Sometime in the first part of 2007, my friend Ben, who was fronting a pretty badass emo-ish old school power pop band called Cabrini Green asked me if I wanted to join the band and play keyboards. Even though I had never played keyboards in a band before, I figured it couldn’t be too hard, so I said sure. Since the band was looking to change directions to more of a traditional rock ‘n’ roll sound, and since I was coming on board (not to mention that gangster ass black dudes in Chicago were sending Ben hate mail for using the name of their “projects”) we changed the name from Cabrini Green to Casing the Promisedland, but we still played some of the old songs, since they were fucking badass and all.
The first CTP show at Off Limits.
Since I didn’t really want to spend a bunch of money on a nice keyboard, I just bought a cheap ass MIDI controller and thought it’d be a good idea to just run it through my laptop at the shows. I tracked down a pirated copy of Reason, since that was the only program I remembered actually being able to use from my MIDI classes in college and we practiced a few times and booked a show at Off Limits. Of course, about the second song of that first show, my computer froze and it took another 2 songs to reboot, but I just stood up there and played tambourine and acted like I was doing something and no one really noticed anyway. Not long after that we had gotten five pretty solid songs written and made our friend Chris Keene record us in the bedroom of his old duplex. We recorded the instruments live over a couple of days, and then Ben and Chris were gonna do the vocals, but for one reason or another they never really got around to it until more than a year later, in the spring of 2008. In the meantime we played a few shows but mainly just fucked off, not really writing any songs or doing anything worthwhile. We all played in other bands anyway, with Josh, Brandon and James doing Magdalena and me and Ben doing People of the Oaks, though sometimes two or even all three of these bands would play on the same show which was tight because we’d get twice as much bar tab.
At the Towne Lounge, Chico Bar Tour 2008
With the songs finally done, we put together an EP and put together the second annual Chico Bar Tour to sell it and play the songs off of it, and get drunk all week without spending a lot of money. The song above is from that EP. I don’t even know what it’s really called and I’m too lazy to get up and look on the CD cover, so I’ll just wager that it’s probably called “These Days” since that’s what the chorus says. This song sounds more like a Cabrini Green song than a lot of the other CTP stuff, but I always liked the hook and the simplicity of it, plus I didn’t really have to play too much on it so I got to just stand around and turn the knobs on my keyboard a bunch and look pro (a trick I learned from Josh Head). Anyways, after the second bar tour we pretty much decided to say fuck it and put the band out of commission, though Me, Ben and the old bass player from Cabrini Green are putting together a new action-movie themed band called Marked for Death. Our first show is March 5th at Normal St. Bar so be there or be somewhere else.
Photos by Matt Kiser, Cindy Aldana and Dain Sandoval
