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After the Plandemic hit in 2020. I got frustrated and needed a place to vent my emotions.
I called Charlie Barnes (bass player for Afiction) and told him I wanted to start a fun project and rock out.
We didn’t want intentions to gig or monetize, just jam, have fun, get loud, and release tension.
We talked a bit about doing some covers songs, and writing some music that had a heavy feel to it.
On January of 2021 we formed the band.
We were able to get my son Elijah Johnson to play drums with us, so we now had a complete band.
My buddy Eric Petersen also jumped in, and played rhythm guitar. Eric is all-around kind, and classic guy that knows pretty much any cover you throw at him. And he’s got the voice too! Playing with Eric was always a ton of fun.
And so did my friend Dave Walden to play lead. Dave is so good at guitar and a solid song writer.
Now we have a shop to get loud, and 5 rusty musicians to get stupid. Ha!
The first practice was rough. We all hadn’t played in too long. We didn’t care, we were having tons of fun.
After a few sessions, Dave bowed out as he had other priorities with family and work. Sad day but understandable.
A few months later, we recruited Tim Carroll and he became our lead guitar player.
Tim was a shredder, and full of passion.
He came into the band wanting to play rhythm, but we asked him to play lead, and he adapted quickly.
What I loved about Tim is that he had a serious love for heavy AIC sounds. And it totally worked!
About 9 months later, we had a falling out with Tim. 🙁
The band wanted to keep playing. So we kept playing but without Tim. It was sad but it happened and I feel bad about it still.
Tim’s a super talented guy with a huge heart and I hope to have the opportunity to work on a project with him again someday.
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We then started rocking out again in the shop. Several weeks later we were able to have my neighbor and friend Matthew Ericson come and play with us as a lead guitarist
Matt was on a different planet with his guitar licks, and tones. He has a great voice, and production skills as well.
We found a gem and were stoked to have Matt as our lead guitarist.
We’d meet a couple times a month on a Sunday, and rehearsals were usually about 4-5 hours.
It was enough to stay healthy, write some songs, and rock out to covers too.
We named ourselves “Something Like That” because we didn’t have direction as a band other than we just wanted to have fun and rock!
Other band names were thrown around at the time, like “No Direction.” 🙂
There was a bit of tension at times with the band members wanting to play live gigs but we weren’t doing any. We had an easy 2 hour set so I don’t blame them.
I was usually the one that just wanted to rock out in the shop and pump out songs. because of my limited schedule. Oye, sorry guys.
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But a sound that was rock-heavy was what we were reaching for.
I never dreamed that it would be SO FUN to be in a band with my son.
Elijah is an exceptional drummer and song writer, with a heavy rock taste mixed with a tribal edge.
He brought the heat and he is a huge reason why I did this project.
The band ended when Elijah needed to focus towards getting married in a few weeks and stepping into more ministry activities with his soon to be bride.`♥`
I am thankful we were able to capture some rough tracks in the shop as we were playing live before it ended.
1. Dust
2. Everyday
3. Bodies
4. Bones
5. Internal Wars
6. A.O.D.
7. Jam Tracks
The production is meh, but it works because this project is not a monetization project, or a get famous project.
It’s just about the season, the moment, and the energy that happened in the time we all rehearsed.
Everything was mixed in post live conditions so no doubling, editing, or shiny objects on this album.
I would have absolutely loved to have had the time to record all of these tracks professionally.
My My favorite track is Internal Wars. I wrote for my wife Karen who has had very bad arthritis most of her life. The challenge she has had to go through is next level.
It’s a daily battle. She is a beautiful warrior, and a treasure.
Internal Wars is probably my most significant song to date and it’s hard for me to sing it all the way through without crying.
The song Bodies was also a great song. This came out of an impromptu riff that Matt and I were playing, and then I couldn’t get the riff and melodies I was hearing out of my head for the following weeks.
So I re-introduced the riff to the band and we all worked it into the song it is today. It’s such a badass song, and it’s too bad it’s not recorded well.
The recording sounds decent until it hits the chorus where everything gets distorted. Ouch!
Dust is also one of my favorites. This song came from a poem that Elijah wrote, with a few keys at the top of the poem for possible chords to a song if it became one.
So I edited the lyrics and tightened them up for a song friendly environment, took his chord suggestions, and mapped out the arrangement.
The whole band did their thing and it became a very powerful and dramatic song.
We then added a break-out version as a bridge with spacious tones and beats that Elijah was hearing in his head. Pretty cool.
Bones was something I wrote unplugged on my acoustic during my morning coffee session. I wanted to write something aggressive and heavy.
I am also venting a bit of political emotions in this song, but you’d never know it by the lyrics.
We used to play Bones a lot faster, but then one evening Eric started playing it kind of slow-mo like, and we busted out an A.I.C. version which is the version you hear on the album.
Everyday was a tune I wrote back in 2006. It’s kind of a chill song and I’m not a huge fan of it cause I’ve been playing it for years. But the guys like it so it’s on the album.
A.O.D. is a song I wrote in 2001. A classic and powerful song but unfortunately, not recorded well.
Charlie was still learning the song in the recording on this album so it’s not the “official” bass lines he was developing…
The recording I found in my phone which is on the album does not have Matt playing with us yet either. Bummer.
There are also 3 recordings in this track of A.O.D. and I probably should have just added one recording of it but I wanted to express our process in learning this song together as a band.
This song definitely deserves better production. Elijah, I must say rocked this track.
Jam Tracks is a track of multiple break-out jam sessions we had as a band. A lot of heat coming into these clips. Fun stuff.
There were other originals I wanted to add to this album but didn’t have respectable recordings of them.
