As someone who was at their first and last shows, not to mention countless in between, I had a bird’s eye view of their all too brief flight path. During that time, Early Empire went from being a good group to one I was going around proclaiming as the best live band in Columbus.
The picture above is the tray card from their lone CD, and features what most would consider their classic lineup. They actually had two other bass players before Joel, while the other four guys were there from the beginning. This was by far their longest tenured, most memorable, and consistently best iteration, though – but then again, in any guise, they were always good, from the first show onwards.
My only complaint is that these guys didn’t do more. As is sadly often the case from bands of that era (anything before 2008-ish, really), their music is currently unavailable on the streaming services, the only CDs limited to what was pressed at the time. They released this five (actually six) track EP in 2005, Resolutions and a Gun, and that was that, although they had many more songs than this in their live set, and I know recorded some others, at some point along the line. My favorite is probably Simpleton, which gets off to this amazingly frenetic start and never really lets off the gas from there, even when slowing things down a smidgen in the middle. Recorded at Diamond Mine studios in 2003, it’s a killer release from start to finish.
This is some relentlessly compelling modern rock, and I was able to find one official video, for Television Eyes, on YouTube. It’s fun trying to play spot-the-venue on there, although the cuts are so fast I wasn’t having much luck. Maybe you will fare a little better:
The lone down note about this release is, I’m not exactly crazy about the cover. The picture of them inside is awesome, and I like the liner note tray card idea. That all looks cool. It’s just the cover image itself that doesn’t really work for me, and I would say doesn’t seem to match the project as a whole. But these are exceedingly minor beefs, and don’t matter. Actually, I’ll tell you what this whole EP reminds me of: it’s like something from a seminal band who went on to greater heights, where their first 3-4 albums are all considered classics. Their debut, a somewhat rare, hard to find EP on a smaller label, meanwhile, is merely rated as very, very good. Kind of like maybe the career trajectory of Tool, whose Opiate EP also had not the greatest cover. The only difference is…life got in the way for these Early Empire guys, and the full length albums (at least thus far), of which they were certainly capable and I would even say were expected to deliver, never came. Anyway, here’s the EP in full:
In an April 2006 issue of Columbus Alive, Stephen Slaybaugh gives it a favorable review, coupled with a photo of these five lads standing in front of that very familiar internal window in Andyman’s Treehouse. Then there’s a writeup in a July 2006 Other Paper concerning their last show and impending breakup – as reported, singer Chris Hostetler was moving to L.A., and guitarist Travis Tyo to Raleigh. “It seems like we’re just peaking now,” Tony Bair laments, and I would agree. Up until the very end, though, they are still practicing roughly once a week, and this piece nicely describes the 8×12 practice space over at bassist Joel Walter’s house. One factual error I would like to point out though is that the article claims they were formed at Comfest 2002. Well, it’s possible they agreed to form the band there, but their live debut, in November that year at Andyman’s, was heavily hyped as being just that. Also, reporter Chris Deville uses the word “goofball” twice to describe them, and I just would never think to use that adjective in conjunction with this band. But overall, yeah, it’s a cool article, capped with a totally different photo of the five of them at Andyman’s, this time in the performance room, with Joel posing in triumphant fashion while the other four offer appreciative smiles behind him.
I still have the recording I made of their first ever show. This is among the secret little treasures I’ve been hanging onto all this time, for deployment at just the right moment. And it feels like posting this dedicated page in their honor is as perfect as it gets, for leaking at least one of the tracks. The rest I will hold onto as a bargaining chip, so to speak – a bargaining chip because there’s been discussion over the years, off and on, of letting their unreleased studio recordings reach the light of day. I’ve even been involved in these discussions, on three separate occasions I can think of, where a few of us have had extensive back and forth about getting this stuff out there, over a series of days or weeks, and they were enlistening my theoretical help. Sometimes even with talk of a reunion show appended. But, who knows what happens, something continually goes haywire on this front, and these talks fizzle.
Until that happens, here’s the first live performance of Simpleton for you, from Andyman’s Treehouse in November of 2002. I can’t quite make out what Hostetler’s saying at the very end, as far as the song title, but it sounds like they must have changed that over time. Still the same song, though, effectively –
Known Shows:
2002
November, Andyman’s Treehouse
December 20, Skully’s
2003
August 15, Red 16
2005
January 22, Andyman’s Treehouse
April 15, a Glass House party
2006
January 10, Cafe Bourbon Street
March 3, Carabar:
It’s about a block away from Broad, in German Village -esque type block that’s actually kind of cool and respectable – not the usual ghetto that Parsons would imply.
Erin just started back at work, and she’s here. Pops a tire just as she’s pulling up to the curb in front of the bar, but at least this means she gets to come inside and wait and have a beer until the tow truck comes.
Judas Cow play first with a backlit projector showing old video clips of them, with vaguely psychedelic touches around the edge (supposed to be Floyd-esque blobs, but this doesn’t really come off). Our mob is getting to be mighty sizable now – Norm, Keith, Matt Hubbard, Greg & Michelle, Jay & Lori (and Lori has friend, some blonde with curly hair, who’s checking me out – but I’m never introduced?), Martha, Nathan and Rob from our writer’s group (Nathan wears hilarious brown leather jacket with grey duct tape all over holding it together), Kyle, his buddy Sean, Josh Minto, Ned, in addition to all those guys in the bands. John O’ Conner works bar here, as does Amber.
Bearded quiet but nice guy running sound – that’s the owner. Soundboard in between black & white checkered dance floor (why always this design?) And tables are on north half of bar. Jay drinking pitcher of Youngstown Stout, or whatever it’s called, he’d never heard of it before and neither have I. Dan and Ancie bring an assload of pizzas – I hold the door for them on our way in, having arrived at the same time, ask if they plan on vacationing anywhere, they were walking up the same time as me.
Early Empire play 2nd and completely blow the doors off the place. They’ve gotten so incredibly good. They’re selling CDs now, on a side table – though still have not had official “CD release” party. Chris amusingly full of himself onstage, as is occasionally the case – announces some of the things everyone’s celebrating tonight, yet even as Ancie’s Dan is trying to get his attention, and Chris grubbed on the pizza with everyone else, he says nothing about their 20th.
“What else, he what else….,” he ruminates, while Dan Schmidt waves a hand near the front.
In the background, Ninja Scroll is playing, and Norm’s so familiar with the movie that at one point he says, “this is one of the best scenes of the movie coming up.” Chris says he lost his voice by the end of the set, but if so it didn’t show.
Mirrors left wall of stage; Spain complains it makes the cymbals a terrible wall of shitty noise. Bandman telling some story to Michelle about drinking in Mexico and having “the Sasquatch holler” (puking) the next day. The Handshake play last, and suffer by comparison, I hate to say, to Early Empire.
Earlier, Dan Bandman and I were at the bar and bump into Miriam Sobel, the girl who was doing sign language two days ago (another Mansfield alum) at the Vonnegut appearance. We’re clowning around with her, because as we noted right after leaving, somehow none of us caught what her sign language was when Kurt made his “blowjob” joke. So we’re asking her if she can possibly demonstrate that for us now.
April 8, Andyman’s Treehouse. CD release party:
Tonight is the long awaited Early Empire CD release party. A five song EP titled Resolutions and a Gun, it’s the first thing they’ve put out, after 4 years together (and official releases from The Handshake and The Judas Cow are still nowhere in sight, even though they too have both been around since ‘02). Recorded it a long time ago, but money hassles and just general dicking around even after the thing was pressed have kept them from booking this until now. As among the first 15 people in the door, our $5 cover charges mean we get this CD for free – I had no idea, but gladly accept.
Slow at first, talking to Quinn about this article I read recently saying he and Andyman are trying to sell this Treehouse. “Yeah, I’ve been in this business pretty much my whole life – eighteen years – it’s time to try something else,” he says, mentions devoting more time to the X-Rated Cowboys, etc.
Tony Bair comes up and does fake boxing moves, which I match. “Hey, I heard you guys’ stuff, man, you gotta look up this one friend of mine, he goes by Nate Dominion!” Tony enthuses, “his stuff reminds me of yours, like really off the wall, you guys should get together. You can get his email off our MySpace page…..”
Copper asking me about my experience at the Anderson’s, says he couldn’t find the place, was thinking about applying. I tell him about the ultra-precise filets, ridiculous cutting list, etc. He’s mildly discouraged, but intrigued by the potential (top dollar, I tell him, for it is) pay. Talking about how he plays street hockey in the abandoned Big Bear warehouse lot on 3rd, tore up his hamstring, should have taken a few months off, but came back after a month and tore it up again.
Elissa’s wearing this puke green shirt tonight, okay, and when she showed up at the door earlier, she had this red backpack on. Except I didn’t know it was a backpack, not initially, all I could see was this diagonal red strap cutting across the front, which even has buttons all over it. Therefore…it seriously looked to me like a Girl Scouts outfit. “Okay, I want a box of Thin Mints, and two boxes of Do-Si-Dos,” I joke, as she punches me in the arm.
The reason she’s rockin’ the backpack tonight though is that she wanted to bring her new Hi-8 camera to the show. She’s walking around all night filming stuff, pregame footage, then the bands playing, et cetera. She and I are singing along with Thin Lizzy’s Jailbreak which somebody played on the jukebox. I think she’s totally awesome and am really into this now. The only downside is I know she slept with Ultimate Donnie over there in the deli, and I’ve heard rumors about Gold as well, but, eh, for some reason I just don’t care when it comes to her. I don’t know, our personalities just seem to click.
Talking to Carracher about the motorcycle he recently purchased, he’s sitting at the bar. On opening day, the Indians night game we all watched over at the Glass House (before rainout), everyone (Carracher not present) was sweating this purchase, saying it “was too much bike for him,” and worried because he tends to space out, they were saying. But I don’t know, he seems like about the most straight-laced no nonsense dude in the world to me, and is surely proud enough, confident enough talking about his bike at this moment.
Vena Cava are the opening act tonight. I saw them in ’98 at a Superstar Rookie show at Little Brothers, and remember being considerably unimpressed. I think in my journal I might even have said they were horrible. Tonight, as it turns out, just two of the four members are playing, though I don’t initially know this; I wander back about three songs into their set, and assume they’d suffered a gradual defection of other members.
Whatever the case, I find my attitude concerning this group, aftere all these years, instantly thrown overboard. Who knows, maybe had all four members been present, I wouldn’t have felt the same way. “The other two are on vacation in Florida,” the singer/guitarist explains, a guy I later introduce myself to, after the set, name Keith.
“Really?” the drummer says.
“Well, one of them is, the other one’s stuck closing a Borders bookstore tonight.”
Wearing some kind of archaic plaid sport coat over a white tee shirt, a vertically rectangular goatee spotted mostly with grey and the wildest yet most natural looking bedhead ever – which means it most likely is a genuine bedhead, not some look he’s affecting – Keith’s voice has this husky genuineness to it, and his guitar playing, while not the greatest on the planet, manages to wring out these terrific little passages now and then, from the whole less-is-more camp mostly during these moments, just a line picked out w/ the right kind of mournful effect on it. A cornucopia of effects pedals down by his feet, and most of their songs feature at least one extended, high energy jam, but the aforementioned bits are what impress me more than the latter.
“This means we can play songs we never get a chance to,” Keith adds, in reference to the missing members, “this one here goes waaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy back, it’s one of the first ones I ever wrote.”
“How far back?” someone in the crowd questions.
Keith’s mouth flies open in a dismayed smile as he ventures, “‘88? ‘89? I don’t know, it was right around then, back when I was still living at my mom’s house.”
“So last year, then,” the drummer jokes.
Wearing a dapper tophat from roughly the same smoking-a-pipe-by-the-fireplace era as Keith’s sport coat, the drummer is nothing short of amazing, armed w/ a steady supply of perfect, original, impressively creative beats, without overplaying. My only complaint is that their songs are often structured as verse-chorus-verse-chorus-extended jam to the finish line, but that’s a minor one. Glad I had a chance to catch them again, here almost a decade later.
“You caught us in our infancy,” Keith laughs, when I track him down by the pool table later, explain my first experience.
“Same four guys?” I question.
“Yep, same four guys,” he says. A pretty nice dude – Travis and Chris were remarking earlier that they’d met him a bazillion times, and he was cool, but they felt bad because they could never remember his name.
Bumping into Tony Allman in the restroom: we both issue near simultaneous sarcastic, “well, well…..”s, and I add, “they’ll let just about anybody into this place, won’t they?”
The Pretty Weapons play second, and are a hard act to classify. Travis tells me beforehand they rock, but need a different singer (“he sounds like a bad Geddy Lee”), whereas Spain swears they’re heavy, but not good. Having watched them now myself, I’m not sure what to think. First off, the bass player does have about the most phenomenal sound I’ve ever heard in such a setting. I honestly had to leave the room at one point because I thought my kneecaps were going to melt. He’s playing some obviously heavy – literally, physically weight-wise – full bodied bass, and his amp has that logo of the little dude wearing, like, an ancient Roman battle helmet. Like a Stratego piece, whatever brand that is. And the guitarist and the drummer – they were a trio – could definitely play, but the songwriting surely needs more work. Like they’ll get on this cool groove, and sure, it takes chops to play it, but they ride out this same groove w/o any changes, and often no vocals, for sometimes up to two minute long stretches, and after awhile you start to figure – yeah, so what. I didn’t mind the vocals so much, actually, but thought the drum chair in particular could use an upgrade – Vena Cava’s was better, for instance.
Dan Bandman’s here w/ this cute brunette he just started dating, really nice. The story of how they met is odd and funny, which makes you think, as the old rule of thumb goes, they’ll stick around. He was buying a guitar off someone and she was the gopher, for whatever reason, bringing it to him at this coffee shop on behalf of the seller, and they hit it off, she stuck around, chatted, the rest is history.
“Good for Dan,” Spain tells me, “she’s gotta be better for him than that other nut he used to date, I hear she was a psycho.”
“Who, Kara?” I laugh.
“Yeah,” Spain nods.
Anyway, talking to Dan & his girl before the Pretty Weapons play, stage right on the other side of the tree. Leaving the room during my kneecap melting episode, I encounter Spain sitting at the bar. He’s told me, earlier, that Matt Miner is all about the Pretty Weapons, which doesn’t surprise me; now he wants to know what I think.
“Well, it’s like, they rock, but are they good? I don’t know. They get on these grooves and ride them forever, it’s like, big deal.”
“Exactly!”
“I wish Miner was here so I could debate him,” I lament.
“Matt Miner tries to come across as being into all this extreme music, but you’ll find he is actually really very conservative in what he listens to,” Spain says, which is funny, because Miner says the same thing to me about him almost verbatim. But Kevin has a point, talking about how Miner claims to be into total noise merchants like Sword Heaven but that he has a hard time believing Matt “gets home after a long day at work, and says to himself, hmm, I think I’ll throw on the Sword Heaven record to wind down to. I just can’t picture him sitting around actually listening to that stuff at home.”
Early Empire play a smoldering set, of course. Chris drunk and commiserating, before one song, that the Dispatch bought out Columbus Alive and are about three weeks away from completely overhauling that weekly, cheesing it out. Copper distressed because someone drew an arrow to him on the flyer above the men’s room urinal, w/ a caption that read, “fire this man.”
Chris telling me he’s had writer’s block for a year and asking me for advice. “You’ve got to find some way to break up your routines,” I tell him, “you know what really helps me, walk around the library aimlessly and don’t even pay attention to what section you’re in, then if some book catches your eye, whatever it is, pull it out and start reading it. It sounds crazy but it works.”
July 21, Andyman’s Treehouse. Farewell show.
