Charlie Brown On Skates

From 1996-2001 I played in a band called The Stand with some buddies of mine from high school. My friend Frank Schwartz and I were the creative force behind the band. We both wrote music and he wrote the lyrics. I wanted to get these songs down on CD before the band broke up (which was inevitable, if you know bands), so we scraped up enough cash to do a demo.

These recordings here were mostly done in one take, with the vocals overdubbed and some tiny fixes made, then mixed down. So if its sounds less than perfect, its because its basically a live recording. For all that, I think it came out okay and very much reflects the band at that time.

Chorus
Upbeat simple song, music by me, lyrics by Frank.

Crystallize
A song from Frank’s previous band, it went through some changes when I added my rythym parts and became a better song. It was featured as GarageBand.com’s Rock Track of the Day on Tuesday, the 15th of October, 2002.

Call Out
Another re-make of one of Frank’s older songs. Once again I somewhat changed some of the dynamic of the song by adding my own take on the rythym parts. This song is kind of special because it’s about struggling to conceive a child, then finally by the grace of God succeeding in conceiving, and the joy of that discovery. Both Frank and his wife and myself and my wife went through this struggle.

Did You Think
One of our heavier tunes, I wrote the riff in the basement one day. When I played it in practice, Frank ran upstairs, got an old poem, came down and sang it and bang, we had a song.

Wind & Ice
Another song where I had the basic music written and played it for Frank, and he sang a song on top of it almost immediately. He had an incredible talent for creating on the moment of inspiration. Kind of a mellow, drive down the highway in the summer type song.

Almost Broken
I wrote the main music parts for this, but this song required more collaboration between us. Frank came up with bridge parts and various other key elements to make it all fit together. Lyrics by Frank as usual.

Colors
Another old song, very U2-like that Frank played with his earlier band in the 80s. We just adopted it as our own.

Only Yesterday
This was the first song we wrote as a band - in fact before we were an official band. I had written the main riff, and Frank asked if I had any original material, so I began riffing and he jumped in and began singing, and shortly after the song was done. It jumpstarted us getting together. The song was featured as GarageBand.com’s Modern Rock Track of the Day on Wednesday, the 11th of October, 2006.

Cyclone
An older song, somewhat elaborate, that Frank had. I added arpeggiated and rythym parts and we worked together on the counterpart riffs in the verses.

In The Light
This is a strangely half-finished song. I had this riff that we jammed on, and Frank was singing what you hear. We had been working on it but had not finished it. We had a few minutes left in the studio, so we ran one take of it. It actually works fine as a short song the way it is. When he sings at the end “once more…” he was trying to clue us in to playing the verse one more time but we missed the cue!