Dogpark - part 4 (1997-1999)

Mark Cross finished mixing the last 4 songs of The Good Box for us, and we sent the album around town. By this point Sherri and I had a monthly gig at the Coconut Teaszer. Dorian was no longer playing with us, but one night we met a female drummer named Cec. She was a studio musician and offered to play with us. We liked her a lot and she fit right in. We even started rehearsing in her house in Santa Monica. Len from the Coconut Teaszer was always trying to hook us up with industry people, and he introduced us to a record executive at EMI named Bob Thiele. Bob was a really nice guy who liked us enough to record a couple demos in his home studio. These he gave to his friend, producer John Philip Shenale. He liked them so much he offered to record a new demo for us in his own studio in Studio City. This was the beginning of a beautiful working relationship. Phil, as he preferred to be called, had quite a track record. He had produced Tori Amos, Willy DeVille plus countless others, and had even toured as keyboardist for The Beach Boys. He loved our avante-garde approach to song writing and took an active role in encouraging and arranging our songs. Plus he was a hell of a fun guy to hang out with...very intelligent and funny. He recorded my guitar through a Vox AC-30 amplifier. It was the first time I had ever heard my guitar sound like it had been professionally recorded. We did 4 songs at first, including Christi (heard above), which we all felt was our best shot at a single. Next he enlisted his own manager, Gary Gunton, to shop the demo around. We also started playing at more clubs other than the Coconut Teaszer, including a special showcase they put together for us at The Dragonfly. This got us interest and meetings with several major labels, including EMI, Geffen, Capitol, and Sony. Phil and Gary accompanied us on many of these meetings, and while we got lots of enthusiastic feedback, in the end none of them felt they could market us. We were simply too diverse, unfocused, not mainstream enough. Eventually Cec left the band to move to San Francisco. Meanwhile we continued to record two more songs with Phil. Shawn Nourse was a drummer from a fellow Coconut Teaszer band we were friendly with, called Milk The Cow. He offered to fill in on drums, and soon we were rehearsing in his studio in North Hollywood. He was another great, professional drummer, and we continued gigging at the Teaszer. Unfortunately the song writing had run out of steam. Six years of grinding away in the LA music scene had pretty much sapped our creative energy. Finally in December of 1999 we decided to call it quits. Within a year Kaitlyn and I got married and moved to the Santa Cruz mountains. Sherri and Shawn also got married and now live in LA with their young son Nolan.