Reno Divorce – 20 Years of You’re Only Making It Worse

Naysayers and Naysayers

This story picks up where the liner notes I wrote for the 2022 Wolverine Records re-release of Naysayers and Yesmen left off. If you haven’t already, please check that record out. It’s been masterfully remixed by the legendary Jason Livermore at the Blasting Room and the package looks and sounds fantastic. Pick it up from the label here or from the band here.

The release of Naysayers and Yesmen in 2002 on Boss Tuneage Records saw the band on tour in Europe for the first time in the Fall of that year. While the reviews were great and the band was sounding tighter than a really tight thing, we were touring on an album that for us was already one year old, having released it independently in the Fall of 2001 for the band’s first US tour. Since then, we’d been working on a batch of new songs, some of which we were already playing live.

Unfortunately, the Naysayers and Yesmen European tour was cut short after about 2 weeks of shows in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands when Brent’s father took ill. The outlook was bad, so after our October 9, 2002 show in Wermelskirchen, Germany, Brent flew back to Florida and Tony went with him. That left Seth and I to fend for ourselves in Europe, where we stayed on for a few dates with the Pavers as roadies before we could get plane tickets home. Although we didn’t know it at the time, this lineup of Reno Divorce would never perform again.

After the tour, both Seth and Tony went MIA. Brent was in Florida, so I was holding things down in Denver, where we had shows booked and new offers on the table. With his father on the mend, Brent was getting ready to fly back to Denver, but we had no bass player, no rhythm guitarist, and no rehearsal spot. Brainstorming on the phone, Brent and I made a short list (5 or less) of bass players we thought could make the grade, choosing to play as a 3 piece until we could figure out what was up with Seth and Tony, neither of whom were returning phone calls.

We never made it past the first name on the list, Todd Grow, then of the band AirSick. We had met Todd when we played with his previous band Splendid in Colorado Springs. He was a great player with nice gear and a wealth of punk street cred (he was an early member of the Nobodys).

I don’t remember exactly where we auditioned Todd, but I know that some of our earliest rehearsals with him were in an abandoned warehouse that some friends of ours were doing a construction job in. They had a generator and some shop lights and we’d rehearse there at night. No bathroom, no heat (in the fall and winter in Colorado!), no running water, and most of the place was a big sandy dirt pit where they were digging the foundation in the middle of the space to build condos. Very punk rock!

Todd fit right in playing wise, but it was an odd transition for Brent and I as overnight, half of our band was gone. There was no big fight or anything, they were just gone. The dynamic we had with that lineup was lost and honestly, the band would never be the same again. Sometimes a lineup has an instant chemistry, other times it’s a slow burn, so we soldiered on and played the dates we had already lined up before the tour with our new 3 piece configuration. The shows went well and we were relieved that we had pulled them off even after half the band quit.

Turn Up the (Horton) Heat

If you’ve read the liner notes to Naysayers and Yesmen, you may recall that when I became the band’s manager/booking agent, we took just about any show offered to us any night. This was not done purely out of sadistic madness, but to show promoters we were committed and could be relied upon. It paid off in the fall of 2002 when we were offered 3 support slots opening for the Reverend Horton Heat. The Rev is one of Brent’s all time heroes, so he was beside himself when the offer came in and of course we jumped at the chance.

The gigs went off without a hitch, were all well-attended (sold out or close to it) and the Rev and band were great. That established a relationship that exists to this day where every time the Reverend Horton Heat comes through Denver, they request that Reno Divorce open the show. I don’t know how many times we’ve shared the stage with them throughout the years, or even after I left the band. It’s pretty amazing to think about your hero repeatedly requesting you as their opening band!

Shortly after the Reverend Horton Heat gigs, Tony re-established contact with us and said he was driving back to Denver from Florida. Also around this time, we finally heard back from Seth. He was moving from Denver and going on a personal quest. That guy has had an interesting life, from punk rock musician to Buddhist monk.

Tony arrived in late December and we played a house party and a New Year’s Eve gig with the lineup of Brent, Todd, Tony and I. Shortly after the New Year’s gig, there was an issue between Tony and Brent that I was not totally briefed on, but it was related to gear. Brent had upgraded his gear, but Tony had not. Whatever happened, the argument lead to Tony quitting in early 2003. He drove back to Florida and I heard he worked in special effects. I saw him once or twice years later when we toured Florida and he came out to the gigs.

We started 2003 as a 3 piece again with the goal of recording a new album on our minds.

Good to Worse

In early 2003, we found a rehearsal spot in a building on top of a VFW meeting house East of downtown Denver. The place was mostly metal bands, but we shared a room with The Swanks, another local punk band and friends of ours.

Todd lived in Colorado Springs, about an hour and half drive away from us, so he didn’t come to every rehearsal. This saw a new songwriting method for the band, which set the standard for the rest of my time with the band:

1. Brent comes up with chord progressions (aka riffs), melody and some words.
2. My phone rings. “Dude, you gotta hear this,” Brent would say as the tinny sound of his new epic jam would jangle over the telephone. “Sounds good,” I’d say, not really sure what I heard, but confident in Brent’s skills that it was probably a winner. “Meet me at the rehearsal space in an hour,” he’d say.
3. We would meet at the rehearsal space and Brent would show me the riff again. I’d start playing along, we’d go through the changes, and I’d come up with a drum part. Sometimes Brent would have suggestions for some of the accents he wanted the drums to hit, but other than that, my drum parts were always my own. I also might have arrangement suggestions. “Make that part shorter” or “Let’s swap the fast part and the slow part.” Little things like that.
4. We would then show the finished song to the rest of the band, who would learn the arrangement and come up with their own parts, adding to the song and taking any suggestions Brent may have about how their part worked with the song.
5. Rinse and repeat.

For recording, we knew we wanted to go back to Matt Van Leuven at 8 Houses Down. Matt had recently combined forces with 2 other Denver studios, making 8 Houses Down an affordable full production studio with 2 recording and mixing engineers and mastering services all on site in a brand new, bigger facility.

You’re Only Making a Demo

With this being our second album, the stakes were higher. After all, we were suddenly an international touring act with rave reviews in major magazines who had also recently weathered some major lineup changes. So, we did what the pros did: we demoed the entire album before going in to the recording studio. In the professional world, this is called “pre-production.”

Usually, pre-production happens in a professional demo studio, but we still made no money from gigs and were paying for everything out of pocket. Hence, we did the DIY punk rock version.

We took some mics we had, my old 4-track cassette recorder and a mixing desk. The end result was a 4-track tape with drums, guitars, vocals, and bass, which sounded great for what it was and gave a solid representation of most of the 15 tracks we were considering for inclusion on the new album.

One song on the demo never made it onto the album. “Don’t Make Me Wait” was never properly recorded or resurrected after we decided not to record it for the album. I can’t remember why we shelved it. Other than a few live shows and the aforementioned pre-production demo, the song was lost to time.

For some of the songs, Brent still needed to come up with lyrics so he just sang whatever as a placeholder. There were a couple songs that had some “nah-nah-nahs” instead of lyrics when we gave the tape to Matt at 8 Houses Down.

California Dreamin’

Before we went into the studio, we set out on our first West Coast tour, which included dates in Huntington Beach, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. This time, we didn’t need to rent a van as Todd had a nice conversion van that we piled in to for the trek.

The shows went well and it was a dream for all of us to play in California and Vegas. There’s a video of our first show of the tour below. Of note is the fact that we are playing the songs incredibly fast, a result of our rehearsals taking place at the Mile High Denver altitude and our first show of the tour being at sea level in Huntington Beach. We thought we had played a perfect gig, until we watched the video afterward and realized we were playing at light speed! Still, we sound pretty great here, even if we are playing too fast!

This was also the tour where some of our nicknames came from: Brent was “Ace,” because the last night of the tour in Vegas, we played our cover of Motorhead‘s “Ace of Spades” and this new fan was following Brent around and calling him “Ace” the rest of the night.

I became “Diablo” (later “Darth Diablo”) after I played a Zeke CD in the van and the song “The Eyes of Satan” proved to be a little too intense for the drive and the CD immediately came out and back into my hands. Oh well, no accounting for taste.

You’re Only Taking a Nap

Once we returned from the tour, we hit the studio in May of 2003. At the helm were Matt Van Leuven and Chris Fogal, both members of Denver punk royalty the Gamits and both fantastic engineers. The new 8 Houses Down was still under construction and we were the first act to record there.

A much larger facility, it had a main recording room, a vocal booth, a large control room, comfy lounge with the movie Super Troopers playing on a loop and then a separate mastering suite where Jeff Merkel, the 3rd owner of the new facility worked.

This time, the recording process was much more difficult than before. We had budgeted for about 10 days of studio time, and they had to be consecutive, so that meant we were recording on work days for our day jobs. Brent did what he usually did when we recorded: quit his job to focus on the recording. I couldn’t afford to do the same, and so my schedule was nightmarish: Wake up around 6 am for a one hour commute to work my day job until 5 pm, eat some kind of microwave dinner at work, hop on the light rail to the studio, then work 8 hours in the studio (6 pm until about 2 am), one hour drive home, sleep maybe 2 hours, then start all over again the next day. We did 2 or 3 days of drum tracks like this, and I was completely exhausted afterward.

Since Todd lived about 90 minutes away, Brent and I did all the basic tracks together just the two of us. This ended up being a preferred method of recording for us on future albums as we had a great chemistry and were able to knock most songs out in a single take. Often times, Brent’s guitar track would be a keeper, but we’d still double it later.

Since I was so exhausted the entire time in the studio, I would finish a few takes, then lay down on the couch in the lounge for a bit while Matt, Chris and Brent listened back or whatever. Then Brent would wake me up, hand me a Rockstar Energy Drink, and we’d do a few more tracks.

It didn’t help matters that they were also literally painting the recording room while I was tracking drums, the paint fumes getting me high when I was already delirious from lack of sleep. Looking back, these were pretty insane recording circumstances, but we had to get the album done on schedule and within budget, so we fought through it.

Because of this experience, I find it difficult to listen back to this album with an objective ear. What I usually hear is the frustrating situation and I’m overly critical of my performance on this album, particularly with some of the drum parts I wrote. I think we felt we had something to prove and that came through with some of the more complicated drum parts I came up with. Trying to replicate these parts on the subsequent touring we did was not easy and I learned that less is always more, especially when you have to play that drum part every single night no matter how much your friggin arm hurts.

Once the drums were finished, it was on to guitars. Toward the end of the guitar tracks, Brent had some kind of a throat infection and the next thing we needed to do was the vocals. He pushed through it, but you can hear the extra scratchiness in his vocal tracks.

Todd came in and did his bass tracks in a single session. His bass lines were fantastic. Not quite as showy as Seth’s on the Naysayers album, but still melodic, flashy and solid. He also threw on some backing vocals, as did our crew master Johnny Smith.

Maim That Tune

The tracks themselves showed quite a bit of maturity from the Naysayers songs. “Hard Luck Story” saw Brent embracing a story telling style to his lyrics, ironically while ridiculing the stereotypical “story topper” that we all know at least one of.

“Bitch, I Hope You’re Happy” had some complicated timing, made even more out there by the light speed tempo. Drumming-wise, I was really trying to show my skills had developed beyond Naysayers. The title was my contribution: Brent told me the song was about wishing a former lover well and I thought that sentiment was not nearly metal enough. I said, “Bitch, I hope you’re happy.” He laughed and we had a song title.

“A .45 Will Pay the Rent” was a creepy metal crossover and one of my favorites. The droning guitar over the tom intro sounded so cool and metal. The lyrics themselves tell the story of a down on their luck couple turning to a life of crime. This song saw us experimenting with some quiet/loud dynamics and I really dug it when we did that.

“Getting Used to You” was a song we had previously recorded with Seth and Tony in 2002 (along with “Kiss It Goodbye”) for the Undead in Denver compilation shortly before the first European tour. I always loved the half-time break during the guitar solo. Back then, Brent was not a big fan of half-time parts, perhaps because they were too metal. I was always trying to sneak them in wherever I could. This time, it worked!

And speaking of “Kiss It Goodbye,” that was one of the most difficult songs to play from this album. The tempo alone was way up there, but then when Brent said he wanted a syncopated snare rolling train beat during the verse at that tempo, my eyes bugged out a bit. Always down for a challenge, I gave it a shot. Usually, it sounded great – but I will never forget one night in New York on the You’re Only Making It Worse tour when I missed one accent during the verse and the whole thing fell apart for a few beats…ooops! And of course it happened in front of Josh Heatley, drummer for the Pavers. The two of us had a friendly competition, always trying to out do each other, so I was major embarrassed. He said something about how hard that drum part sounded, but was tactful enough to not say “Hey dude, you kinda blew it right there.” I’m sure he knew how embarrassed I was. Thanks, Josh!

I always enjoyed “Always Be Your Slave.” The song had a great hook and the jam-style ending was super fun to play live. I also really dug the fancy hi-hat part I played during the verse. Must have been listening to some funk that day!

OK – my least favorite song on this album (and in the Reno set going forward) was “Say It.” I know, it was a favorite for a lot of fans, but for me personally, the song was just too poppy and catchy. I know I would immediately get into an argument with Brent right now if he read this. He would say something about how the subject matter of the lyrics makes it tough, but dude, I’m a metal head. And “Say It,” is NOT metal. At all. And yes, I know I’m in the minority here, as proven by the many fans who loved this song.

My favorite song on the album, and one of my favorite Reno songs period, is the title track. Lyrically “You’re Only Making It Worse” was based on Brent’s experience when his father had a heart attack during our 2002 European tour. He was examining mortality and the complexities of the parent-child relationship in a way that really resonated and fit so well with the power of the song. Musically, Brent and I were listening to a lot of the Backyard Babies Making Enemies Is Good album. They had a killer mix of punk with some modern rock production and song craft that made for some catchy as hell tunes, and we did our best at assimilating that vibe into the Reno Divorce sound on this album. Sadly, this song would later take on a deeper meaning during the tour supporting the album.

Also of note, after abandoning the original 2001 recording of “Life in the Trailer Park,” we were finally able to record and release the song. Because it was such a different track from our usual fare, we made it a “secret bonus track” that appeared as track 13 on our 12 song album. Mercifully, we didn’t make the listener sit through a bunch of silence or weird sound effects before they got to hear the bonus track like so many other bands did back then. Don’t bore us, get to the chorus!

You Are What You Beat

Equipment-wise, I used the same 4 piece Tama Rockstar kit that I’d used on Naysayers. Hi Hats, 2 crashes and a ride, all Zildjian. The only thing I did different was use nylon tip drum sticks because I really wanted the ride cymbal to come through. That probably had something to do with the fact that the ride wasn’t loud enough on Naysayers as it wasn’t even mic’d. I never used nylon tip sticks again after this – was never a huge fan of the sound.

Listening back to the album while writing this article, I’m reminded that even though it was difficult to make, I’m still very proud of You’re Only Making It Worse. It’s packed with great songs and everyone involved did a fantastic job making a powerful, kick ass sounding punk rock n’ roll album.

Picture Perfect

The album cover was dreamed up by Brent and made possible by a friend and fan who went by the name of Mikey Emotional and photographer John Johnston. Mikey was a school teacher at Doherty High School in Colorado Springs and was nice enough to allow us to use his classroom for the photo shoot. For models, we had Brent’s son Austin as “the frustrated kid” and my then-wife’s Uncle Jim as the “grumpy teacher.” The irony was that Uncle Jim was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet and so he had a real hard time during the photo shoot. He would be trying to say something mean, but instead just said something silly in a mean voice, which would make everyone in the room laugh.

Regardless, we got the shots we needed right before the laughter broke out and then it was on to the layout. Having learned a thing or two when I’d had to rescue the Naysayers layout at the 11th hour, the layout to You’re Only Making It Worse was a breeze.

The concept was that the lyrics would be hand written as if a school kid wrote them in their notebook. Brent got an artist friend named Eric “Monkey” Meyer to do the artwork. Monkey had also done tattoos on both Brent and I.

For the back of the booklet, I put together a collage of live shots from our US and European tours mixed in with various candids, tourist photos and photo shoots.

For the CD inlay card and credits, I went for a “movie poster” kind of vibe for the credits, so it said “Starring” before listing the band members. I was probably inspired by Entombed‘s To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth layout. Not quite sure it landed the same way it did for Entombed, but it sure seemed like a good idea to me 20 years ago.

And Then There Were Four

While we were finishing the album layout and getting the files to Boss Tuneage for pressing and release, I was also booking a 3 week Midwest and East Coast summer tour for us. To balance out our sound, we began auditioning rhythm guitarists.

Ironically, we only auditioned 2 guitarists and they were both named Mark. Todd’s friend Mark Appleby was a scientist on sabbatical and he got the gig. Mark was not the most rock and roll of guys: he wore socks with sandals and dressed like someone’s Dad on vacation. But he could play a mean guitar, had a Marshall Anniversary amp and he was a nice guy.

You’re Only Making It Worse

In the weeks leading up to the tour, the universe decided to throw us some pretty major curveballs. First, I got laid off at my day job when they cut my entire department. I was supposed to get some paid vacation days during the tour, but now I would not get paid at all. Touring the US never earned us any kind of profit, so I couldn’t expect the gigs to earn me any money. Brent helped me find some day work at his job unloading semi trailers for 2 days, but the rest of the 2 weeks before the tour, I was unemployed and broke.

Then, just days before the tour kick off show and CD release party in Denver, Brent’s father had a stroke and was hospitalized. Again, things were not looking good and Brent had to fly home to Florida while the tour was in danger of being cancelled. Todd, Mark and I did some rehearsals, hoping that the tour would still happen. Meanwhile, I had to find a band to fill-in at our CD release party. Enter our friends Boldtype, then a new band playing their first show.

Brent’s father eventually stabilized enough to tell Brent he should still do the tour, and so Brent flew back to Denver, we did some rehearsals, and the tour started July 1, 2003 at the Ranch Bowl in Omaha, Nebraska. We played dates in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois before hooking up with the Pavers for shows in Ohio and New York.

If a Tree Falls in Rockford, Will Your Drummer Hear the Sound?

There were some pretty wild stories from this tour. Two come to mind right away. July 4th, we played in Rockford, Illinois. The gig itself was mostly uneventful, other than the time when Todd fell down mid-song and played bass while laying on his back. No, he wasn’t hammered. He had a bum knee and it decided to give out on him.

After the gig, we were staying at Todd’s friend’s house in Rockford. There was a huge thunder storm coming. I remember checking it out on the horizon before heading off to bed that night. I was exhausted, so I crashed before everyone else. And because I wanted to get the best sleep, I popped in a pair of earplugs.

The next morning, I awoke to the guys joking about trees and chainsaws and how I could sleep through anything. Apparently, at some point in the night, the storm got so bad that it knocked an entire huge tree over onto the van, denting the roof, but thankfully sparing our windows. The van was pinned down and the tree too heavy to move, so the guys had to ask a neighbor to come over with his chainsaw and chop the tree into pieces so that it could be removed. There’s a video of all of this somewhere, but I never got a copy. We ended up making our show that night in Chicago, but it could have been a much different experience if the tree had landed differently on that van.

Do Not Eat the Sweaty Muffin

The next night (July 5th to 6th), we had an overnight drive from Chicago to Cleveland. Flashback to July 1st, driving to the first show of the tour in Omaha: at a gas station somewhere in Nebraska, Todd bought a packaged muffin, but didn’t eat it. Instead, he left it on the dashboard of the van, exposed to the summer sun and heat for the next several days. It had developed some condensation inside the packaging, and so Brent and I had taken to calling it the “Sweaty Muffin.” We started teasing Todd about how he probably shouldn’t eat it. Todd, however, insisted that there was nothing wrong with the “Sweaty Muffin,” and he would eat it when he felt like it.

5 days later, somewhere in Ohio as the sun was coming up, we stopped at a truck stop to get gas. This truck stop had a McDonald’s in it and they had just introduced those new McGriddle pancake and sausage sandwiches. Brent and I hadn’t tried them yet, and so we went in to McDonald’s to buy some. Todd decided not to go in. I think Mark may have been asleep.

We got back to the van to eat our McGriddles. I will never forget Brent’s face after his first bite – he looked at me, eyes bulging out of his head. They were one of the greatest things we’d ever eaten. Brent actually went back in to the McDonald’s to get another one!

Meanwhile, Todd sat in the front seat of the van and proceeded to consume the “Sweaty Muffin” in spite of our warnings.

After our championship level breakfast, I called up our friend Brian in Cleveland. Brian was the bass player in the Unknown and they were label mates of ours on Boss Tuneage. Any time we were in town, they helped us out with gigs, accommodations, actually getting an audience to show, etc. Brian agreed to allow us to crash in his rock n’ roll basement as we were set to arrive at about 8 am and our gig wasn’t until 8 pm.

When we got to Brian’s, we set up sleeping bags in his shag carpeted, rock n’ roll jampad basement. Todd had been slamming coffee and driving all night, so he asked Brent for one of his sleeping pills. Brent gave him one and we all laid down to crash out. Just as I was drifting off to sleep, I heard “Bllleaaarrrgghhh!” and a wet sound coming from the other side of the room. I sat up in my sleeping bag to see a huge puddle of barf surrounding Todd as he went for barf round two on the shag carpet.

I immediately went upstairs and apologized to Brian and he gave me some old towels to clean up poor Todd’s barf. Brent woke up and helped me as Todd wasn’t exactly feeling up to cleaning things up at the moment. The best part? Todd kept blaming the sleeping pill that Brent had given him for upsetting his stomach, no matter how many times we tried to convince him that the 5 day old “Sweaty Muffin” was the most likely culprit.

Bad to Worse

The tour continued with the Cleveland and New York gigs and then after the North Carolina show on July 9th, the van experienced some serious issues and we limped our way down to Florida in the early morning hours of July 10th for some dates down there. Brent’s mechanic friend Jamie met us in Florida and did what he could to fix the van, but it was clear that the issue was not fixable and we were going to be without a vehicle for the rest of the tour.

Sadly, Brent’s father was still in the hospital and it was clear the end was near. After we played 2 Florida shows on July 11th, the decision was made on July 12th to cancel the rest of the tour. We split the few hundred bucks we’d made on the tour to help pay our separate ways home. Todd’s van was left behind in Florida while Todd and Mark first took a Greyhound then rented a car and drove the rest of the way back to Colorado Springs. I flew back to Denver a few days later and received the call from Brent after I landed that his father had passed. I gave my condolences and it was over a month later that we finally regrouped after Brent drove all of our gear back to Colorado in a pick up truck. We played 6 more shows before closing out the year.

Laughing Now, Crying Later

In January of 2004, we parted ways with both Todd and Mark due to the old “musical differences” and we began the year with 2 new members: Bill Sour on bass and Tim Jadowski on rhythm guitar and backing vocals. This lineup continued promoting You’re Only Making It Worse with shows in Colorado and Wyoming before heading out on our 2nd annual West Coast tour in June of 2004. We began working on a return to Europe, but Boss Tuneage insisted we put out an EP as the album would be over a year old by the time we got to Europe. And so begins the story of the next release, the elusive (not on streaming services and out of print) Laugh Now, Cry Later EP. But that’s a story for another time.