Felix and Friends

Felix and Friends is a "band" I will always be in till the day I die...

The Early Days

Once upon a time I was a high school freshman taking a German class instead of Spanish or French like normal students. My "German name" in class that I picked out was Felix.

So I start playing music and recording songs. At first they are hilarious, weird, and sometimes unlistenable. Most of my early work was all about experimenting with different sounds and beats using unconventional methods of playing and recording to see if what came out would be cool. Some of it was. Especially the early work.

Sometimes friends would drop by as I was recording and they would add to the noise. In order to give them credit for their contribution I named the band Felix and Friends and the name stuck.

Real Music

About two years into the experiment in noise I started writing "normal" songs on the side. During this time the band's lineup changed more often than a baby gets its diaper changed. Each lineup played live at least once.

I can think of only a few truly "big" performances back then. The first was at a party during the summer of '02 or '03. That was with the first lineup of Felix and Friends. The next was at a concert put together by my then friend Barbra's boyfriend. The third performance was the most fun. Between 2002 and 2003 Felix and Friends always had at least one original member (excluding me) present. In 2004 I was the last original member left. 2005 was the year the very last lineup of Felix and Friends played together with me on guitar, Matt Somethingorother on bass and Fat Joe on drums. We played "Linus and Lucy" by Vince Guaraldi, the guy who did the music for Peanuts. Linus and Lucy is like the Peanuts theme song.

Around 2005 I had a number of really great songs inspired by a loss I'd suffered in the months before. I ended up playing around four solo shows in Orland Park and Lockport.

Collaborations

Between 2005 and 2006 I collaborated with a good friend from Loyola, Chris Benson. The music that came about from these sessions was amazing but its hard for two control freaks to work together. He was the founder of his band and I was the founder of mine. We couldn't merge the two so we kind of treated the deal as a two man supergroup.

In 2006 I performed once at an open mic night and it was the absolute worst performance of my life. I took a long time away from songwriting after that.

The Comeback

Now that I've pulled myself out of the malaise I was in I am busier and more productive than ever. There literally aren't enough hours in a day to finish what I'm trying to accomplish. At the moment I am writing and recording a 12 song album that I think is my best work yet. A lot of the songs are about that same things I wrote about when I first started writing good songs. Its strange to put myself back there. I'm also working 40 hours a week and I have another job in addition to that... oh and school too.

2009-02-25