The Sun’s Up, I’m Not: (conclusion)

Jeff Nichols had proven the perfect complement to our line-up. He was a more-than-capable drummer and funny to boot. He gave Hunter a pristine, white kick-drum to decorate with a Wannabes logo. Hunter was an art major and had designed fliers for shows as well. He put a picture from a Skiff article on a popular campus cook, Miss Peggy, who was leaving after many years of service, up on an overhead projector at the art department, and traced her image onto the drum-head. It should be said that Miss Peggy was the archetypal “lunch lady,” grey permanent wave billowing from beneath a chef’s hat, a toothy smile beaming across her porcine, bespectacled face. Her chapeau was then defiled with an anarchy symbol as the “A” in WANNABES, for the final outrage. It fronted Nichols’ kick-drum at all subsequent gigs. We were having many laughs, and growing closer. It seemed Wannabes was coalescing into a tight-knit, exciting band with steadily building buzz on campus, and in Cowtown at large. Then crisis would strike.

Chip Kelsey, who had begun as a proxy to Rob in a one-off novelty act, had become an integral component of our sound. His conservative appearance belied a guitarist of wicked skill, who could write solos against a song’s key if he wanted and make it sound right anyway. Chip, however, was a competitive swimmer, and had been offered a swim scholarship to Arizona State. It was an opportunity he would not turn down. The band would miss him greatly. Chip had played on the demo and every show. He liked to have a few drinks and cut loose, but he was always composed and had a calming effect on the roiling waters of rock n’ roll debauchery we were attempting to navigate. We would continue to perform Chip’s song, “Grey with a Shade…” until our final shows. It became the set closer.

Our brand of mischievous mayhem was, more often than not, fairly innocuous. Silliness and surrealistic profanity became a hallmark of our music and our lives. Once, Jennings and Hunter got Rob and I, and a couple of other friends, to go with them to Grapevine High’s homecoming football game. After quaffing Happy Buddha drinks with dinner at Benihana, we convinced some girls at the game that I was The Replacements’ Paul Westerberg. Another time, I took down a flier for The Skam from the TCU post office wall, and after doctoring them all up with permanent markers to look like they belonged in Boston or ELO, and rechristening them “The Sham,” ran off multiple photo copies and hung them all about campus. It advertised, “Industrial Strength Rock N’ Roll,” and exhorted potential attendees to “Bring deaf friends,”
or “Bring your date’s dad!”

Hunter kept me up on the bands I needed to see and hear: Glass Eye, whose drummer I still recall as on of the most rocking ever, The Wild Seeds, and Alejandro and Javier Escovedo’s True Believers. He had become friendly with Doctor’s Mob and Zeitgeist in particular. Hunter and their bassist Cindy Toth seemed to be rather flirtatious toward each other. I felt we were truly becoming part of something great happening in music.

Jennings Crawford was Darby’s best friend from home, and had been along with us on a number of occasions, partying in the dorms, ripping out some of his songs on Rob’s guitar. He had a good voice, and a dab hand at crafting tunes. Jennings and Hunter were like the Lennon/McCartney of our little underground scene in Fort Worth. They each had a passel of songs they seemed to come up with effortlessly, rife with sardonic wit, some being downright funny, but always laden with superb hooks and riffs. One of Jennings’ songs I still can’t get out of my brain twenty years hence is called “It’s Not Easy Being Me,” a wry little number written from God’s perspective.

One day, Hunter received a call from Rob Thomas asking if Wannabes would open for Public Bulletin that very night at The Hop in Fort Worth. Darb came to me and asked if we could play the show, and I was a trifle reluctant because Chip was gone, and I was no lead player at that time. Hunter said he could call Jennings and see if he was free to come out and play. It would require him to spend the afternoon learning a full set and heading straight to The Hop to play. He was up for it, so we met up at Les Cargot’s to teach him our set. During that rehearsal a couple of curios were invented, to be unveiled that night. One was a doo-wop version of “Sunday Bloody Sunday/New Year’s Day,” with all four members singing, which Lord knows why I concocted. Also there was a brief rap number I’d written as a laugh, complete with beat-boxing backups, entitled “Don’t Crack,” an anti-crack cocaine ditty. “Ziggy Stardust” was a staple at that point, and we’d also learned X’s “Blue Spark” to fill out the set. “Time’s Up” and the Zeitgeist version of “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain” were also included. We loaded all of our gear into Hunter’s Dart, drums included and managed to squeeze in everyone but me, who wound up riding to the gig in the trunk. I held the trunk lid from latching, and while stopped at red-lights I would open it and boisterously greet the chagrinned drivers behind.

The set was a fiery, if at times delightfully sloppy affair. The crowd was rowdy right from Rob’s intro of the “new” Wannabes. Jennings tore it up, and people screamed for everything we did. It was an unqualified success! Of course, because of the incident at The Backside Lounge, someone yelled for “The House of the Risin’ Sun,” and we launched into it, though I still didn’t remember all of the verses. We were more confident than ever that we were onto something. Though Public Bulletin was quite good, I remember a good number of people leaving after Wannabes got done. We ended up carrying Darby bodily from The Hop, as he had passed out under a table after taking “some green pill” offered him by ”someone.” Rock n’ roll sure wasn’t office work.

There was one other notable show, but I honestly cannot recall whether Chip or Jennings played it, possibly due to a small quantity of psilocybin mushrooms which I had taken pre-show. It was Frog Aid II, the follow-up to the battle which had spawned our quartet in the first place. It was one year hence from our debut, and we had some other oddities in the set by then. There was a strange number I came up called “The Scarab.” It began with a creepy, ambient noodling intro vamping behind a tale of my “arch nemesis,” a giant beetle-creature which I was forced to do battle with when least expected. It eventually exploded into a two-chord instrumental ferocity, resolved each time with a pause, and a breathy utterance of “the Scarab.”
There was a rocked-up version of the Dolly Parton hit “9 to 5,” and something I wrote called “Whore,” of which nothing has survived in my memory except the line “I had no idea you were such a whore!” Also in the set by then were two of my songs, which I’d written in high school, “June,” and “Sleeping.” Once again, we did not win, but whipped up a mighty noise, and impressed quite a few of the kids in the audience.

I can’t be certain, but I think Hunter and Cindy Toth of Zeitgeist were starting up a relationship not long after that. He was well-liked and known by the main players in the Austin scene and felt the town’s draw as he spun his wheels at TCU, no longer interested in finishing a degree. Eventually, Darby came to me and confided that he felt we would burgeon in Austin, and that he and Jennings wanted us to move there and pursue the band. As tantalizing as that seemed, I was two years into a degree, on scholarship, and with loans, financial aid, and work study paying for it. Jeff Nichols was also not sure about uprooting at that time. I agonized over the decision, but knew that I was trying to further my education and forge a career as an actor. I elected to stay in Cowtown, not sure that even such talented folk as Darb and Jennings would be able to attract enough attention in a town supersaturated with music like Austin. At nineteen, I felt I owed it to my folks, who had worked so hard to send me to college, and to myself to finish my course of study. Making it as an underground band has never been an easy course to chart, and I was not sure enough of my abilities to believe I would aid in their success.

As it happens, they didn’t need me to become one of the tightest, most memorable rock bands I know of, especially when seen live. They have entertained countless fans over these twenty years, and the experience I gleaned from my stint with them gave me the courage, and some of the skills, to continue in music professionally. They are a rare bunch of guys who I am an inveterate fan of, a long-time friend of, and at one brilliant time, was lucky enough to be a band-mate of, treasured memories for me, and I hope for them, as well. If you are already a fan of Wannabes, you may find this article amusing, and hopefully edifying to some degree, and if you are unfamiliar with them, I hope it sends you out to investigate their output. You will then be, as many of us are, acquainted with one of the fine pop bands of history, Austin’s legendary Wannabes.

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Michael Comiskey has been the force behind the Seattle band, Still House, for the past ten years. He is a musician/writer/actor, currently working on a semi-autobiographical novel about life in the entertainment industry entitled “Home Town Rock Star.” He is also writing a short play based on the novel for Burning House Group in Minneapolis. In addition, he is frontman for Tampa, Florida-based band Roman Shades, and plays lead guitar in Seattle novelty pop band Colonel Ham and The Infidels.

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