Lisa was supposed to meet out out there. She gave us a number to reach her at, but we were never able to reach her.

We didn't hear from Lisa until about a month later. Our meetings after that were sparse, until one day, when I tried to call her, and I heard the recorded message saying that the number had been disconnected! Lisa had always talked about moving to Chicago, but I would have expected at least a warning or something! We didn't hear from Lisa until a year or two later, when Bill ran into her at Target in Highland. She had, indeed, moved to Chicago, but that's about all we know. We haven't heard from her since.

The band broke up after Lisa dissapeared. Bill and I continued to jam together for a while, but never really did anything serious with it.

Mire was:
Lisa Ruth - Bass and Vocals (not at the same time, mind you)
Dave Isom - Guitar
Bill Huges - Precussion