Love in the Time of Cthulhu

Another band that came and went this year was People of the Oaks, which was Ryan J. Prado on vocals, Ben Tietz and Matt Daughtery on guitar, Zach Ahern on bass and me on drums. We wrote a bunch of songs while Ben was on tour with Emery last summer or fall, and played our first show right before Christmas 2007. Over the first half of 2008 we played a few badass shows with a bunch of rad bands (Immad Wusif, Phantom Planet, Red Robot, Rykarda Parasol, Kaddisfly, History Invades). Our last show was in Willows back in July for my 10 year reunion, and I ended up spending the night in jail, which was pretty tight. Right after that Prado moved to Portland and the band officially fucked off. However, we have two complete, unreleased EPs finished and done. The first we recorded with Scott Barwick from Candy Apple at his house/studio. The second we did with Chris Keene at the Cutters Cathedral. I think Matt D. is trying to start a digital label to get these tracks on iTunes at some point, but in the mean time, above is a song from the Chris Keene EP called “Light Lion”, about the dude in the park named Light Lion. If you see Ryan Prado in Portland, tell him move back in to the Senator so we can sit on his window sill and drink Pabst and watch bums fight more. There’s another version of this song somewhere that had like 20 minutes of a bunch of us and our friends talking about shit at the end, as kind of an outro. It was pretty far out, but I think Im the only one who liked it so whatever.

One other thing that bears nothing noting (whoops! talk about Freudian slips…): myself and POTO bassist Zach Ahern have a new band called Cold Blue Mountain that sounds kind of like Pelican only sloppier, and our first show is February 13th at Paradise Lost in Chico with our homies the recently reunited Abominable Iron Sloth. Shit will be kind of heavy, if we aren’t all too wasted.

Photo by Harland