In Memoriam: The Second Roster

The Second Roster:
May 1995 to June/July 1995
Recorded Time. Venues included Brass Works and the Maplewood Drive Inn.

• Tony Breeden - Vocals.
• Jamie "Jaymz" Nichols - Guitar
• Brett Green - Bass
• Mark Minear - Drums

With Davy Cain gone, along with some of our equipment, MIDIAN was effectively back to square one. 

Mark

I honestly can't remember how Mark Minear came to be our drummer. In fact, it was kind of an odd choice. My experience with Mark was that he was a vocalist and guitar player. In fact, I remember him playing the Battle of the Bands at the Smoot Theater in Parkersburg, WV, singing this ballad, "I Give My Love to You," to his girlfriend Becca (msp?). I remember it because he was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a vest, like he was a long-lost member of Poison,  and because he wrote the song himself, which I thought was kind of cool. Even so, his style of music was just very, very different from mine. This was the same Battle of the Bands where I saw Davy Cain's band play for the first time. My only other interaction with Mark was when I designed the logo for one of his bands, Tell-A-Tale. I recall that the terminus of the "e" in the logo extendee into a dragonish tail.

Regrouping 

I digress. I think we probably connected with him at BrassWorks' Open Mic Night. Anyway, next thing I knew, Mark was moving a drum set into Jamie's tin foil basement. Jamie got his dad to buy me another microphone. John Nichols became our unofficial manager around this point, because we simply did not have enough money to bankroll our dreams. 

I'm pretty sure, but not super confident, that we wrote "Wrapped in Foil" around this point. John Nichols thought we should've pitched the song to Reynolds Wrap. Considering that the song is a fictional tale about someone facing the electric chair, much in the vein of Metallica's "Ride the Lightning." I doubt the Reynolds Wrap execs would've went for it. I'm fairly sure that the verses were performed in the Jim Morrison/Glen Danzig vocal blend I was fond of, while the chorus was spit out in that Taime Down (Faster Pussycat) style I'd employed in "I'd Do It All Again."

We also wrote "Diana" and "Typical Nonsense Song" at this time.

"TNS" was a song we wrote to protest songs like Beck's "Loser," Stone Temple Pilot's "Creep," Nirvana's ironic "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and pretty much anything written by Rob Zombie during the 90s, where meaningless lyrics falsely hinting at deeper poetry were inserted into songs to make money. Vocally, it sounded mostly like  cross between Beck's vocalist and Faith No More's Mike Patton.

"Diana" was a love song, ostensibly about the moon, but really written anonymously about my lifelong Muse. Vocally, it was very much styled after Nirvana's Kurt Cobain.

Powerhouse 

Anyway Mark was only with us a couple months, but they were productive. Granted, most of our gigs centered around Brassworks. Monday Open Mic Nights at Brassworks eventually became Powerhouse Thursday Nights. Blessed Altar started Powerhouse as a local area metal band showcase. We tended to play Open Mic Mondays, while we waited for our turn at Powerhouse. Our first Powerhouse gig was May 25, 1995, a little less than a month after we lost Davy Cain. 

We'd been angling for a show at Brassworks from the very beginning. Our first set on Open Mic Night was supposed to be an audition for a headline show. In a lot of ways, that first Powerhouse gig was the culmination of all of our effort until that point. It was certainly our focus! We really didn't know where else to play, because no one else wanted a metal band.

Point in fact, we never did get a Friday/Saturday headline gig at Brassworks. Powerhouse was all they were willing to offer us.

After that show, we were stuck in limbo and everyone knew it. We didn't really have a plan. 

The Maplewood Drive Inn 

The Point Pleasant at the Maplewood Drive Inn was a welcome break from the doldrums. Brett arranged the whole thing. This was a country bar in the middle of nowhere but they hadn't had a live band in quite some time. We weren't sure how welcoming they'd be to a metal band. Our flier for that gig featured MIDIAN's bindrune. I really forget what it was supposed to represent; in the end, it didn't matter what it initially meant because it came to mean MIDIAN.

The Maplewood Drive Inn

Some joker played "Duelling Banjos" on the jukebox as we were setting up. Since we also knew that particular song was also the "theme song" to the movie Deliverance (1972),  I prudently decided to arrange the sets with some of our slower songs and power ballads until we could get a feel fir whether the crowd was on our side. By the end if the night, with the backing of an enthusiastic crowd, we were ready to ramp things up. Maybe it was the booze, or the fact that Metallica's Black album is somehow part of nearly every WV rednecks music collection, but they were into it!

As noted, they hadn't had a live band in that place in a long time, so some of the regulars were a bit shocked to find that there was a cover charge at the door. At least two fellows found themselves patting their pockets to cone up with enough spare change for the meager $2 cover charge. I have no idea how they supposed they were paying for money for drinks! 

After the first night's show, as we were loading our equipment back into the trailer for the next night, we were accosted by a grizzled old fellow and his two big old mountain boys. He looked at me and said, "You know, I usually don't like this metal sh*t." He looked pretty angry. "And today was my birthday. "

I remember just thinking, 'Please Lord, let them just spare the equipment. And maybe my face.'

Then he grinned. "But you boys kick a$$! You coming back tomorrow?"

We breathed a collective sigh of relief and assured him that we were. He promised to invite his friends. 

That night, everyone in the band also met a guy who claimed he knew the guy who did the artwork for Type O Negative. Everyone but me, that is. I was openly skeptical about the whole thing, which paid off in this case. We met the artist in question the following night, and Syd Edwards came to be known as the godfather of MIDIAN.

Syd included MIDIAN (although our name was mispelled as MADIAN) as one of the bands featured in his article, "Unsigned on Dotted Line," for Rock Out Censorship magazine (shortly before it went belly-up), noting that we had "captured the attention of a normally Country & Western audience with their intense all originals set."

What he witnessed that night was certainly memorable. We didn't hold anything back the second night. The crowd was bigger and rowdier. Everyone was there to have a good time!

In fact, our show was much more interactive than intended! At one point, this adorable old couple got up on stage and one of them asked if they could sing a song.  The crowd was into into, so we listened to a crooning acapella version of Dwight Yoakum's then-recently released,  "Try Not To Look So Pretty."

At another point during this gig, a young woman joined us on stage and began slow dancing to "Wasting Away," a existential song about mortality, suicidal ideation and lost love. It was an odd choice for a solo dance. How was her dancing? Let's just say that this was the only time we played the "extended version" of that song.

Inevitably,  the crowd got out of hand. A bar fight broke out. It was only later that I found out that Brett's dad and Brett's little brother, Corey, might've started it. Corey was underage at the time but he was so hairy that he had a full beard and, frankly, no one questioned whether he was supposed to be there. According to the story, a bottle hit Brett's dad and Corey returned fire, only it hit a girl instead of the felliw who threw the first volley, and then the place ignited. We kept playing but as it continued to rage out of control, we realized the show just couldn't go on. This guy who was the spitting image of Tom Petty (but not actually Tom Petty, mind you) got up on one of our mics at one point and announced,  "Stop! Tom Petty says no!"

Again, he wasn't actually Tom Petty and they didn't listen. We started packing up our equipment as we played, until we only had the mic and guitar. Then we thanked them for coming out (most folks were oblivious that the music had stopped) and headed on down the road.

The Time Demo

One of the things Syd Edwards remarked was the poor quality of our first demo.  "Darker" was recorded in the home of Jon Siders, Brett's uncle. We took Syd's criticism to heart by creating a better demo in Mark's studio garage. The demo called "Time" has been lost; no one seems to own a copy anymore, though everyone remembers it. I'm not sure we ever gave Syd a copy of that one, but we did deliver a copy of the demo after that: "Towards Zero."

"Time" really brought an ongoing disagreement between Mark and Jamie to the fore. Mark thought that we should be concentrating on the songs our crowds were responding to. Jamie wanted to keep writing songs and evolving our style. Their disagreement eventually fixated on one song, "Sign My Name."

Jamie developed this churlish habit of running off band members who disagreed with him, a trend that began with his hostility toward Mark. Their particular point of contention was over a song we'd already recorded on the Darker demo. Jamie started refusing to play "Sign My Name," implying that by playing a popular rock ballad we wrote that we were somehow selling out. Nevermind that the proposed point of writing more songs was to refine our style until we had assembled the cream of the crop. If the popularity of a song wasn't a good indicator of whether we should keep it, I'm at a loss to see how we were supposed to determine what our best songs were. Mark saw potential in "Sign My Name" and wanted it on the new demo we eventually recorded. He also wanted to play it at gigs obviously. 

I can't remember if it ended up on Time, though I'm pretty certain it did. The only songs we all agree were definitely on that demo were "Dysfunctional Families in America, "Why Choose Me?" and "Don't Push Me!" (a song that became our big finish). It's probable that we also recorded "Diana," "Darkness is Coming," "Wasting Away," "Typical Nonsense Song," and "Wrapped In Foil" on this demo.

The last piece of advice Mark ever gave me was that I needed to ditch Jamie if MIDIAN was going to go anywhere. I probably should've taken that advice.

In Memorium: The Original Roster

The Original Roster

Start [Jan/Feb 1995] to Walpurgis Night/Demo Release Party [April 30, 1995]

Tony Breeden - Vocals.

Jamie "Jaymz" Nichols - Guitar

Brett Green - Bass

Davy Cain (1971-2017) - Drums

Before MIDIAN

MIDIAN was technically preceded by an acoustic band called Kayman's Shame, which was really just Jamie and Tony (and later Brett, whom Jamie more or less taught to play bass), informally performing songs from previous bands along with a new song called "An Hour Ago." 

Jamie and Tony had already a history of bands together, including Usher A.D. and Mind Warp. Jamie also played bass for a show in another band fronted by Tony, Altared Fate. Anyway, Kayman's Shame was basically an acoustic MIDIAN without a drummer.

The Name

MIDIAN was born when we added Davy to the roster. The band's first decision was to change the name. We went through several different ideas at Davy's residence in Vienna, WV (Tony & the Tones was jokingly suggested), until we settled on MIDIAN. The idea for the name was derived from a story Tony's brother, Greg Breeden, told about Asylum's lead vocalist, Jamie Fletcher. According to the story, Fletcher had done an interview with Graffiti magazine in which he said Asylum was getting ready to go on their Lock Up Your Daughter Tour. He also listed a few songs from their new album, including "Locked Without a Key," "The Search for Midian" and others. He then told his band they had to write those songs! Whether true or not, it was a good story. MIDIAN sounded good. It was mentioned in the Bible. It was also "where the monsters are" by way of Clive Barker. People could make of it what they wanted.

The Beginning 

Davy bought a drum set and a Shure microphone, among other things. Jamie and Tony had moved to a house on Camden Avenue in Parkersburg, WV. The house's basement had walls that were lined with foil insulation. After deciding the name, we spent more time practicing than performing. The "tin foil basement" was our first practice place. We wrote the majority of our songs there. It was certainly the inspiration for the song "Wrapped in Foil."

The prevailing wisdom at the time was that a successful local act had to do a lot of covers. I had an epiphany back in high school when I saw Mercenary [one of Adam Smith's early bands] play the Williamstown High School talent show and blow the doors off the place with a mostly original set list. I saw it again when I saw a trio comprised of Kevin Hanna, Kenny Bartlett and Davy Cain play an all original set at a Battle of the Bands. I forget the name of the band, but I came away humming their songs, especially "Who" and "She." Local favorite Jet Black was awarded the top prize by the judges, but all I remember about them was that they did covers.

I realized then that it made absolutely no sense that a band should promote a lot of other bands' music in order to be successful. That might be what bar and club owners wanted, but it was a short-term strategy at best.

Back when Jamie and I formed Mind Warp, we gave my strategy a try. We did a few covers but we concentrated on writing a full set for the Smoot Theater's up-coming Battle of the Bands. Though the band fell apart afterward, the show was a success. I heard people making the same sort of comments about the songs that I overheard after Mercenary's show. Naturally, when MIDIAN came along I wanted to put that strategy into play.

I wrote almost all of the lyrics for MIDIAN's songs. Our usual method for writing songs was to come up with the music and then add lyrics. The rest of the band would literally play a piece over and over, getting it down in the process, while I wrote lyrics. 

The first song we ever wrote for MIDIAN was "I Just Might," a punk song about the cycle of rage and helplessness I felt being bullied throughout my childhood until I became a metalhead in high school. It became our standard opener until we eventually wrote "When I Wake Up."

"I'd Do It All Again" was also referred to as our Faster Pussycat song because my vocal style mirrored Taime Down's on this one. It's a mean-spirited punk song about a heartless cheater. 

"#1" (aka "Do Unto Others") was yet another punk song, this one styled after Glen Danzig vocally. It was a predictablly nihilistic and unimaginative song about looking out for yourself. 

"Armageddon Is Near" was notable for the extreme tone shift from our other songs. I used a husky bass voice inspired by Type O Negative's Peter Steele during the verse and then moved into a higher snarling voice inspired by Megadeth's Dave Mustaine. Songs featuring me shifting my vocals like that became part of our signature sound, at least for many songs. The song was dark, being an attempt to parse out what happened during the 1993 fiery death of cult leader David Koresh's Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. My take was cynical, suggesting both sides were at fault.

"Sign My Name" ultimately became one of our most popular songs, maybe even our most popular. It was a simple power ballad. It came to mean a lot of things to a lot of people: everything from the search for meaning to vampires. The truth was that it was written about the feelings I had when my grandmother died the previous year on September 30, 1994. The song ambled from an acoustic set of two verse-chorus sets to another run through the same two verse-chorus sets with distortion. It never felt quite complete with just two verses so I think we added the second set to make the song more the length we felt it should be. Post-MIDIAN, I eventually wrote a third verse, a farewell verse to.both my grandmother and the band itself.

The few cover songs we performed at the time were "All By Myself," "F.O.D.," and "Longview" by Green Day and "Skulls" by the Misfits. It should be said that the lyrics we sang to "Skulls" wasn't exactly right. They were pulled from Brett and possibly Davy's memory and they were a bit off. I had no idea. I distinctly recall singing, "Demon I am and the faith I seek/Keep twisting inside out/Cause I've got to have you on my wall/We're out tonight." Those aren't the actual lyrics.

As an impetus to practice and write songs, Tony called up Brass Works and asked about playing a gig there. We were told that we could audition on Open Mic Night two months from then; if we were good enough, we could get a gig. It was make it or break it, so we put everything we had into practicing over the next few months. We had some pretty big dreams. I remember there being a couple self-made interviews on tape, maybe even on video. I kept careful record of practices, lyrics and such in the Band Log, which would also come to include fliers, set lists and notes from gigs.

Unfortunately, I later entrusted the Band Log to Jamie Nichols, who takes all things for granted. 

The Darker Demo

Darker, the band's first demo, was recorded either shortly before or after that first Brass Works gig at Jon Siders' [Brett's uncle] residence in Point Pleasant, WV, presumably to help us line up gigs. Jamie picked out the cover art, that old man's eyes and Tony designed the band's logo and the rest of the cassette liner. The name of the demo was also his idea, possibly before we ever wrote "Darkness is Coming." We know that "Sign My Name," "I'd Do It All Again," "I Just Might," "Armageddon is Near," "Black Rain," and "Mr. Frost," and "Vampire" [aka the only song Jamie sang on an official MIDIAN rrecording] were on the demo. There were either 8 or 10 songs on that demo total. The liner included two quotes. "We are the Music Makers and we are the Dreamers of Dreams," by poet Arthur O'Shaunessy and quoted by Gene Wilder's Willie Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1971) and "Living, I was your plague. Dying, I shall be your death," a quote Martin Luther chalked onto his cell in 1954 on the eve of his death, and later utilized in the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. There may've been a drawing of a plague rat by yours truly.

First Photos

There was no denying that we were serious-minded about MIDIAN. In addition to the ridiculously grueling practice schedule and the demo tape, we took promo shots for a press kit. Loretta Cain, Davy's wife took the photos at the Parkersburg Memorial Gardens cemetery near Parkersburg High. Those, of course, were lost forever.

First Show

When the fateful night at Brass Works came, we got up on stage to cat-calls. "Send those boys home!" We looked young (one of us wasn't even old enough to be in the bar, a fact we kept to ourselves) and probably looked scared. I think we kicked it off with "I Just Might." I also know we played "Mind's Eye" and "Sign My Name." I can't remember what else. There was a "band log" that had all of our lyrics and gigs and even set lists, but it no longer exists. All I know is that we watched everyone's faces change. Blessed Altar was there. They were among those heckling us in the beginning.

Brassworks (photo credit: Google Maps 2019)

Everyone was impressed when we got through, but there was no gig. It was the wrong kind of music or something. Brass Works' regular crowd liked bar bands like Jimmy Clinton & the Mean Red Spiders. Blessed Altar couldn't catch a break either.

Sportsman's Lounge Gig

We did manage to land a gig at the Sportsman's Lounge, located beside Parkersburg High School. Back in the day, the building had been an all-ages hangout called The Ozone. 

 

The Ozone (1990-91)

The guy at the Sportsman's only liked one song off our demo, "Black Rain," but we were in. The crowd there was hostile, but we pulled it off somehow.

Jamie and Davey

Jamie experiments

Brett gets into it

Jamie and Tony

Brett strikes a pose

Me (Tony) and Brett 

Davey and Brett. The MIDIAN banner is in the background. 

There was cake!

This one was recorded on video, but we only have a few photos of the event. The photos focus on Brett and Jamie with Davey and I barely visible in some shots. If you look closely, you can also see pieces of our original hand painted MIDIAN banner Jamie performed his song "Vampire" here, but I think that may've been the only time. 

We played with Death by Daisys at this gig, which, of course, meant that we had to split the door cover charge with them. Their lead singer was Sam Hyde. Davy's brother, John Cain, was also in the band. Crystal the Pistol sang a couple songs with them, including "The Bomb" by L7. I honestly don't remember her last name and I don't recall the reason she was called that. 

The End

Our last gig with the original roster was on April 30, 1995, aka "Walpurgis Night," which was also the name of one of our songs. This was also the first time we performed "Darkness Is Coming."

The show was performed at the Cedar Grove Community Center in Cedar Grove, WV.

Cedar Grove Community Building

(Photo Credit Google Maps 2022)

It was meant as the demo release party for Darker. 

There was a lot riding on this gig. We weren't making that much money and much of the bill was being footed by Davy and his wife. We had one of the best stages we'd ever played on, but turnout was poor. We should've expected as much, especially given that we were playing in the middle of nowhere and we hadn't yet have built our brand.

At the end of the gig, the band pinwheeled out of control. Davy and Loretta demanded all of the money from the gig to cover their losses. They'd paid for the promo shots, Davy's drum set, the microphone and maybe even rental of the venue that night. I think we agreed that the venue needed to be paid before the split, but I'm pretty sure we called for an even split. Either way, it got ugly. Davy quit and they took the microphone.

We thought that was the end of it, but it wasn't. Shortly after, Davy, Loretta and some of the members of Death by Daisys (John and Keith) came by Jamie's house. I [Tony] was alone. They forced their way in, threatened me, and took a bunch of the Darker demos. They kept trying to agg on a fight, telling me that Sam was a better singer than me and even slapping me at one point, but I couldn't fight that many guys at once. When they left, I was still in one piece. Jamie refused to call the cops.

A couple nights later, Keith and John drove up while the lights were off. Angie was alone in the house. When they saw her in the window, they threw a beer bottle at the house and drove off.

And that was that. 

In Memorium

Years later, when I contacted Davy about the legacy page and the re-discovered recording, he apologized for the whole fiasco. This had been his last shot at a band and it hit him harder and made him angrier than he intended. He revealed that sometime after he was out of the band, Loretta gave him an ultimatum: the family or his band stuff. He made his choice and got rid of the tapes and everything else associated with MIDIAN. She divorced him anyway.

In Memorium

Davy died in August of 2017. 

His son wrote the following about Davy and MIDIAN:

"He was an amazing person and father very talented when it came to playing drums. He kept with the same style of music through out his entire life. He told me bout the whole band and what his life was like back then. I got some crazy photos of him which I'll cherish my entire life."

It should also be said that Davy Cain's drum style set the tone and pace for every drummer that followed him. We wrote fully half of MIDIAN's songs in that tin foil basement with Davy. Any drummer following him was not only learning the parts he'd established but also continuing in that style when we wrote new songs. He put everything he had into those songs and don't think we appreciated that enough in the days that followed.

Now What?

Back in 1995, without a drummer [and some other equipment], MIDIAN's fate was uncertain.

But MIDIAN wasn't done yet.