[Updated: I decided to add some more information after recalling some more memories]
So, years ago, I think even before the Wasteland Zombies even started our rehearsals for the reunion shows, I had set up on Reverbnation, pages for all of the bands that I've played in ( - Reverbnation is an American online platform that provides tools and opportunities for musicians to manage their careers - ). Those bands are, K.G. Wolfe (1985 to 1989), Dreamkick (1990 - 1993) and the Wasteland Zombies (1993 to 1994 and then 2015 to present)
Also a few years ago, a friend of mine, Timmy Taylor, had offered to 'rip' my old cassettes that had K.G. Wolfe live tracks and Dreamkick, studio recordings and some live tracks and then our Wasteland Zombies tracks from back then, but that page is frequently updated and has our recently recorded tracks and a couple of demo tracks.
K.G. Wolfe: It was in the Spring of my first year at George St. Junior High school (now called George St. Middle School), that all classes had attended the George St. Jr High Variety show. This was an annual event put on by the students and school and held at Fredericton's Playhouse. During that variety show, there were a couple of students who performed Van Halen's 'Jump'. From what I recall, it was only a drummer and I believe a guitarist, possibly a bass player. But they had no singer, so it was more or less an instrumental rendition of the Van Halen mega hit.
For some reason that performance really stuck with me, I guess you could say that I was inspired by that performance.
So it was in grade 8 that I began to search out musicians. One of them I found right in my homeroom class and he was Scott Buffet. Scott soon became my best friend through Jr. High school years and while we didn't find any other musicians at George st. Scott had some friends in New Maryland (where his family lived) who he was jamming with, so we soon organized a practice that had Scott on Drums, Stephen Farrel on guitar and Mike Rogers on Guitar. We jammed quite a bit, playing covers like Iron Maiden's 'The Trooper', Metallica's 'Seek & Destroy', ugh, embarrassing to say so, but Poison's 'Talk Dirty to Me' (Hey! We were stuck for tunes that anyone knew how to play!!). But we also started to write originals. it was ALWAYS in my heart to do originals, I felt it was important. I had been writing lyrics from around grade 6 and through grade 7.
Not too many months into the New Year of 1986 (I Believe), we auditioned an original song 'Someday' for the George St. Jr High Variety show AND, we got in!
So our first performance as 'K.G. Wolfe' - The name thought up by Scott, which he explained was a fictional character (like Eddy from Iron Maiden), that had been a civil war soldier and had been killed in a battle and his ghastly form would forever haunt the World (or whatever the neighbourhood in which K.G, Wolfe was performing). The band didn't have a bass player and we went out there as a 4 piece.
The first show was in the afternoon in front of our peers, one 3 minute song goes by super fast, so while it was frightening to be on that massive playhouse stage, we did alright and got a huge round of applause from our peers. That evening was the 'big show', as our parents and siblings made up the audience. From what I recall we did pretty good and that was our induction into the World of playing gigs and having a blast on stage. I'm not sure what the capacity of the playhouse is or was then, but it was over 500 people, so that was a definite high point to start out our 'careers' in music.
Later in 1988, I met former Neighbourhood Watch bassist Rob Melvin and then local guitar god Bryce Mclellan who joined up and turned that immature innocent Junior High School band into a crossover, Metal/Hardcore band that was actually starting to kick some serious ass!
K.G. Wolfe went on to play school dances, a couple parties, a showcase at Fredericton High School, from which we were picked to do a live performance during an 'Air Band' contest at FHS.
Fredericton's Indie record label producer and indie music promoter Peter Rowan, then allowed us to play some shows under his management and got us a gig at the annual Fredericton New Years Eve celebration festival 'First Night' and also a spot in the Maritime Independent Music Festival, that had bands like Lizard, Jellyfish Babies, Neighbourhood Watch, No Means No, SCUM and many others.
I also, with the help of Nick Oliver from Neighbourhood watch, put on my first show at the Capital Exhibit Center, Xmas Metal Bash '88, was to see K.G. Wolfe open for Halifax's Adrenalin and another band I can't remember who it was now. But it was ill fated, the bands from out of town got their wires crossed and didn't show up, thinking that the show was the NEXT weekend (this was of course WELL before the Internet, emails and probably even FAX machines!)
In 1989, the band broke up when I moved out to Victoria BC at the age of 17.
Dreamkick: In around 1990, while hanging out with my friend and room mate Mark Wall and local radio DJ Paul Yavis, I had heard that a guy out in Lincoln that I had met a couple of times through my friend Mike Fields, was looking for some people for a band, but he wasn't sure if I'd be into it, because he had attended a couple of K.G. Wolfe shows and knew that I was into much harder Metal than the project he was planning to put together.
I ended up meeting with Peter Gillies and we talked about his plans. He wanted to put together a tight hard rocking outfit that would play mostly covers, but he also wanted to do originals and THAT was the single most important thing for me. I may have been 'selling' myself out by doing covers of 'Glam' Metal bands, but as long as we were doing originals, that's all I cared about... Well, not all I cared about, I wanted to perform as best as I could. Dreamkick's modis operandi was taking the 'Classics' of Rock and making them as 'heavy' as we could. Peter dubbed the band "The Wildest Motherfunkers In The Maritimes"
Before long Dreamkick was born, that name coming from our guitarist Mike Dunn, who said we were "kickin' our dreams around".
The original line up of Dreamkick was, Mike Dunn - Guitars, Peter Gillies - Bass, Shawn King - Guitars, Pat Pelletier - Drums and myself.
We rehearsed our asses off, we built up a huge set that consisted of well over 30 songs, and began writing a few originals. We rehearsed in Peter's Grandma's basement and Pat Pelleiter's parents house basement and in the 'lighthouse' on the Gillies property We didn't have a PA or anything fancy, but we practiced like we were playing a show, each and every time and we went through our set backwards and forwards.
Dreamkick's first show was at the Oromocto Community Center in 1991, we then played Ecole St. Anne (Centre Communautaire) in Fredericton and then we entered 'Trina's' Battle of the Bands.
Trina's was a pub that was located in Kings place in downtown Fredericton. A yoga shop and waffle house are where the pub was today.
We won that battle of the bands and that saw us win some recording time at Lloyd Hanson's 'Reel North' studios as well as 25 cases of beer... Now, this is hard to believe I know, but it's the truth.. The band thought that the "25 cases of beer" was for the band, but when we went to pick it up, it was 25 cases of beer for EACH BAND MEMBER!!!! UNfreakin' believable!
I ended up bootlegging a lot of mine while on the road with Terry Daly, who was doing sound for Theresa Malenfant's blues tour that Summer, I did the lighting for those shows.
Dreamkick went on to play a lot of shows all over the Maritime's.
Peter had rigged up a video editing system and threw together a music video for our song 'This Means War' and had sent it off to MuchMusic, who had played it a number of times, what that number was, I don't know. We caught it once or rather the tail end of it once and had a few friends who had seen it as well.
Also of note with Dreamkick, we did release an indie album, on cassette, that was titled 'Naked Left The Bones', all of the tracks were recorded at 'Reel North Studios' on Fredericton's North Side.
Dreamkick also had two tracks appear on a local indie release by local musician Jon Fiddler. This compilation album of Fredericton bands and musicians was co-produced by the hair product company 'Joico'. It included artists such as, Geordie Haley, Brent Mason, Michael Doherty and Fredericton's power house of Metal, 'Power Syndrome and was released on CD!
In 1993 I left the band, as I was not too happy with a couple of things going on in the band.
That was when I met Ray Robinson and Glen Brown who had been playing some gigs around at the time and were looking for a singer.
That's when The Wasteland Zombies were formed. We went on to win another Battle of the Bands at Trina's (We didn't get beer or recording time for that one, in fact, I don't remember what that prize was... Possibly money that we put towards recording our debut 'album' self released on cassette called, 'The Town Fair').
I do believe thinking about it further that we did get some cash from the Trina's Battle of the Bands, this along with some T-Shirt sales went in to the recording of 'The Town Fair', which was recorded on Prospect st. in a storage unit that Terry Daly And Dave Campbell had been renting to house their P.A. and lighting gear, their company was called ACE Productions and since nearly our first show with Dreamkick, Dave and Terry had been kind enough to take me under their wing, learning the ropes of live sound and lighting production. They had also been renting the place out as a rehearsal spot. With all the gear they had there, we set up a studio and though it was January and the front of the storage space had no heat, Dave Campbell braved the cold to record our album.
While playing a show in Saint John, New Brunswick, unbeknownst to us, Canadian Blues rocker David GoGo was playing a club just down the street and his EMI records rep while GoGo was on a break went for a walk and ducked into the bar that we were playing.
The next day, back in Fredericton, I was helping to set up for David GoGo's show at the Attic, a bar adjacent to where 'Klub Khrome' is now.
While setting up, that EMI rep showed up and came to me and said, "Were you not playing a show in SJ last night? You guys were really good!"... I was kinda in shock... An EMI rep?? We were "really good"???? I got on the phone with Ray and told him to get to the Attic right away with our album.
So, we got an album to this EMI rep, but after a couple of months, when I got in touch with him, he said he liked what we were doing, but we needed a better recording.... But that was not to be, as I left the band in the Summer of 1994 to begin a new life in Vancouver BC, not to come back to live in my hometown until 2012.
Of course in 2015 is when the dead were raised and The Wasteland Zombies were back playing live shows... The rest as they say, is history... Still in the making!
So, here's the links to those Reverbnation pages:
K,G, Wolfe: https://www.reverbnation.com/kgwolfe - Just remember that we were like 15/16 years of age here! recordings done on 'boom boxes' and a personal mini cassette recorder, nothing digital here!
Dreamkick: https://www.reverbnation.com/dreamkick
The Wasteland Zombies: https://www.reverbnation.com/thewastelandzombies
So, years ago, I think even before the Wasteland Zombies even started our rehearsals for the reunion shows, I had set up on Reverbnation, pages for all of the bands that I've played in ( - Reverbnation is an American online platform that provides tools and opportunities for musicians to manage their careers - ). Those bands are, K.G. Wolfe (1985 to 1989), Dreamkick (1990 - 1993) and the Wasteland Zombies (1993 to 1994 and then 2015 to present)
Also a few years ago, a friend of mine, Timmy Taylor, had offered to 'rip' my old cassettes that had K.G. Wolfe live tracks and Dreamkick, studio recordings and some live tracks and then our Wasteland Zombies tracks from back then, but that page is frequently updated and has our recently recorded tracks and a couple of demo tracks.
K.G. Wolfe: It was in the Spring of my first year at George St. Junior High school (now called George St. Middle School), that all classes had attended the George St. Jr High Variety show. This was an annual event put on by the students and school and held at Fredericton's Playhouse. During that variety show, there were a couple of students who performed Van Halen's 'Jump'. From what I recall, it was only a drummer and I believe a guitarist, possibly a bass player. But they had no singer, so it was more or less an instrumental rendition of the Van Halen mega hit.
For some reason that performance really stuck with me, I guess you could say that I was inspired by that performance.
So it was in grade 8 that I began to search out musicians. One of them I found right in my homeroom class and he was Scott Buffet. Scott soon became my best friend through Jr. High school years and while we didn't find any other musicians at George st. Scott had some friends in New Maryland (where his family lived) who he was jamming with, so we soon organized a practice that had Scott on Drums, Stephen Farrel on guitar and Mike Rogers on Guitar. We jammed quite a bit, playing covers like Iron Maiden's 'The Trooper', Metallica's 'Seek & Destroy', ugh, embarrassing to say so, but Poison's 'Talk Dirty to Me' (Hey! We were stuck for tunes that anyone knew how to play!!). But we also started to write originals. it was ALWAYS in my heart to do originals, I felt it was important. I had been writing lyrics from around grade 6 and through grade 7.
Not too many months into the New Year of 1986 (I Believe), we auditioned an original song 'Someday' for the George St. Jr High Variety show AND, we got in!
Your's truly on the night of K.G. Wolfe's very first show - Age 14/15
So our first performance as 'K.G. Wolfe' - The name thought up by Scott, which he explained was a fictional character (like Eddy from Iron Maiden), that had been a civil war soldier and had been killed in a battle and his ghastly form would forever haunt the World (or whatever the neighbourhood in which K.G, Wolfe was performing). The band didn't have a bass player and we went out there as a 4 piece.
The first show was in the afternoon in front of our peers, one 3 minute song goes by super fast, so while it was frightening to be on that massive playhouse stage, we did alright and got a huge round of applause from our peers. That evening was the 'big show', as our parents and siblings made up the audience. From what I recall we did pretty good and that was our induction into the World of playing gigs and having a blast on stage. I'm not sure what the capacity of the playhouse is or was then, but it was over 500 people, so that was a definite high point to start out our 'careers' in music.
Later in 1988, I met former Neighbourhood Watch bassist Rob Melvin and then local guitar god Bryce Mclellan who joined up and turned that immature innocent Junior High School band into a crossover, Metal/Hardcore band that was actually starting to kick some serious ass!
K.G. Wolfe went on to play school dances, a couple parties, a showcase at Fredericton High School, from which we were picked to do a live performance during an 'Air Band' contest at FHS.
Fredericton's Indie record label producer and indie music promoter Peter Rowan, then allowed us to play some shows under his management and got us a gig at the annual Fredericton New Years Eve celebration festival 'First Night' and also a spot in the Maritime Independent Music Festival, that had bands like Lizard, Jellyfish Babies, Neighbourhood Watch, No Means No, SCUM and many others.
I also, with the help of Nick Oliver from Neighbourhood watch, put on my first show at the Capital Exhibit Center, Xmas Metal Bash '88, was to see K.G. Wolfe open for Halifax's Adrenalin and another band I can't remember who it was now. But it was ill fated, the bands from out of town got their wires crossed and didn't show up, thinking that the show was the NEXT weekend (this was of course WELL before the Internet, emails and probably even FAX machines!)
In 1989, the band broke up when I moved out to Victoria BC at the age of 17.
Dreamkick: In around 1990, while hanging out with my friend and room mate Mark Wall and local radio DJ Paul Yavis, I had heard that a guy out in Lincoln that I had met a couple of times through my friend Mike Fields, was looking for some people for a band, but he wasn't sure if I'd be into it, because he had attended a couple of K.G. Wolfe shows and knew that I was into much harder Metal than the project he was planning to put together.
I ended up meeting with Peter Gillies and we talked about his plans. He wanted to put together a tight hard rocking outfit that would play mostly covers, but he also wanted to do originals and THAT was the single most important thing for me. I may have been 'selling' myself out by doing covers of 'Glam' Metal bands, but as long as we were doing originals, that's all I cared about... Well, not all I cared about, I wanted to perform as best as I could. Dreamkick's modis operandi was taking the 'Classics' of Rock and making them as 'heavy' as we could. Peter dubbed the band "The Wildest Motherfunkers In The Maritimes"
Before long Dreamkick was born, that name coming from our guitarist Mike Dunn, who said we were "kickin' our dreams around".
The original line up of Dreamkick was, Mike Dunn - Guitars, Peter Gillies - Bass, Shawn King - Guitars, Pat Pelletier - Drums and myself.
We rehearsed our asses off, we built up a huge set that consisted of well over 30 songs, and began writing a few originals. We rehearsed in Peter's Grandma's basement and Pat Pelleiter's parents house basement and in the 'lighthouse' on the Gillies property We didn't have a PA or anything fancy, but we practiced like we were playing a show, each and every time and we went through our set backwards and forwards.
Dreamkick's first show was at the Oromocto Community Center in 1991, we then played Ecole St. Anne (Centre Communautaire) in Fredericton and then we entered 'Trina's' Battle of the Bands.
Oromocto newspaper article on Dreamkick's first show
Trina's was a pub that was located in Kings place in downtown Fredericton. A yoga shop and waffle house are where the pub was today.
We won that battle of the bands and that saw us win some recording time at Lloyd Hanson's 'Reel North' studios as well as 25 cases of beer... Now, this is hard to believe I know, but it's the truth.. The band thought that the "25 cases of beer" was for the band, but when we went to pick it up, it was 25 cases of beer for EACH BAND MEMBER!!!! UNfreakin' believable!
I ended up bootlegging a lot of mine while on the road with Terry Daly, who was doing sound for Theresa Malenfant's blues tour that Summer, I did the lighting for those shows.
Dreamkick went on to play a lot of shows all over the Maritime's.
Peter had rigged up a video editing system and threw together a music video for our song 'This Means War' and had sent it off to MuchMusic, who had played it a number of times, what that number was, I don't know. We caught it once or rather the tail end of it once and had a few friends who had seen it as well.
Also of note with Dreamkick, we did release an indie album, on cassette, that was titled 'Naked Left The Bones', all of the tracks were recorded at 'Reel North Studios' on Fredericton's North Side.
Dreamkick also had two tracks appear on a local indie release by local musician Jon Fiddler. This compilation album of Fredericton bands and musicians was co-produced by the hair product company 'Joico'. It included artists such as, Geordie Haley, Brent Mason, Michael Doherty and Fredericton's power house of Metal, 'Power Syndrome and was released on CD!
The 3 'albums' released by each of the bands I've been in. All indie releases
In 1993 I left the band, as I was not too happy with a couple of things going on in the band.
That was when I met Ray Robinson and Glen Brown who had been playing some gigs around at the time and were looking for a singer.
That's when The Wasteland Zombies were formed. We went on to win another Battle of the Bands at Trina's (We didn't get beer or recording time for that one, in fact, I don't remember what that prize was... Possibly money that we put towards recording our debut 'album' self released on cassette called, 'The Town Fair').
I do believe thinking about it further that we did get some cash from the Trina's Battle of the Bands, this along with some T-Shirt sales went in to the recording of 'The Town Fair', which was recorded on Prospect st. in a storage unit that Terry Daly And Dave Campbell had been renting to house their P.A. and lighting gear, their company was called ACE Productions and since nearly our first show with Dreamkick, Dave and Terry had been kind enough to take me under their wing, learning the ropes of live sound and lighting production. They had also been renting the place out as a rehearsal spot. With all the gear they had there, we set up a studio and though it was January and the front of the storage space had no heat, Dave Campbell braved the cold to record our album.
While playing a show in Saint John, New Brunswick, unbeknownst to us, Canadian Blues rocker David GoGo was playing a club just down the street and his EMI records rep while GoGo was on a break went for a walk and ducked into the bar that we were playing.
The next day, back in Fredericton, I was helping to set up for David GoGo's show at the Attic, a bar adjacent to where 'Klub Khrome' is now.
While setting up, that EMI rep showed up and came to me and said, "Were you not playing a show in SJ last night? You guys were really good!"... I was kinda in shock... An EMI rep?? We were "really good"???? I got on the phone with Ray and told him to get to the Attic right away with our album.
The Wasteland Zombies circa 1994 - LtoR: Glen Brown, Rich O'Neil, Ray Robinson, Me, Chris Storey
So, we got an album to this EMI rep, but after a couple of months, when I got in touch with him, he said he liked what we were doing, but we needed a better recording.... But that was not to be, as I left the band in the Summer of 1994 to begin a new life in Vancouver BC, not to come back to live in my hometown until 2012.
Of course in 2015 is when the dead were raised and The Wasteland Zombies were back playing live shows... The rest as they say, is history... Still in the making!
So, here's the links to those Reverbnation pages:
K,G, Wolfe: https://www.reverbnation.com/kgwolfe - Just remember that we were like 15/16 years of age here! recordings done on 'boom boxes' and a personal mini cassette recorder, nothing digital here!
Dreamkick: https://www.reverbnation.com/dreamkick
The Wasteland Zombies: https://www.reverbnation.com/thewastelandzombies
Good stuff Chris. I enjoy reading these 👍
ReplyDeleteGood stuff Chris. I enjoy reading these stories👍
ReplyDelete