I have spent the last nine weeks following around my roommates' band The Wife and Kids. I said in my very first post that I love them; I live with them, but I don't always like them, and that is still true today.
Over the course of the quarter, TWaK have gone from a group of four guys competing with one another to a real band that work together to write and perform music. When I started writing this blog, the band really conflicted with one another. They did not want to share music, and there were many tense moments during song writing and practicing.
However, some time after the Wire show things really started to change. TWak started working together. There was less competition during song writing and just generally more respect among all the members. The Wife and Kids became a band.
I do not know what caused this change, and I really hope TR, Adam, Coert, or Chad comment on this post to tell me their opinions.
I really noticed how much the band had changed during the interview. Listen to the history of The Wife and Kids part, and you will see that the band started off on semi-rocky ground. However, you can also here the respect that they have for one another now. Each gives the other the benefit of the doubt and listens to try to make TWaK even better.
It has really been a great experience from my perspective to follow them. I do not know a lot about music. In one way I have learned a lot about guitars and amps, and what is takes to perform a show. It literally takes as long to set-up for a performance as it does to play the show. I was just amazed by that, and it made me have a lot more respect to see what the band was willing to do to perform for an audience.
It has also been really great to watch the band interact. All of the members of the band are creative, and it has been really great to sit in on practices and hear songs evolve. I knew song writing was a organic experience, but it can be really amazing to hear how a song changes within the first couple practices or when lyrics are added.
This project has been more successful than I ever thought it could be. I think I have really captured The Wife and Kids, especially by being able to get photos, video and audio of them. I hope that you have enjoyed reading this blog as much as I have enjoyed writing it.
I do not expect this to be the end of this blog. I will still be living with Chad and Adam next year, and if TWaK survives, I will continue blogging about them.
2 comments:
I really agree. I think our songwriting is a lot more collaborative now, the things we've been writing are a lot more The Wife & Kids, a lot less TR, Adam, Chad or Coert. I think the thing with us pulling together after The Wire was sort of strange. I don't think it was destruction of our property that made us start thinking more as a collective whole. The real shame, for me, is that Coert is leaving and we almost have to start over with one or two new members. The second real shame is that I'm not going to have the blog to come to and hear an outsider's opinion. I'll be honest, I really used the opinions on here to decide on things that were happening with the band (the solo to To the Broken Man, Adam and I singing after Coert leaves, I'm sure there's more). I think Chad felt the same way about these opinions. The third real shame is that we're not signed and touring with like, Incubus or some other band that I love.
So I've been meaning to comment on this for awhile... and what better time when I'm avoiding finishing a paper on virginia woolf?
So I've always thought of a band as similar to a dating relationship. Which is odd, cause when things are rocky in the band I bitch to my girlfriend, and when things are rocky with the girlfriend I write a song about it.
But there's that time in a relationship, and it's different in everyone, when things get really hard for the first time, or there's a fight or whatever. and it's like "Okay, this is the moment when you decide whether or not you're really going to do this." and a lot of relationships don't make it past that point. I think the end of winter quarter was that for us.
And then things were a bit still on edge. But at the wire 2 things happened. One was we put on a great show. We all felt good about it. And then with the shit that went down ever, it at first was like a fight within the band, but then about halfway through the next day it was like... no, this isn't a fight within us, and we just became a united front.
I think it's really important that even though we don't always agree. (and we don't, at all) that now we all kinda get that we can let stuff that happens come between us, or we can go into everything with the mentality of "I am just a part of this band, this isn't Adam Caudill and The Wife and Kids, or TR Snyder and the Wife and kids, or ... etc. (I'm not going to write out everyone) it's just "The Wife and Kids" and because of that we all have to do what's best for the band."
... Plus I think this band kinda stumbled across our sound with Slow Play, then we were lost for a little bit. Then we found it again with "Farewell Collision" (which took a long time to come together, and we were skeptical for a long time), but again, we really didn't quite have it in hand firmly. But right before the Wire we wrote Cigarettes and Shooters, and we wrote it in like 2 or 3 days. And I think that song was kinda like "Yeah, you got it. This is how you sound, this is how your lyrics feel, and you can totally do this."
Maybe the others will disagree, but I think Cigarettes and Shooters is the most "the Wife and Kids" song we've written yet.
Anyway this post is getting long, but it's been great reading this blog this quarter.
Vote for us to get to Lollapalooza:
http://lollapalooza.mp3.com/feature/2007lollapalooza/?band=THE-WIFE-AND-KIDS
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