Tag Archives: Ned Danison

News

Who the hell knows what’s coming? My guess is nobody.

Hey, there’s a lot to look forward to, people. Like, I don’t know …. whatever is next. And some other stuff. When it comes to Big Green, well … it’s anyone’s guess. Nevertheless, we’re still doing the thing. And that thing is weird ass music.

Here’s basically what we have in store for you:

New Single: Against It

That’s right – we’re dropping a one-off , tentatively titled “Against It” in May, just in time for the first anniversary of the release of our album In Retrograde. (Hardly seems like a year, does it? More like five.) The new single is, well … let’s say a bit more topical than what’s on the album. We’ll post the lyrics so you can sing along! (Just be careful where you sing it, or you might end up on some kind of shit list.)

We’ll push out details about the new single in future posts, so watch this space.

New Album: Pick your adventure!

Hey, like any band, Big Green is always thinking about the next project. You know how it is – you get one collection out into the world, and next thing you know, Matt’s got about seventeen new songs he wants to do. (Joe is a little slower on the uptake, frankly. Dude’s got issues.)

So, we’re back to where we were a couple of years ago. Should we do all new material, or should we work through the mountain of Ned Trek songs we produced over the previous decade? As before, the answer is, well, both, but this time around we’re leaning more in the direction of finishing out the Ned Trek catalog. That’s about 100 songs in total to choose from.

Our plan is to cherry pick the best numbers, work them over a bit, and release that as an album. The rest we will either release over time, collect in a volume 2 at some point, or just put out as a “pick your adventure” database. Either way, less work for mother. We’re lazy-ass mofos, let’s face it.

This day in history

On this day in 1986 (or sometime around this day), I started playing in a bar band out in the Albany area. A drummer I had worked with in previous bands was pushing the bandleader to hire me as a bassist, mostly because the leader’s girlfriend and lead vocalist was filling in on bass, and let’s just say … playing bass was not her strong suit. The keyboard player in the band was Ned Danison, and we had such a good time jamming together that we formed Big Green later that year.

Of course, before we did anything, we press ganged Ned’s friend Leif Zurmuhlen to take some promo shots of us, such as the one below. (Ned is on the right. The drummer is actually Leif, sitting in for our lack-of-drummer at that moment.)

Big Green (original cast)
Big Green in 1986

Matt still has that Rick bass (you can hear it on our last album) but the Kustom 88 piano is long gone. Damn, that sucker weighed a ton and sounded like ass. I absent mindedly left that scarf in a pizza joint in Saratoga something like a year later. And Matt’s hat was eaten by wolves, but anyway … that was the week that was.

Listen to our 1986 demo

Usual Rubbish

The many incarnations of one Big Green

Get Music Here

Ever watch Dr. Who? Sure you have. And no doubt you’ve seen how he regenerates himself every once in a while. It’s like restarting an old computer, except that when it’s done booting, it’s a new computer. That almost NEVER happens in real life, you know. Almost never … unless you’re Big Green. (Or, frankly, any other band I’ve ever known.)

We got to talking the other day. Our mouth parts moved and sounds emerged from our throats, then floated through the air and vibrated our ear drums. Those little thingies translated the vibrations into electrical signals that were then piped up to our brains. At that point, the impulses – call them voltsters – circulate around in the brain like ants in an ant farm, until they and their confederates make their way down to the mouth and vocal cords, making the whole process begin again. It’s amazing!

Anyway, we were talking about how many versions of Big Green there had been down through the ages. We started chalking up the white board and this is what we came away with.

1979 – 1986: The Proto Period

As I’ve mentioned on the blog before, Big Green started under other names. Matt and I started learning our various instruments in the mid-1970s, and of course it occurred to us that we should play our newfound instruments in the same room at the same time, occasionally playing the same song at a similar tempo. In 1979 we decided to do that thing with some other people with instruments, and the result was a band variously named Slapstick, Mearth, Withers Backtrack, and five other things.

Did we work? Not much! A few bar gigs here and there. We spent a year in the Albany area playing one-night stands, a few outdoor events, nothing special. It was practically all covers back then. Matt was writing stuff and I was writing some as well, but mostly not the kind of material that worked well with a rock group. We have a bunch of scratchy recordings from this period, plus some studio recordings, such as Silent as a Stone, which we featured on our February 2018 episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN. That incarnation trailed off into the eighties.

1986 – 1987: The Ned Year

Yes, this was the first year we called ourselves Big Green. I met Big Green co-founder Ned Danison when we were both playing in a cheesy bar band, and together with Matt we pulled this mess together. Did we practice? One hundred percent. Did we perform? Eh … not so much. I think we played in front of an audience exactly once, at a street fair in Ballston Spa, NY. (I’ve posted photos of that heinous incident in the history of rock.)

Of course, Ned and I played a bunch of other gigs that weren’t with Big Green and had nothing to do with the cheesy bar band. One was Dale Haskell’s Factory Village, videos of which I have posted on our YouTube channel. We also did a couple of songs at the wedding of our friends, Leif and Jill Zurmuhlen (Leif is the amazing photographer who took so many pictures of us before we shriveled into our current superannuated state of disrepair.) And, well, we recorded a demo. That was the year that was.

Is this part three or two?

1988 – 1994: Musical Guitar Players

Our first year we had a problem holding on to drummers. From 1988 on, after Ned went down the road, we had trouble securing a permanent guitar player. Over the next six years, we played with Tony, Steve Bennett, and Jeremy Shaw. We also disguised ourselves as a cover band under the names I-19 and The Space Hippies. (Tony and I were going to do a duo named Seven Vertical Inches of Purgatory or SVIP, but we never got round to it.)

This last period needs a little more exploration, so I’ll save it for another post. Suffice to say, we played a fair number of gigs under the various monikers and did some recording as well.

Then came the reboot. CHIME!

Usual Rubbish

Stages in the ascent (or descent) of Big Green

Get Music Here

You know, when I was a boy, my pappy said to me …. what’s that? How the hell did you know that? Oh, right. He’s your pappy, too. Easy to forget little details like that when you get to be MY age. Get off my lawn!

Yikes, well … welcome to geezerville … I mean, the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted squat house. It is, after all, just a rest stop in the long journey that is our story. Not exactly the best appointed rest stop on the Thruway, mind you – there’s no Cinnabon, no Chick Fillet. There’s no 1960s style automat where you can grab a soggy hours-old tuna sandwich if you’re in a hurry. But I digress.

Phase one: the first phase

Sure, we go way back. Big Green’s founding was a scattershot affair, spread over several decades. We count our age in geologic time, as our official story will attest, but as far as start dates are concerned, we’re probably talking 1979. That’s the first year Matt and I played in a band together. Sure, we sucked, but give us a chance! We had only just grown our guitar hands, our pump organ feet, our harmonica teeth. (Ever seen harmonica teeth? Trick question – most harp players don’t have teeth.)

I mean, if you want a more compelling genesis story, look elsewhere. (Genesis, perhaps.) The fact is, we picked up our cheap guitars, went to some cheap venues, and started playing our cheap repertoire. Matt and I did some duo gigs, but we mostly played as a four-piece, with our first drummer Mark K (no last name – YOU know who you are!) and our first lead guitarist, Tim Walsh. So there was pounding and there was twanging, but no screeching quite yet. Big Green was still in the protozoan stage.

Phase two: the one that came after one

As was my habit, I took a year off, this time in New Paltz, NY, living in the worst dorm on campus at the SUNY college there. Across the hall from me lived our soon-to-be second drummer, Phil Ross, who’s still playing gigs, last I heard. Phil and I used to sit in his room and listen to his truly impressive LP collection – lots of old Dylan sides, Phil Ochs, etc., and some new stuff by this Elvis Costello dude. Phil and I shared an apartment for a semester, then a house outside of Albany, NY, along with my other bandmates, Matt and Tim, and my partner at the time, Ellen.

Phases of Big Green
Phases two, three, and three and a half of Big Green

So, the nameless band that one might call proto-Big Green went under a variety of monikers, from Slapstick to Mearth to Duck and Cover. We played some gigs around Albany, did some recording, then kind of ran out of gas as a band. That’s when Matt dug into writing in a big way. (Fun fact: his song Sweet Treason is partly about our year in Castleton-On-Hudson. See if you can guess which part!)

Phase three: a name and a phase

What came after that? Well, Tim and Phil went off to do other stuff, and Matt and I teamed up with Ned Danison (author of A Name and A Face) and a bunch of random drummers – and eventually John White, our forever drummer – to put together the band that would be called Big Green. So it was musical drummers for a while, then musical guitarists for a longer while, but ultimately we landed in an abandoned hammer mill and started telling you this long, shaggy-dog story of failure and hardship.

You know the rest. Five or six more phases, and we’re here. Any questions?