I joined the band not long after Michelle called it quits, and we released a 7" record, played our very first show in Santa Barbara, did a bit of touring up the West Coast, headed out to Detroit for Michigan Fest in March of 1995, and went over to Europe in 1996 on a tour that was, in many ways, quite disastrous, before calling it quits.
Officially, Swing Kids played our "last" shows at the end of 1997. Jimmy LaValle, who had been playing in a couple of other bands with Justin, joined the band toward the end on second guitar. Not long after the band broke up, Eric passed away.
In 2009, a number of things happened that drew us back together and we reformed Swing Kids with Jimmy playing Eric's guitar parts. We played two shows in California; one of which was a benefit show, which was a big part of why we all agreed to do it.
The shows were great, but Eric's presence was notably lacking. As much as we tried to capture what was there before, it could never be the same without him.
Since then, we started getting a lot of contact from people overseas who wanted us to play their cities. Marco Walzel, at Avocado booking in Munich -who incidentally booked us for some German shows in 1996 -asked if we would come over to do a tour in honor of the 15th anniversary of his booking agency. We were the first band he ever booked, and he wanted us to help celebrate by reforming and coming over. Long story short, we agreed to do it again...
...but this time, we didn't quite think it was fair to play as Swing Kids, and we needed to add a bit more to the band to round things out in Eric's absence. We decided to call this new version of the band Blue Note (which is the title of one of Swing Kids' songs), and asked our friend Nathan Joyner, who plays guitar in the excellent band All Leather, to join up with us so that we could once again have two guitars.
I'm surely going to be talking a lot about the four guys I am currently playing with in the band in my posts over the next couple of weeks, so here's a brief introduction to each of them.
This is Justin Pearson, or JP for short -
As I mentioned before, Justin is our vocalist. He currently lives in San Diego. You may know him as a member of the band The Locust, Some Girls, All Leather, and several others. I've known Justin since I was 14 years old...and even though he has a track record of pissing off just about everyone who has ever known him, we've managed to remain friends for over twenty years.
This is Jose Palafox -
Jose lives in the Bay Area and I've known him for just about as long as I've known JP. He's an incredible drummer, and an excellent resource for leftist political discourse.
This is Jimmy LaValle -
I'm not quite sure when I met Jimmy. I think it was around 1996. He played in two bands with JP around that time; The Crimson Curse, and The Locust (known at the time simply as Locust). Eric wanted a second guitarist for Swing Kids toward the end of the band, and because Jimmy was a good friend of ours and had already played with Justin, we asked him to join up.
Today, Jimmy has his own music project - Album Leaf - and resides in Los Angeles with his beautiful and brilliant wife Kate. If you haven't heard his music, go check it out and pick some up. It's really good stuff.
Lastly, this is Nathan Joyner-
As I already mentioned, Nathan plays guitar for All Leather (with JP on vocals). I just met Nathan a couple of years ago, and haven't gotten to know him quite as well as the other guys because we live in different cities (he lives in San Diego, and you probably already know that I am in Chicago) but I'm looking forward to getting to know him better over the next couple of weeks.
Anyway...we are about an hour into our flight across the pond heading toward Frankfurt as I type this...and I think it's about time to pull the window shade and attempt to get some sleep.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
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