We released our sophomore album, Honey in the Hive on this very day 18 years ago: August 27, 2002. Back when records came out on Tuesday. Back when people bought records (not that many people bought ours). Back when “putting out a record” usually meant you were probably only putting out a compact disc.
Honey was our first of two LPs for Yep Roc Records. We were on the same label as Nick Lowe for a few years. That blew our goddamn minds. Yep Roc liked the first record. And someone from the label saw us play to four people (including the Yep Roc staffer and his date) at the Local 506 in Chapel Hill, N.C. the previous summer and likely recognized the way we brought the same heat to an audience of four as we would have for our usual audience of seven. That’s just showbiz.
Honey came out in the era of Interpol and the Strokes and the hundreds of bands that brazenly attempted to look and sound just like them. That was not our lane. So while we were largely ignored, Honey did put us on the guitar-pop/power-pop/record-geek-rock map in the tiniest of ways. Which basically meant we started to draw a dozen or so dudes everywhere we went.
Always dudes. Always. Dudes.
I am extremely proud of the work we did on that record. Bret and Scott each came in armed with a handful of crushers, which we “fine-tuned” in late 2001 in our rehearsal space above the old Green St. For Pets consignment shop on Market St. in Olde City ($50 a month AND it came with a secret parking space out back). Ed played lots of tasty guitar throughout the record, and I was finally starting to figure out when it was appropriate to go bananas like Keith Moon and when to just stay outta the way and let the song have some space. We were four dudes who had a fair amount in common musically (Big Star, Beach Boys, Replacements, Robyn Hitchcock, the Kinks, Cheap Trick, Nick Lowe... you get the idea) and I think we got the synthesis just about right, with a lot of help from Brian McTear and Thom Monahan, who engineered and produced, respectively. Not too jangly, not too messy, not too pretty, always about the song.
Two of my TBL faves are on that record: Scott’s “What Would it Take?” (which, inexplicably, I don’t think we played live but once or twice) and Bret’s “Bought Your Ghost.” Thinking back on those days, one particular line from “Bought Your Ghost” rings painfully true: “Little victories/And all the stunning disappointments.”
To wit:
We put out a record out on a REAL LABEL who sprung for the digipak packaging! We’re getting set to play a crazy hometown record release show at the Khyber before leaving for a tour later that week! Then the van gets totaled on 76 en route to the Khyber.
We got a great review in Rolling Stone! One week later we’re performing before a handful of people in some shithole in Columbus, Ohio G.G. Allin would’ve thought twice about playing, and we got paid in a 12-pack of Miller High Life. The agent STILL wanted his 10 percent. (1 ½ beers?)
We’re finally doing TV! A local show hosted by a meteorologist. We played in front of the doppler radar and they made us play quietly, a completely foreign concept to us back then.
We landed a great opening slot that paid halfway decent touring with Los Straitjackets! The most enthusiastic reaction we got from their crowd was a dude in a wheelchair heckling us.
You get the idea.
The best of times. The not so best of times. A lot of violent hangovers. A lot of Red Roof Inns.
But I’d give anything to be playing that shithole in Columbus right now for a case of Miller High Life.
P.B., 8/27/2020