My Dismissal from the People’s Punk Band

I have been dismissed from the People’s Punk Band. What follows is a very long explanation of what happened. Sunlight is the best disinfectant and my position is that it would be best that, rather than let gossip and speculation run amok, I instead speak to what happened with as much honesty as I can offer. Rather than anyone wondering what went down, I present my version of the events for anyone to read. I do not pretend to speak in any way for the rest of the band. I have tried very hard to make what follows an honest account of what went down without casting anyone as a hero or villain. While I am no longer in a band with these guys, I still love them and regard them as brothers. Like any family, our bonds are dynamic and ultimately, those bonds couldn’t be maintained in the form of a band. It is what it is and it is now on us all to deal with it.

My version of the events is as follows:

The afternoon of Thursday, April 16, I returned from a three day business trip in Ohio, hastily choked down a couple of pieces of fruit, walked my dogs and took off for band practice.

Upon pulling up in front of our practice space, I spotted Tim, Jimmy and Ean walking up, all smiles and cutting jokes. It was a sight for sore eyes as I hadn’t seen much of them for a couple of weeks. I smiled back at them. I don’t do that much so it speaks to my sincerity. Work has been keeping me running nonstop lately and it was good to see my friends. I pulled my guitar case and set it on the ground in from of our practice space, running into the coffee shop to get a couple shots of espresso to carry me over my the lack of sleep I brought home from two nights in a hotel. Jimmy very nicely pulled my case and carried it up for me while I finished out my order and said hello to a couple of friends.

Once I got upstairs, our gear was still sitting disassembled from having played the previous Friday. Upon walking up to my spot, Ean informed me that he wanted to try switching our positions on stage. He gave me his rationale, that being that he felt with he and Jimmy singing back-up standing next to each other that they looked like a doo-wop group backing up Tim. More notable than what he was saying was the manner in which he was saying it. His tone of voice and body language were firm. I explained that I didn’t want to switch and explained that among other reasons, I like to move around on stage. He was incredulous at this. Dismissive even. He doubled down and said that he wanted to try this at practice that evening and at the show the following evening and that was that. And he was being firm.

This was pretty out of character for Ean. He’s always been the guy who cut any tension in the room with humor. He hadn’t made a demand out of me or anyone in the year and a half we’d been playing together. I was flatly stunned that he was being so confrontational about something that he wanted to “try.”

Jimmy, who had been carrying equipment up from the street, joined us and mirrored Ean’s statement about them looking like a doo-wop group. The specifics of this language told me that a conversation had happened earlier and when I looked to Tim to see what he thought of all of this, he didn’t make eye contact with me, but he seemed to acquiesce to the idea without needing much information. Clearly a conversation had happened and given that I was getting a solid front on this, it was apparent that I was being “handled” by the band.

Recognizing that they weren’t interested in having a debate about this, I took a walk. I needed space to clear my head because my emotional response was telling me that I was being disrespected and I needed to get clear of it long enough to look at the situation from a different perspective. As I left the room, Ean asked me if I wanted him to set up my gear for me. He seemed to anticipate what was coming and I took it he wanted to know if I had intentions of walking out. So did I. I really didn’t know just that second.

I sat on the curb out front for about five minutes, reflecting on what had just happened. I tried to take myself out of the situation. I came to understand somewhere along the line, I had been perceived as someone who was unreasonable. No one had ever accused me of that before, but why else would they need the solid front? I asked myself if I was being unreasonable in this situation. I knew too well I had perfectly good reasons for wanting my side of the stage, but I wasn’t being allowed to voice them.

The truth is that I am not a good enough guitar player to really take my eyes off of my guitar. Ean is. Ean can not only play and sing, he can do it with his eyes closed. I’ve always been impressed with that, especially given that his parts are significantly more complicated than mine. I have to look at my guitar and many times during a set I will look to the rest of the band, watching hands, looking to see what Tim is mouthing, making sure we’re all in sync. I have always known these limitations about myself, so early on in our first rehearsals, I made a point of calling the right side of the stage. And it had never been a problem before this demand.

And that was to say nothing of the fact that I do actually move around on stage. Given that Tim is the only other member of the band who moves around, it seemed to be an asset that I could swing around and jump a little when my concentration on my parts could afford it. Once I had loosened up and was starting to do more of this, I asked Tim how he felt about that and he told me he had never had any problem with my stage presence. Point to fact, I had been complimented by him and others in the band and other bands on what I brought to the show. If it was an asset, why was I being asked to go play in half the space, where it would be more difficult and all I could do is annoy Jimmy when he needs to sing backups?

That only brought up another question, which was the whole notion of making our stage appearance more “aesthetic” (which I took to mean, symmetrical). It wasn’t really spreading the mics out to one on the left as the three of them were still going to be grouped, just in a different order on the other side of the stage. This didn’t make any sense and anyway, I knew it wasn’t the move itself that was upsetting me, it was that I was being “handled” the way I was.

Earlier in this version of the band’s history, Tim and I would spend time talking out various decisions, sometimes over lunch, sometimes while he worked on instruments. We would reasonably come to some pretty good decisions and then move on them. Almost all of the time, I felt like I was serving Tim’s will. But a lot of decisions are better made with a sounding board and in the early days of this version of the band, Tim and I would rip through a lot of decisions together while standing in the back of the music store. We thought we were being efficient, but I learned eventually that other members of the band were irritated when decisions were made without including them, despite our convening only once a week.

It occurred to me that maybe in the same way I didn’t understand what I was doing was irritating to them, maybe they didn’t know that what they were doing. It felt like the mature thing to do was to go up and calmly explain what was bothering me. Apparently this was a big mistake.

As I walked back into the space, I explained that I didn’t know if it was a better idea to talk to Ean about this one on one or just put it out in front of the whole band but as I started to explain where I was coming from on all this, Jimmy cut me off, raising his voice, shouting angrily, “This isn’t a big deal. You’re the one that’s making it a big deal.”

I stood there stunned for a couple of seconds. Damn right I was making it a big deal because I was being told to go stand elsewhere on stage despite having a real good reason for wanting to stand where I wanted to stand. Being pushed to the other side of the stage without discussion was an order and it didn’t jive with the relationship I thought I had with these guys. Recognizing that there was no more conversation to be had with the group in that moment, I calculated whether or not I could clear all of this conflict out of my head. I knew I would have only been in the room. I would not have been present. I made the decision to walk out of rehearsal. “I’ll see you later guys,” I muttered, picking up my case and walking out.

When I got home, Rachael was surprised to find me there, and asked me why. As I tried to explain what had happened, I got angry. I realized I had just gotten yelled at for trying to take part in a decision that directly affected me. I felt disrespected. I posted to the private Facebook conversation that the band maintained for in-band communication. I cut and paste it as follows:

“I’ve worked too fucking hard for this band to be disrespected like this. I’m not gonna be bullied or put in a pressure position. It’s not so much the placement as much as how it’s being handled. I just wanted to express how I felt about how this was going down and I was immediately told that I was blowing it out of proportion. If my opinion doesn’t matter then I don’t see why you guys want me in the band. Its obvious that a conversation happened about it and it didn’t include me. I’m not an employee and you guys aren’t my supervisors. No one asked me how I felt about because nobody cared. And I ask myself why I work so hard for this thing if that’s the rationale.”

Nobody responded to that. By the next morning, I texted Tim wondering if I was going to play with them that evening in Topeka. Tim responded, “We are going to play tonight as a four piece and revisit this next week. Your reaction was not well received.” He added, “I think it’s best to discuss this in person next week. Let some time pass.”

So here we are in the next week. Tim and I just talked. I’ve been pushed out of the band as Ean and Jimmy don’t want to be in the band with me. That’s fair. Break-ups don’t require a unanimous decision and I’m the odd man out. So I’m out. The reasoning presented was not really defined for me, but the conjecture was that Tim thought maybe I was too assertive with my opinions and that maybe I didn’t leave room for discussion. In my defense, I felt like everyone who has a strong opinion about a point should be as assertive as I am and that the differences should have been debated. Disagreements often boil down to better choices. In retrospect, I think I failed to recognize that no one was really debating the things we disagreed on and the reason was that no one thought I wanted to hear them. I’ll need to learn from that. It’s a fair point, I guess. It would have been more productive if someone could have told me that this perception was there. No one ever did until I was out.

So now that I’m out, and if you’re actually still reading this, I want it known that I do not mean the band any ill will. I recognize that I have a part to play in this even if I don’t totally understand what I did wrong just now. I derived no sense of importance or superiority from working as hard as I did for the band. I’m nobody. I worked as hard as I did for the singular and exclusive reason of my love for these guys. It was first as gratitude for my friend Tim who invited me to be in the band. Then, as I worked with and got to know the rest of them, it became a way to express my gratitude for them as friends as well. I don’t know what success looks like for an aging punk band, but I had hoped we would all get to that whatever it is together. And I continue to want that for them now that they’re going on without me.

Jimmy Kegin is to be appreciated as a top-rate bassist, who not only has a brilliant sense of how much melodic potential there is for bass lines, but one that keeps razor sharp time. And on the rare occasion when he makes a mistake, it’s only because he’s bringing more intensity than his bass can handle. In all the ways you want bass guitar to be the bedrock that a song propels off of, Jimmy delivers the goods. Not only that but he’s got a crazy memory for parts (going back YEARS) and I would be amused at anyone telling him they’re the PPB’s biggest fan. Jimmy is PPB’s biggest fan. That’s not conceit on his part, but sincerity. We didn’t have the “hammer” logo finalized for more than a month before the guy had it tattooed on his arm. He means what he’s doing and he’s the hard-beating heart of this band.

I think Ean Kessler has been slowly feeling more and more comfortable with the limelight and he has rightly begun to claim it. He’s a hot shit guitarist who remains self-deprecating despite knowing very well how good he is. There are few things you can do on a guitar in front of him that he won’t quickly disassemble and play back for you but improved. If the band’s current plan to continue on as a four piece holds firm, he’ll have to revise the guitar parts for the tunes, but if anyone can do it, he can. He’s pretty clever. Watch that guy.

Following two amazing drummers into this band, Jason Meier had a pretty stacked challenge on his plate the second he walked in and he’s just hit the ground running. He learns songs faster than I understand the component parts I’m hearing. The period when he joined where we were asking for minor corrections was short, and the time we were watching him do amazing things with our jaws dropped open was near instantaneous. He took brilliant parts, learned them frontwards and backwards and found room for minor improvements. In all the ways you hope a line-up change can result in greater reach for a band, Jason gave us amazing flexibility and allowed the tunes to really take off.

Tim Mohn is one of my best friends. Lots of people love Tim. The only reason I stacked this band on top of the too many things I already have to do was because I love Tim. I was grateful for his invitation to join and all I wanted to do the entire time I was in the band was help build it into what he wants for it. He’s sincere as a heart attack, and if anyone can stubbornly push through the insane odds that hang over any band becoming successful, it’s this guy. We have bonded over a common perception of the political landscape and commiserated and collaborated and turned our frustrations into a mission to speak our complaints at the current state of political and social dysfunction. I would have this guy’s back through hell or high water. As I say, this is news to no one. Everyone loves Tim.

So that’s that. What plans do I have for the future? I don’t know. I have some rough drafts, but it’s not the time to talk about that stuff anyway. I’ll miss my band and the crazy adventure it’s been so far, but we’ll all make the best of it.

Thanks for reading all this.