My apologies for releasing things out of order. I have a ton of stuff and it's pretty overwhelming and daunting sometimes. I also need to get with people and get their permissions to share some stuff. I'm still trying to track down the original Dead Society and Peggy Lynnfield and the Castaways tapes and CDs. Suckbutton came about through disillusion with Nates' death and a fear of aging out. The music business had changed drastically and was still changing. A close friend and former drummer from other bands I had played with was without a band and I had written two songs while trying to win a barista competition in Seattle ( yea, I won some stuff and I am a lot of things; not only a musician). When I came back to Dallas I played the songs for my friend, Scott Carter, he liked the music but the drumming wasn't to his caliber( I did the drums on those demos). We knew a guy that we had met while recording my friend Fabian's demo, a really talented multi instrumentalist named Brandon Elwood. We added a really funny guy that I worked with at the coffee shop named Brian Covert. Brandon, Scott, and Brian could have been a comedic troupe and I don't think I have ever laughed as hard as I did when those cats would get together. The only other band I laughed that hard in was The Hellions(TX). Those guys are super funny as well. With that we set out to conquer the world. Through a friend of a friend I was put in touch with Stefen Egerton from ALL/Descendents. He had time to record our debut full length ( we had an e.p. that I had butchered) so we went to his new studio in Tulsa Ok. We had two weeks booked and planned to finish it. We never finished it. A lot of things happened during those two weeks. Brian would forget songs and would become upset with the situation; and himself. And probably me as well. I was a slave driving dismissive dick back in those days and I regret being that way. I sprained my ankle falling out of our van. We almost got caught up in a Swat raid on a drug den that was right next door to the taco truck that we had all walked to get lunch ;on a break from the session, etc.
So we tracked 10 songs and had Stefen do the bass parts that Brian couldn't, and we had him also jump in on a couple of leads. He was/is, one of my favorite guitar players and people.
I think we fired Brian, and Brandon knew a guy named(oddly) Nate that was willing to learn our songs and style. Brandon moved to bass and Nate came in as a dueling lead guitar. Brandon also knew almost everyone in the metal scene at the time. So he would go out on tour with metal bands while I was touring with the Burden Brothers and the Toadies.
Well Brandon knew of a party one night that was happening at some friends house that were hosting the bands from Ozzfest that year. Well( I believe it was the 4th of July) at some point everyone started climbing onto the roof to gawk at fireworks. I started to climb up there and I heard a voice distinctly in my head say “Get down.” So i did. I blew it off though as my imagination. At that time the guys and girls started climbing down from the roof and egging each other on to jump off the roof. I watched as our drummer started to jump, second guess his decision, and hit the ground with his ankle at an unnatural angle. It was definitely broken. Brandon rushed over to the situation and to help our friend and drummer, Scott. As I pulled his sock down and his pant leg up, the sock swallowed his foot. It was only attached by skin. I worked to assess the situation and Brandon and I worked to keep Scott from trying to get up and we tried to keep him calm. To this day he says he didn't know how bad it was because we were so calm and he was in shock. The metal bands started coming out to look and some saw, and started to vomit. We asked them to go inside and then the paramedics arrived. Even the EMTs would see the injury, and start to gag. The contents of Scott's leg was laying on the grass. He had quite a number of surgeries and now he is doing quite well.I left to go on tour with the OLD97s the next day and I had to drive across country to pick them up from a Willie Nelson tour that they were on. The whole drive all I could replay were the events of the night before. We played a show a couple of weeks after it happened. The band didn't last much longer after that.
