New March and April schedule dates are up!

The Crunch game was a lot of fun. I especially like the free food coupons and drink! A special thanks has to go out to Chris Cox for his after-the-show performance. By the way, he is fired as our photographer. We appreciate all of the positive support that we have been receiving lately and we are trying to get some new things coming your way. We are mixing the live tracks from Coleman's, Rosie's, the old Styleens and the Woodshed. We are looking to get it to press by the end of April. Keep your fingers crossed..I have had some problems with some tapes being eaten...YIKES! Dr. Chris can perform miracles so I am not too concerned. Thanks again and see you soon.

Once again we're down at Armory High this Friday. It definately ranks as one of my most favorite places to play. It's a real music venue.... I love it!!! If you like our originals than this is the place to see us. Always a good time and a great crowd. I hope to see everyone there. Rick

(Continued once again from below) With the beginning of 2000 we were finishing up the CD confusion with Acqrok and continued the shows out of town as well as here in Syracuse. We were playing up at The Woodshed Tavern in Oswego on a regular basis now, as well as colleges like St. John Fisher in Rochester, Alfred St, Colgate, and Daemen College in Buffalo. Spirit's where we had played in Auburn for a while slowed down and we moved across town to Swaby's. We also landed another spot at Balloon Festival in Jamesville with a couple of national acts again. This year it was Stroke 9 that we opened for and got to meet. I gave them a couple of our CD's and wished them well. We are probably their favorite regional band now, in fact they probably listen to it all the time:-) The CD release party was downtown at The Hotel Syracuse. We gambled having it on Easter eve hoping that a lot of friends and family would be in town for the show. The turn out was amazing. It's nice to see how many people we have come to know through the band over the years. A lot of people came and out and I think we sold close to 200 CD's that night. The highlight of the evening was Rick dressed as the Easter bunny before we went on. There was this deranged easter bunny giving out candy and no one knew who it was. I figured it was not the real easter bunny because the real easter bunny is not 5 foot 7. We also filmed the video to sally hayes soon after in the fall of 2000. AJ Schultz directed and helped conceptualize the idea. We followed the story line from Salinger's Catcher in the Rye where the idea for the song came from after I read the one book per year that I read. The cast and crew did a great job with the video that was shot in various locations around Syracuse as well as in a sound studio up at S.U. where the bar was created. Whenever you see the bar shots in the video we are actually on a sound stage. If you look close you might even see someone that you recognize. A lot of our friends were in the video and my brother Matt was in it as well. Our friends Wink, Beevus, and Mark were also on the set for filming on the Saturday that we filmed but were asked not to return by the directors on Sunday. The rumor on the set was that while everyone else was drinking water as a prop that looked like alcohol, they were actually consuming alcohol throughout the course of the day. By the end of the day, to cut the story short and let your imagination take over, they were in rough shape. We finished out the year (2000) playing shows to support the CD and get it out there. Our fanbase was growing and we were doing well for ourselves. The highlight of the year came when I booked us at a Christmas party at The Oneida Hotel. Don't ask why because I cannot figure it out myself to this day. Picture an older crowd that thinks that modern rock is the Bee Gee's and wants to grind their way through the night to our rendition of "Earth Angel" and "Blue Suade Shoes". As the night went on it got better, probably from the vodka and cranberries. We were looking forward to 2001 and getting back into writing some new songs and more college shows. The best was yet to come.............

(CONTINUED FROM BELOW) 1999 was our third year together as a band. We had a new name and were beginning to play shows out of town regularly for our booking agency out of Buffalo. We were traveling to places like Orono Maine to play at Maine University, Amherst Mass to play Amherst College, and even out to Ohio for a couple of shows at Dennison University and Wooster College outside of Columbus. The shows out of town are always a lot of fun. You never know what to expect. Our show at Dennison University was in this beautiful performing arts theatre for a crowd of 6. The next night we played an on campus bar at Wooster for a few hundred. It was always something different from show to show. Out of the twenty something differerent colleges that we have played at over the years I think the band is in agreement that Wooster in Granville Ohio is one of the coolest places for a college that we played at. The student union has a bar in the basement that holds a few hundred and it's always a good time...aside from the college dates that began to pick up we were also playing a variety of new shows back home in 1999. We played party in the plaza that year downtown as well as the Jamesville Balloon festival with Fastball and the Spin Doctors. We also began to play a few shows down at Styleens with The Rigby's and another show where we opened for the British band Tinstar. One of our first shows with The Rigby's was over the summer where we played up front in the bar and we brought our own soundsystem. When The Rigby's went on we were having trouble with the grounding on the microphone and as a result, Lou (The lead singer) kept getting shocked every time he stepped up to the microphone. To curb this problem he left the stage for a few moments and returned with his sock off of his foot to cover the mic with. Despite the trouble from our equiptment, we've become good friends with the guys from The Rigby's and they are our favorite local band to play with. Always a fun time when we get together. By the fall of 1999 we were ready to enter the studio again to record "Confusion Among the Masses". This time we were at Acqrok Studios with Bob Acquaviva and Garrett "Hayes" Ayers. Bob helped us to produce to second disc over the next four months starting in September of 1999. The Cd would be released in the spring of 2000. We ended the year with a show at the Hotel Syracuse on New Years Eve. We actually cleaned up a bit with dress shirts and ties. SCARY. With 2000 coming we had a new CD in the works and more opening slots for nationals as well as the usual local shows around CNY. We were playing a lot and enjoying the successes of 3 years of working to get our name out there. It was finally paying off. More later.................