Saturday, August 13, 2011

Part 6: In Which ZAN Begins in Earnest

Before I get into anything with the band proper I’d like to take this time to acknowledge an important part of the Zombie Apocalypse NOW! team: Stephanie Friedersdorff.  She’s not a member of the band officially but we usually think of her as the fourth/fifth (Depending on how many people are in ZAN at the time) member of the group.   I hesitate to call her our #1 fan, not because she isn’t probably our biggest fan on Earth because she is (Though I suppose technically when you have three fans it isn’t that hard to be number one) but because she does so much for us that goes far and beyond her duties as a fan.  She is the main force behind the production of our t-shirts as well as other merchandise and the last few years she’s been basically our personal photographer.  If you’ve seen a girl hanging with us at a show it’s probably her. Steph is pretty much the fan that all bands wish they had; she comes to damn near every show (Sometimes bringing other people), helps promote the band, and makes merchandise without complaint.

Drawn by Stephine Friedersdorff and not in fact a 3-year old
I don’t really remember exactly when she started coming to our shows on her own but Travis and I did know her beforehand as she was dating our roommate back in the day.  So she often heard us practicing in our basement and likely caught some of our early basement shows so she’s been a fan for years.  I often wish we had more folks who seemed to dig us half as much as she seems to. Then we’d maybe play in front of more than ten people a bit more often.

The return of Zombie Apocalypse NOW! after the jump.

Live in Grand Rapids
In the end of 2008 I decided that Zombie Apocalypse NOW! had run its course.  After more than two years of failure to launch I had had enough and decided that I was wasting my time trying to do the "music thing".  However by the top of the following year I had quit my extremely stressful and will sapping job at a local downtown Kalamazoo restaurant (I won’t name names but the place can go to hell nonetheless).  With that dark cloud off my head I felt a bit more optimistic about life in general and was more open to not just giving up on ZAN.  Some time earlier, while Travis and I were drinking a bit more than we should have he revealed a horrible truth: he had gone back to college to study criminal justice so he could eventually enter the police academy but it turns out that he didn’t actually want to do that at all.  He was only going through with it because he felt it was the thing he had to do but in fact all he wanted to do was play music professionally.  Despite this he had convinced himself that it would never, ever happen and resigned himself to a fate he himself admitted deeply depressed him.  We drunkenly agreed that we would make the band a success so that Travis could fulfill his dream.  And by 2009 I had effectively turned my back on that promise.  Once my overall mood lifted I knew I had to try again (This promise, however, would haunt me later, and even to this day, but more on that in future blogs).

In any event with renewed vigor and a sense of fraternal obligation I decided to once more attempt to get the band off the ground and to do this we again needed a drummer.  Mark Horner, our most recent drummer, had implied he’d be interested in coming back after his schedule became manageable but I didn’t bother contacting him because I was still unreasonably and stubbornly bitter over him leaving back in November.  So yet again we were searching, possibly in vain, for a new drummer so we could do as little as play a show. It was around this time that I got an e-mail from The Common Good.

A bit about The Common Good, if I may.

The Common Good is a West Michigan band that I’ve been a fan of since I saw them years and years ago.  A rock outfit with Grunge influences I think it’s safe to call them the most underrated band in the area.  They always have solid shows, they have awesome hard hitting rock songs, and they’re genuinely decent guys which is more than a lot of bands can say.   The fact is that these guys are probably the best band in West Michigan you've never heard of.  Travis and I first saw these guys a while back at the (Now defunct) Ground Sphere in Allegan, MI during a battle of the bands where they , in my opinion, unfairly lost due to the winning band’s fanbase voting for their inferior group and then leaving before the other bands even got a chance to play.  Even so we ended up becoming big fans of the Common Good, making sure to go to any show they did in Kzoo and over time we became decent friends.

The Common Good
Last time I heard The Common Good was looking for a drummer.  Check them out ASAP.

Anyway they were playing a show in Grand Rapids at a bar called Louie’s the first week of March and wanted us to come check them out since they knew we were in a band.  Now this is pretty much the same type of scenario as last November so I was hesitant to agree since I didn’t want what happened then to occur again. Still there’s no motivation quite like the pressure of an upcoming show so in the end I agreed BUT told them we may have to pull out since we didn’t have a drummer and may not find one in time. They agreed and we attempted to increase the intensity of our search. After a short while of failure our roommate Mr. Kaze had a suggestion.

Mr. Kaze worked at The Strutt, a local venue that as of this writing is either doing really well or really poorly depending on who you ask.  Apparently he knew a cook who also worked there who was really, really interested in joining a band, any band.  Eventually I told Kaze to go ahead mention us to the guy only to have a surprising conversation a week and a half later when he finally got back to me:

Kaze: You know that cook I work with?

Jay: Yeah?

Kaze: Yeah, it was Darin. I forgot you knew him.

Darin Bluhm was the drummer I jammed with way back in 2004 and then later recruited him for the Janissaries.  He left that band because he moved to Germany for a little while.  He came back eventually and I ran into him once or twice by chance but I had no idea he was still in Kalamzoo in 2009 let alone a co-worker of my roommate.  In any event I got into contact with him immediately, he being as surprised as I was about the whole situation.  We jammed out a bunch of songs to the point where we felt it was good enough for playing that show.  Though we hadn’t played together in a while Darin and I knew each other’s playing style pretty well so jamming ended up being a bit more relaxed than it had been in the past.

Darin Bluhm's first show with ZAN
The show, which I’m told wasn’t exactly the best sounding ZAN has ever been, went off without a hitch unlike the last disaster.  While in Grand Rapids Travis’ brother took a ton of promo pictures for press kits which is why they’re have been so many images of the three of us all over the place.  A new era of ZAN had begun.  Now with a drummer in tow we finally had the ability to book shows and, unlike Mike our first drummer, Darin was extremely eager to do so.  The fact that he worked at the Strutt and was friends with the booker of Papa Pete’s (Another Kzoo venue) it looked like we would actually get the chance to gig like we were actually musicians!

There was one issue that was a possible complication; Darin had been in the process of preparing to move to Korea to teach English (A great use of his degree in German).  He said he was supposed to leave that year but would likely miss the opportunity and instead leave the following year. I nodded since that was a ways away, but I took what he said with a grain of salt.  March of 2010 was in the distant future, as far as I was concerned, and a lot could change in that time.  Regardless now armed with an enthusiastic drummer the band could now begin the plan I laid out to Travis more than two years earlier: build a fan base locally and spread out more and more until we were playing regular shows throughout Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

The nerdiest street gang ever to roam Grand Rapids
Obviously this did not happen.  But before our vision for Zombie Apocalypse NOW! came crashing all around us we first needed to climb up high enough to where it would hurt when we fell.  Next time ZAN begins recording an actually decently produced demo and a new member joins the band.

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