Band Needs Only Shitload of Equipment To Make It Big, Band Says
To become a huge, overnight success, local band Jerkey Herkey needs only a "shitload of amps, guitars, keyboards and a double-bass drum set", according to band spokesman and front man Jim Olson.
The band, which rehearses in bass player Rick Nikto's parent's basement, also claims that a rehearsal studio, roadie crew and, gig at the Village Youth Center would also aid in the all-but-assured success of the quartet.
"Seriously, we've got everything that a great band needs except some real equipment," said Olson as the band took its second break of the allotted half-hour rehearsal. "We've got all these great ideas, and if we could only get a horn section in here for chorus of 'I Love You, Babe'– I wrote that one myself – then that song would be a sure hit-single."
Herkey, famous around the campus of Bay High School in Bay Village, Ohio, has gained a cult following composed of friends of the band and this one graduate who keeps showing up and demanding that the band do Lynyrd Skynrd's seminal classic "Simple Kind of Man". But the band claims that lack of proper equipment and accommodations are making it difficult to break out into a wider audience.
"I've got this idea for a song where it starts out all mellow, then slowly builds and builds with a whole lot of timpani in the background and sort a foreboding mood that would be accomplished with a ten piece oboe section," said keyboardist Todd Taylor, "but there's just no way to get all those people on the stage we'll be using for the First Annual Bay Middle and High School Rock Fest."
"If they would give us a bigger stage," he continued, "and if [band director] Mr. [Craig] Day would let us sit in with the orchestra on a few rehearsals, I'm sure that we'd have it together in no time, but he won't, so it's like, how are we ever going to get started? It's like that song we wrote, 'My Girlfriend Loves Joseph Heller'."
But although the band current lacks record company interest, its four members have decided to press on in the hopes that it will some day have enough of a band-fund to pay for, among other things, a gospel choir, string quartet, a guitar tuner, and a store-bought microphone stand, instead of wasting money on post-gig libations and the late-night supper menu at 24-hour diner My Friends.
"The rock and roll lifestyle takes its toll, but we've got to put the music before our own personal interests," said Olson, eating at My Friends after an acoustic three-song gig at the Red Eye coffee shop. "This Denver omelet that I'm eating came right out of my allowance, but the $20 that the band earned went into our fund, which is probably up to $100."
The four musicians have also asked for help from friends and families to aid in the development of the band's infrastructure. Considerable progress was made over Christmas when lead singer Dave Donnely received a halogen lamp that was ultimately converted into a microphone stand.
Besides lack of musical accoutrements, the band says that all it will need, once a wall-of-sound speaker rig has been procured, is a manager. Douglas Taylor, father of keyboardist Todd, gave the band their first taste of fame at his insurance company's Summer Promotional, but has since abandoned the band in any sort of formal presence.
"I know that he said that in order to become a big hit he'll need a baby grand piano and a Hammond B-3 organ," said Taylor about his first-born son, "but for now he's just going to have to stick with that Casio with the karaoke feature that we got him for Christmas on his twelfth birthday."
Though members of Taylor's insurance company referred to the experience as "holocaustic", "embarrassing" and "jesuschristwhatthefuckwasthatman", members of the band claimed that all that stood between themselves and immortality was the lack of a saxophone to do the solo on the band's lone original composition of the night, "Interstellar Funk Space Jam No. 1".
"I think that gig went pretty well," said drummer Mike Diego. "There were, like, ten people who stayed in the tent where we were set up, which is a pretty good turnout for a first gig. Dave kind of blanked on the words to the chorus of 'Sweet Home Alabama'– he just couldn't remember how it started as well as most of the chorus – but overall things went pretty well, I'd say."
