Hello, Farewell Scalar

In 2006, my friend *d.auge asked me to form a band. Farewell Scalar quickly found a bass player, struggled to find a drummer, played a handful of gigs, and called it quits during my first semester of grad school after having moved two hours south to Chicago, which I think was a letdown to d. As time has passed, it's become so for me.

Fortunately, it was right around the time Scalar formed when d. began amassing recording equipment. We wrote most songs collaboratively, and we wrote quickly. And as we did so, we recorded what we came up with. Working like that didn't always produce gold, but what it did produce always felt fun, fresh, and energetic. 

So when we began discussing recording an album, we were looking for ways to promote it (MySpace had done a lot of the work gathering those who might be interested in the type of music we were making--mostly lo-fi, Pavement-esque indie pop). d. came up with the idea of writing 30 songs for the first 30 fans to pre-order the album. We called the project The 30. And we went to work.

Cactus Club, Milwaukee WI, May 2007: d.auge and me

But, as I mentioned, grad school happened. Chicago happened, with all of it's cheap concerts and comedy shows and bars and cute girls and new people to collaborate with. So hours--days--worth of The 30 recordings went unfinished (a missing vocal here, a missing bassline there). Beyond that, I found excuse after excuse not to come up to Milwaukee to work on the album proper (although bits and pieces of that managed to get recorded too).

I had become too busy for Farewell Scalar. Or I thought I had. Or maybe I had always thought I had been too busy. Listening back to the sessions for The 30, you can hear hints that I might think I'm better than this band picked up by the mics between takes. Following a performance I obviously didn't approve of, I'll say something along the lines of, "Well that's gonna be some sucker's song. Sorry," pitying whichever fan was going to receive the free track. At another point, about an hour and half into a recording, we begin a new song only to have me bring it to a halt to ask if d. "has to play every song with your fucking wah pedal turned on?" I was 24. I thought I was a good guitar player and a better songwriter. I was a self-important shit.

What's funny is I remember having a great time working on The 30. I just didn't show it. Maybe subconsciously I didn't want to give any weight to what we were doing. I was about to go to grad school. I was about to get a real girlfriend (or at least a girlfriend who refused to add me on Myspace but insisted I add her cat's page, most likely because she didn't want anyone to know about me because I wasn't actually her boyfriend but the guy she was cheating on her boyfriend with). Maybe she would be my future wife. And I was going to get a real job. Or at least prepare to become the type of person who could get a real job. I was in no place to put any serious focus or effort into a silly band.

Stonefly Brewery, Milwaukee WI, April 2007: Corey, the drummer. Although he doesn't drum on any of The 30 sessions, so there's little else to add about him in this piece. Even so, I will add, he had a good sense of humor.

Five years later in 2011, I was about a year into trying to upload any old material I had collected under the Stir Up Your Grey Matter banner to a then new Stir Up Bandcamp site. The 30 came to mind. I began to record those missing basslines etc. and waited for d. to record his missing vocals. This time around, it was d. who had become too busy for Farewell Scalar. And so, again, the recordings sat and waited.

Now, it's 2016, and I don't know what's changed, but The 30 is finally being finished and soon will be available on the Bandcamp page. I'm married and have a step-daughter and that real, grown-up job grad school kind of mostly didn't prepare me for. I have less time than ever, but somehow more for finally getting this thing finalized. d. is, as far as I can tell, pretty much same as he ever was, but now somehow too has been able to scrounge together time to return to this now decade old project that was meant to be a quickly pulled together promotion for a band that was going to move on to more serious things.

Stonefly Brewery, Milwaukee WI, April 2007: d.auge and a tiny bit of bassplayer Jim, who wrote some great basslines, and was kind and always generous with a smile and homemade guitar pedals, but also does not appear on The 30 sessions.

The only obvious reason for this (other than the fact that I hate leaving things unfinished) is tied directly to the reason I was so flippant and quick to agitation while doing the original recording. Which, itself, ties directly to the type of person I became when I drank whiskey in college--the kind who was quick to leap from utter silliness to mocking cruelty because, in that state of mind they seemed very much the same. Both extremes felt warm and comforting and put me in a space where I at least believed I was witty and fearless and where I (again, at least believed) I was pushing myself as much as I was others' buttons. And in that state of mind, both extremes seemed very, very pleasurable. I could act like a self-important shit, but what was maybe worse than even that was that I kind of believed people wanted me to act that way. 

I can't speak for d.'s recent availability to finish this project, but I think there's a bit of that silly, old, cruel whiskey drinker in him as well. The collaborative work between the two of us always created a similar juxtaposition where the work felt frivolous but also important and where I could be cavalier about the process while still taking pride in it (at least enough pride to get up in arms over a stupid wah pedal). The self-important 24-year-old shit, d.'s earnestness, the clashing egos, the willingness to try things and experiment, everything, is what made Farewell Scalar as fun as it was. Listening to the completed songs ten years later, I'm proud of them for what they are, not dismissive of them for what they aren't.

All in all, The 30 turned into about 60 completed songs, double the intended goal. All of which we'll be putting up on the site (complimented by about a dozen actual album demos and improvs, a few of which actually even include Jim and Corey!). And each of them, including those I wouldn't call my favorites, has its charm and it's little moments of swagger and wit and silliness and even sometimes seriousness, with some songs as short as a minute straddling a lilting and jangly wistfulness and a pummeling aggressive battery.

With our audience dwindled due to MySpace becoming a post-apocalyptic wasteland of a website, I doubt very many people will find their way to these songs. But it's been worth going through the process that The 30 probably needed to go through not only for it to be complete but for me to fully enjoy it. At least I can get it off my to-do list.

Archive Vol. I will be available for download March 30 at stirupyourgreymatter.bandcamp.com.

In the meantime, you can listen to/download some other Scalar tracks  here and Archive samples here.

*UPDATE (3/22/16): d.auge says the band was actually my idea. If this is true (I'm questing my memory now), this would make me an even bigger shit than stated in the above post.