What's Up?

We found each other again because I was trying to write a book.

That sounds more organized than it actually was. I had been looking for a subject for months, and a stack of yellow legal pads was the proof. I had started one novel about a lawyer, another about a family fighting over an estate, and a third about a teacher at a private school. I needed inspiration that came from something other than my own life.

I was teaching then, as I still am, and most days I'm happy with things. I teach literature, grade papers, and talk too much about music for a literature class. Every day, I try to make seventeen-year-olds believe that books were written by actual people instead of marble busts or artificial intelligence. I have a good office, a good marriage, a clean house, and I'm a pretty fine cook. The only thing giving me trouble was my next book.

One afternoon I found an old cassette in a box. It had a faded label with Andrew's writing on it, a date in 1987, and "Jimmy's" written on it. I popped it into my boom box and pushed play. It was us, back in the day. And we sounded... young.

Rick counted off pretty fast, as usual. Andrew told him (on an open mic) to calm down before we were even eight bars in. Dave’s amp was turned up nicely, and Eli popped in with a Casio that sounded like he got straight from a Toys R Us. It sounded really great. Wacky and strange, but great. Then my younger voice came in, higher than I remembered and trying very hard to sound excited.

I sat there and listened to the whole thing, twice. What struck me first was how cheerful we sounded. Even when we were singing about death, we sounded happy. Sure, Rick wanted everything faster and Andrew wanted everything steadier, but what kept coming out of the speakers was pure joy.

Jimmy's was almost empty that night, so we were really loose, like a rehearsal. That meant a lot of false starts, mistakes, interruptions, jokes, and everybody talking over everybody else. But it was fun. About halfway through the first listen, that entire night came flooding back to me. I remembered so much about that night - even the bartenders were into the vibe, dancing and throwing around as they wiped the tables and served the few patrons who stuck around.

That was great to hear, and to remember.

I started writing down the scenes I remembered from those years. I wrote about Kenner Bowl, where Rick first decided drums were the right instrument for a man with his ... um, let's say "gifts." I wrote about Andrew’s family restaurant, where he could carry four plates, settle a bill, and remember every customer’s name before he was old enough to vote. I wrote about Eli sitting on Decatur Street with a tape recorder, two books, and an expression that made tourists wonder whether he had just insulted them.

And I wrote about all of us as a group of friends - that night, driving to Biloxi at two in the morning because somebody said they wanted to see the beach. Rick drove, and of course he never looked at the gas meter so we ran dry near Slidell. Dave walked into a Shell with a few dollars, bought a scratch-off ticket, and came back with six hundred dollars. Andrew observed that Dave had amazing luck, and even more so when he really needed it.

Andrew's voice kept ringing in my head. The more I wrote, the more I wanted to hear him, see how he's been doing. It had been, what, over twenty years since I'd seen him at the restaurant? I still had his number in my contact list, and I'd scroll past it sometimes and think that I should call. But I never did.

I had no idea whether the number still worked, so I sent a simple text. “Hey, it’s Thom. Don’t know if this is still your number. I just wanted to check in. How are you?”

He wrote back three days later. “Took you long enough.” I knew enough about Andrew to know he wasn't really peeved. He was welcoming me into a conversation. So I called him that night, and within a few minutes we were talking the way we used to talk after rehearsal, when everybody was tired and nobody wanted to go home yet. Andrew told me about his wife, his kids, and the restaurant. I told him about teaching, the books, and the cassette I had found.

He remembered the rehearsal as well as I did. He even remembered every song, which didn't really surprise me. Andrew always remembered things and then would offer up observations about them when you weren't expecting it. Wisdom or just a patient memory? Probably a little of both.

Andrew said Dave would probably still have some of our old equipment and possibly the original recording. That turned out to be nearly true. Dave answered the phone when I called him the next week. He was wiring up an amplifier (it wasn't broken, but that never really mattered to Dave). When I mentioned the old songs, he asked whether I still had my Martin and the case with all the stickers and pins - I don't. I asked whether he still had the Gibson - of course he did.

Rick was harder to find because Rick had made a career out of being hard to find. Andrew eventually tracked him down in Alaska. When Rick answered, Andrew told him I was writing about the band. Rick said, “Who died?”

Eli was the hardest to find, but he always was. Dave had an old email address (bounced), I tried a few internet searches, and we came up empty. Rick claimed he could find him through “drummer channels,” which none of us really understood. I even looked through the obits. Eventually, Andrew found somebody who knew somebody in Portland, and then Eli appeared by email as if he had been on CC the whole time. I told him we might all get together sometime. He asked, “Do we still get to be weird?”

Through all this, I realized I was no longer just writing a book. Maybe now we have jobs, families, mortgages, schedules, and reading glasses. But those songs have our youth in them, and now there's something even more that still binds us together. We're a group of old(er) friends who are still funny, still generous, still recognizable (Rick has suspiciously shaven his head - has he lost that incredible hair?), and still interested in the same odd little hobby we had started when we were young(er).

So that's what this is. We hope you feel as good as we do today. We’ve started playing them again. A few of them, anyway. Turns out they still know their way home.

Who We Were (And Still Are)

Our Story

Thom Duceaux — vocals, rhythm guitar, lyricist

I grew up in Metairie, out by the lake, around Causeway and Severn. Fat City was still trying to convince everyone it was glamorous, Lakeside Mall was where civilization happened, and my mother was personally keeping several department stores in business. She loved shopping. Not necessarily what she bought—she was especially fond of the boxes. Our garage looked like we'd been preparing for a cross-country move since about 1978.

One afternoon she wandered into Werlein's and came home with two questionable financial decisions: a guitar for me and a piano for herself. The guitar stuck. The piano... didn't. A few months later there was a perfectly respectable Steinway sitting in the gym of the Boys & Girls Club, wondering where everything had gone wrong.

School came pretty easily. My dad was an attorney and annoyingly smart, so I suspect I inherited enough of that to stay out of trouble. I spent more time figuring out R.E.M. guitar parts than studying anyway. I listened to WTUL—"The Mighty Tool"—obsessively. If there was a jangly guitar, an earnest singer, or a record only nineteen people owned, then they were probably playing it. It felt like someone had built a radio station specifically for me.

I went to Tulane because it was the sensible thing to do. Pre-med kept my father happy. English Lit kept me happy. Somehow both departments thought I belonged there and I wasn't about to correct them. I could've spent a lot more time worrying about nicer cars and nicer clothes. Looking back, I don't remember any of the people who cared about those things.

I do remember the guys from Kenner, Mid-City, and Metairie. We kept finding reasons to get together—from Mardi Gras to dollar night at Joy's Panorama Movie Theater. Somewhere in there we also became a band and gathered a following of almost seven people.

The band ended when we graduated. I drifted longer than I care to admit - my dad had left enough that I didn't have to make any urgent life choices, which turns out to be a terrible environment for personal growth. Eventually I realized that drifting doesn't get you to a destination. I wandered into teaching, picked the guitar back up, and somehow ended up chairing the English department at a local private school. Every year I'd sneak songs into the curriculum alongside Shakespeare, Faulkner, and Dickinson. Sometimes a three-minute song explains a novel better than any lecture could.

The nicest surprise is that people still remember us. I don't know exactly why. We certainly weren't the biggest band in town, and we weren't the best. Maybe we just looked like we were having a good time.

Pretty good for a kid whose mother mostly wanted the box the guitar came in.

Andrew DiMarta — Bass, composer

Thom told me everybody was writing one of these. I asked how long it was supposed to be. He said, "However long it takes." I asked him what I should say. "Whatever you want." Typical Thom. Grandly cryptic, like there's some deep meaning in there. And absolutely no help at all.

I grew up in Mid-City, and my family had a restaurant, so I spent a lot of my childhood either carrying something, washing something, or trying not to break something. I started bussing tables when I was fourteen. I thought I was ready. My dad wholeheartedly agreed.

People ask if it was hard growing up in a restaurant. I honestly couldn't tell you. That's just the way it was. We'd eat with the staff after everybody else, close up and go home. I always liked walking through the dining room. You'd see birthday cakes, first dates, anniversaries, people arguing over the check, grandparents introducing babies to waitresses who'd known their parents twenty years earlier.

I picked up the bass mostly because everybody else wanted to play guitar, and it turned out I liked it. Bass players don't get a lot of attention, which was fine with me. I liked hearing everything fit together.

I met Thom through friends when we were in college. We started writing songs together before we ever thought much about being in a band. I'd come over talking about somebody I'd met at the restaurant. Maybe a guy who came in every Thursday after work, or a waitress who somehow remembered everybody's kids' names, or somebody who looked like they'd had a rough week but brightened up after sitting with friends for an hour. A week later Thom would hand me a lyric and I'd think, "Well... that's what I was trying to say."

I think he liked having stories to start with, and I liked hearing where they'd go after they passed through Thom. We never talked about it much. We'd just write another one. Somewhere in there Rick wandered into the picture and rehearsals got louder. Rick has never met a quiet room he couldn't "improve." Dave would stop us halfway through a song because he'd heard something the rest of us hadn't, and Eli would disappear for ten minutes and come back with an idea nobody else would've thought of. It all just fit together.

Most rehearsals ended the same way. We'd play for a while, somebody would decide they were starving, and we'd wind up around a table somewhere talking about everything except the songs we'd just spent three hours working on.

Then one afternoon my phone buzzed with a text from Thom. I looked over at my wife and said, "Well... I guess Thursdays are back." I still made him wait three days before I texted, though. It had been years and years. He deserved a little wait.

Voltage Rick Nolan — Drums, Percussion, Energy

If you want to know about me, my driver's license is a good place to start. It's got my picture, my address, says I'm about six-foot-two, and says my name's Voltage Rick Nolan. I'm not so sure about that part, though.

Mama would call me Rick all morning, then holler "Voltage!" from the backyard like she'd forgotten she'd been calling me something else five minutes earlier. I asked her once which one was my real name, and she said, "Honey, don't worry about those small things." So I stopped worrying. Every year when school started my teachers would ask her about my name while they were filling out forms, and she'd just smile and say, "Y'all just full of bother." Then everybody'd start talking about something else and another year would go by.

I spent most of my childhood outside. We built forts, ramps, tree houses, one raft that sank almost immediately, and a few things we all agreed not to mention anymore. On the raft, we mostly just wanted to know if it'd float. It didn't. We swam back laughing and started building a tree house instead. We never quite got around to finishing the roof but we still spent the summer up there.

Some teacher wanted me tested because I couldn't sit still. Mama said, "He sits still when he's asleep." Nobody seemed to have much to say after that. Looking back, I think she figured I just had more things I wanted to do than there were hours in the day.

So I got to the drums while I was working at Kenner Bowl handing out rental shoes when that night's band took a break. The drummer wandered off, I wandered over, picked up the sticks. I wasn't very good, but I was loud. That got some attention, and pretty soon I was back to handing out shoes. Mama got me some lessons and off I went. She said, "Well, if you're going to keep making all that racket, you might as well learn to do it on purpose."

First time Eli came over to the house for lunch he looked at Mama and asked, "Miss Mama... do you think birds know why they're singing?" Mama said, "Well I'd hate to think they don't." They were pretty much locked together after that. Eli must have spent as much time at our place as he did at his own, wherever that was. Next thing I knew I was sitting in somebody's garage with Thom and Andrew arguing about songs and Dave trying to tune something that already sounded fine.

College ended the way it usually does. Everybody started building somewhere else. Maria and I wound up in Alaska because we'd never been there before. I always wanted to see a bear. Never did. Saw plenty of caribou, though. Fair trade. Caribou generally don't eat you.

Then one afternoon Andrew texted and asked if I'd come back and say hi to everyone, so off I go. I expected that everything would be different, but it really wasn't. I was looking at everybody laughing and I was thinking that I really missed this. I knew I was about to have one of those thoughts people have at reunions, but then Andrew came around with the spaghetti instead.

What's Up?

Who We Were (And Still Are)

Our Story

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