'96 was my freshman year in high school, and that was when I met Jesse. Picture a scrawny little guy with long frizzy red hair past his shoulders, he wore nothing but black clothing and I distinctly remember this necklace he wore, it was a piece of string with a fork hanging from it weird! Jesse and I quickly became friends and we started jamming together in my back yard. In those early days we used to both plug (our guitars) into this old beaten up 3-channel keyboard amp Jesse had. Between the distortion I cranked out of my Digitech RP-5, and his Boss Metal Zone it was possibly the most awful sound you have ever heard. The third channel on the amp was reserved for the microphone we used. So we would sit in my backyard and play Bush or Nirvana songs and take turns singing for hours or until someone called the cops, which is usually what happened. It was fun though, and that's when we first decided we wanted to start a band together.

Time went by and so did several of our haphazard attempts at a band until the Methane Gerbils (I'm embarrassed to use that name now so I'll just say MG for the purposes of the story). MG consisted of me playing guitar and singing, Jesse playing guitar as well, Donny playing bass (although Donny didn't play the bass), and kid name Mat Jimmerson on drums. We practiced in Mat's garage, wrote a few songs, and even had stickers that we made ourselves (if you've got one of those burn it please). Although we talked about being a band a hell of a lot more than actually 'being a band' we had fun while it lasted. So while MG was on the decline, Jesse, Donny, and myself all knew we still wanted to be in a band. That's when we decided to ask Auggie to play drums for us. His band Spunkie Morton had just broken, despite achieving a pretty good level of popularity locally. Auggie said yes, and in November of 1999 we had our first real practice in Auggie's garage. Standstill is born. MORE >>>