Movin' The Pharmacy

All of this writing lately about music and recording has made me think back to my first experience in a band. It was named “Movin’ The Pharmacy”; we were a cover band made up of Southern Indiana college students, with a couple of non-college students thrown in for good measure.

The band line-up looked like this. Richard was a Brit who was significantly older than the rest of us and had a ton of experience. He was one of our guitarists, a principal vocalist, and our primary technical engineer, had a very dry sense of humor, and was panicked before every show. I haven’t seen him for six years and miss him terribly.

Garett was our lead guitarist and another vocalist. He was a young punk, with several tattoos and piercings where no man should be pierced. We didn’t really get along very well, but tolerated each other.

Mike was the drummer and was about 10 years older than us young kids. He had solid chops and wasn’t flashy, but was a very cool guy and laid down a solid beat. He had two little girls that came to most of the shows with his wife, and they loved dancing in front of us. Even when we were covering the more edgy alternative songs. That's the cool thing about little kids. Even songs filled with angst are fun for them to dance to.

Brian was our bassist and went by the nickname “Cool B”. He was a scrawny kid with glasses but was a solid bass player and was a lot of fun. We were often on opposite sides of the stage and occasionally took turns throwing snack food at each other in an attempt to catch it in our mouths without missing a beat or a note.

Emily was a secondary guitarist and primary vocalist. She was hot, blonde, and had a great voice. I understand that she’s in the greater Cincinnati area and making quite a name for herself on the local music scene. She was one of my best friends in college but we weren’t very good at maintaining the friendship after the band broke up. I think it had a lot to do with me being a womanizing jerk, and I think I sort-of broke her heart. I’m not sure how she would categorize the end of our friendship, but I can tell you she told me at one point that she wanted a deeper relationship with me and I shook my head and told her it would never work. In reality, I think I was trying to get the milk without buying the cow. I miss her terribly.

Then there is me. I was the multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, doing both lead and harmony vocals. I was responsible for the keyboard programming but also played rhythm guitar and, on one song, the drums.

As far as band experiences go, I couldn’t have asked for anything more. I was very close with both Richard and Emily, and together we formed the lead trio of the group. Sometimes we’d do acoustic shows with just the three of us, and we were fortunate to be the first group to play at an eclectic restaurant and coffee house called Jungle Mornings in Evansville, Indiana.

A typical gig would go like this. For a 9 PM stage time we’d arrive at 5 or so to start setting up. We’d do about an hour load-in, spend an hour setting up equipment and running cables, then an hour tuning, mic-ing and adjusting the front of house sound. With an hour left before show time, Richard would start to panic. Something would be terribly askew. You could count on a glitch in the front of house sound or one of the midi controllers acting temperamental or one of the 4 million cables had a short. With 20 minutes to show time, we’d have it as good as it was going to get and would all exit the stage to go for a smoke. Emily and I would stand outside the back of the venue smoking clove cigarettes and doing vocal warm-up exercises. With the cigarettes finished, we’d do some stretching then had back to the wings of the stage.

The lights would go out, and the one original tune, pre-programmed and run remotely by a backstage midi-controller, would waft from the stacks. It was a song I had written called “Infanticide” and it was just as eerie as the title suggest. A waltz in the key of D-Minor on a music box that sounded, as Garrett once remarked, “…like dead children.” We’d sneak out while it played and launch into something aggressive as the last music box chord died away.

3 solid hours later, with only one 10 or 15 minute break, we’d do the last song for the night. We’d be all soaked with sweat (except for Emily, who would merely “glisten”) and high on the energy of the music but also exhausted. We’d mill about for about 15 minutes talking to people who came to the show and then around 12:30 start tearing down. It would be 2 AM before we were done loading equipment back into the trucks, and usually we were quite hungry.

If the show was in Evansville we’d head to JoJo’s, our favorite all night diner. We always had the same waitress, Maria, and she came to expect us between 2:30 and 3 after our shows. She knew us by name, knew what we liked, and would often sit a spell to talk about how the gig went. We’d sit and talk about the best parts of the show and what needed some work in our next rehearsals. We’d laugh about how the stage was covered in Crunch “n” Munch as a result of Cool B and I throwing it at each other, or how everyone loved it when Emily sang the entire song of 99 Luftbaloons in German. We’d be amused (and a little jealous) how all the girls made goo-goo eyes at Mike, the only married one among us.

Before long, it would be 4 am, we’d be worn out and full, and we’d head our separate ways to bed. I’d fall asleep with a smile on my face, feeling like the luckiest guy in the world to be able to do this.

It’s been almost 5 years since I played live and twice that since the Pharmacy last played. I’m so thankful that God gave me the opportunity to experience that thrill when I was younger. I hope to have the opportunity to experience that again. I may never be famous, but for a while I got to be on stage every weekend. That was the next best thing.