My Musical Past – On Indie Spinner Rack

The most recent installment of the Indie Spinner Rack podcast (direct link here) is a special episode that features music by cartoonists and one of the songs included is “That Mile” by my old band, Come on Thunderchild. This is a great idea for a show–and one that I’m surprised hasn’t been done before. There are lots of cartoonists with musical backgrounds and/or side projects, the most notable being R. Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders, the Leisure Suits featuring Peter Bagge, Sof’ Boy artist Archer Prewitt’s band The Sea and the Cake, and James Kochalka Superstar. On this episode you’ll hear Alex Longstreth playing a Magnetic Fields song, a great cut from Scott Pilgrim cartoonist Brian Lee O’Malley, and a cut off of the self-titled Come on Thunderchild record from 1998.

At some point the full story of Come on Thunderchild, and its previous incarnation Electro-Luxe, (with whom I played bass only for the very tail end of its existence) will make its way to The Internets. In fact, I purchased the domain thunderluxe.com a while back with this thought in mind, and COT guitaris/keys-player/singer John Morris and I talked a bit about setting up a site, but with me busy with comics stuff and a new baby and John running his own business whilst also playing in what appears to be about thirty-five different bands in Charlotte, nothing’s really been done on that front…

Anyway… In the ISR episode, the host Charlito speculates that I abandoned music for comics, which wasn’t really the case. I of course wound up pursuing comics post-band, but that wasn’t really part of anything as well-considered as an agonizing “music vs. comics” life-path struggle. Regrettably, though, I have let my musical passion pretty much idle since then. Time-wise, there just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day to squeeze in comics and music, along with the usual day-to-day stuff. I did, though, recently purchase a vintage Harmony ukulele and have been really surprised at how much I’ve been enjoying playing it. At the moment I mainly know a weird combination of faux-Hawaiian songs like “Little Grass Shack” and “Tiny Bubbles,” and stuff I learned to sing to my daughter Marion (who thankfully can’t yet vocalize any objections to my off-key caterwauling) like “Baby on Board” by Homer Simpson’s barbershop group the B Sharps and “Rubber Ducky” (a kid’s song with some surprisingly non-standard chords).

A few images of band-related stuff from the days of yore:

The article above is from a 1995 issue of Billboard Magazine spotlighting the just pre-COT version of Electro-Luxe. Our then-drummer Michael Glaser would unfortunately succumb to a bad case of carpal tunnel and we later added David Kim (AKA “D.K.” or “Da Kid”) on drums. Pictured left to right: me, Randolph Lewis, John Morris, Michael Glaser.

I’m not exactly sure where this was taken, but I think this was maybe a rejected publicity still. Right to left, that’s: Randolph Lewis, me, John Morris, occasional percussionist Chris Krull, and David Kim.

This is on-stage at Charlotte’s Legendary Double Door Inn, where tons of famous folks including JJ Cale, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Matt “Guitar” Murphy, Buddy Guy and Willie Dixon have performed. If I recall correctly, this was my last performance with the band. Left to right: Randolph Lewis, me, David Kim, John Morris. I’ve actually got a recording of most of this show which includes a handful of newer songs that we put together after our record came out–something to consider putting online if we ever put thunderluxe.com together.