Reno Divorce – 20 Years of Laugh Now, Cry Later, Part One

Picking up where we left off with 20 Years of You’re Only Making It Worse, we started 2004 with another lineup change, parting ways with both Todd Grow (bass) and Mark Appleby (guitar) due to the old “musical differences.” This time, we had no idea who we would get in the band, so we put out an ad. The first promising responder was Bill Sour, a metal bass player we had previously shared a stage with at Cricket on the Hill in 2001 or 2002.

I remember the night we played the same gig as Bill‘s former metal band, Forgotten Pride. I think we played after they did, and someone in their band was at the bar heckling us that we “sound like Green Day.” This kind of thing would happen a lot when someone who had no idea about the genre we played would just call out the name of the most famous band from that genre that they could think of in whichever state of drunkard was currently comprising their reality. While it was annoying, it was also kind of refreshing to not hear that we “sound like Social Distortion” for once. I guess Social D were outside of his limited knowledge of punk rock.

In all honesty, though, I can’t remember at all what Forgotten Pride sounded like or even if they were any good. Nonetheless, Bill showed up for an audition. He was a few years younger than us and came from a different background, but unlike his former bandmate, he knew his punk rock and played the songs well enough to be invited to play some gigs with us for a trial run as a 3 piece.

Some time after we started gigging with Bill, I got a phone call from Tim Jadowski, former guitarist and frontman for St. James Gate. We had met Tim and St. James Gate back in 2002 when we won a Battle of the Bands to earn an opening slot for the Dead Kennedys and St. James Gate gig in Colorado Springs. St. James Gate were opening all of the Dead Kennedys’ Colorado dates in one of those “let us use your gear and we’ll let you open for us” deals that booking agents would often put together. They were cool dudes and we hit it off with them right away. Tim was particularly talkative that night…and I would soon find that just about any night you saw that guy, he was super talkative.

St. James Gate had their own label called Roman Ruin Records and we contributed “Getting Used To You” and “Kiss It Goodbye” to their 2002 Undead in Denver compilation album, which showcased several underground Denver punk bands. The tracks were recorded by St. James Gate’s lead guitarist, Bart McCrorey, at his Motaland Studios. This ended up being the last session we did Seth and Tony, having recorded the tracks shortly before we left for our ill-fated 2002 European Tour. Check out the videos below to hear these rare, alternate versions of these classic Reno tracks.

Back to early 2004: St. James Gate had recently broken up and now I’m on the phone with Tim. He asked if we were still looking for a bass player and before I could get in a single “actually, we already found a guy,” he went on a long-winded rant about how he had played bass in tons of different bands before St. James Gate and he was a fantastic singer (which I already knew) and we could really use some Bad Religion-style backing vocals to take us to the next level and on and on. The guy seriously talked for about 20 minutes before I could say a single word!

Finally, I told him we already had a bass player, but we were gigging as a 3-piece and would he be interested in playing rhythm guitar? He preferred bass, but he was up for it so I told him I’d talk to Brent about it and get back to him.

I called Brent and told him Tim from St. James Gate wanted to play bass for us and he just said “Ask if he’ll play guitar instead.” We often thought alike.

So Tim came down for his audition and of course he did fantastic. The guy is a great musician and singer. His enthusiasm and confidence encouraged Bill to step up to the mic as well so that we finally had some nice backing vocals going on when we started doing gigs again with this new lineup. Fun fact: because we’d had so much band member turnover since 2002, we chose to delay the official announcement of the new members until after we’d been playing shows with them for about 6 weeks.

Once again, things came together super quick for us. Everyone in the band had a passport, so we put out the feelers about a Fall 2004 European tour. Aston at Boss Tuneage said that the You’re Only Making It Worse album would be too “old” by then and we should put out an EP closer to the Fall so that we’d have a new “product” to tour behind. That’s really how the industry worked at the time – unless you were huge like Metallica or someone known, if you didn’t have a new product on store shelves within the past 6 months, you might as well not tour as your record wouldn’t be in stores and booking agents wouldn’t book a band that’s not in stores.

Aston suggested we record one or two new songs and then fill the rest of the EP with some live tracks. I always hated it when bands did that because it felt cheap and really, who cares about live tracks? Anyone? Hello? Brent and I talked about it and we had enough new songs to just record an all new 6 song EP so I told Aston we’d be doing that instead.

In March of 2004, we entered Motaland Studios with Bart McCrorey to record “Rocks Under the Hill” and “Let’s Go Out Tonight” for the Undead in Denver Volume III compilation (we skipped participating in Volume II). Bart‘s studio had moved to a bigger facility than the last time we’d been there and was really turning into a nice joint. I remember a drum room, isolation booth, and a sizeable control room where he ran everything with a Pro Tools rig.

We knew when we went in that we would put these two tracks on the new EP we’d be releasing and so we treated this as a test run to see if we wanted to record the whole thing with Bart. I remember there was a little bit of awkwardness, since Tim and Bart were recent former bandmates, but both were professional and worked well together on the recording.

The session was just a Saturday/Sunday weekend thing for the recording and I think we may have gone back one night during the week for mixing. I remember being super tired that first Saturday morning when I arrived to set up my drums because I’d been at the Zeke and High on Fire gig at the Larimer Lounge the night before.

On this recording session, I used my 4 piece Tama Rockstar kit in Misty Chrome finish. I can’t remember which snare drum I used, although I want to say it was either the trusty 1970s era Decca wood snare in a red sparkle finish or my road warrior $50 Tama Rockstar aluminum snare. Cymbal set up was hi hats, ride and 2 crashes, most likely all Zildjian.

One persistent problem I had during my entire drumming career was broken cymbals. No matter what I tried, I would always break any cymbal, any brand, any heaviness within about one year of acquiring it. Most cymbal manufacturers give you a 2 year warranty and will replace a cymbal once in that two year period, but receiving the replacement takes a while and requires you to send in the broken one. Basically, I was having to buy new cymbals every other year, but also would sometimes have to pick up used cymbals to hold me over while waiting for replacements to arrive in the mail. A very costly habit that I did try to break, but to no avail.

So many drummers told me I was hitting wrong or using the wrong sticks or angling my cymbals wrong – I tried everything to remedy the situation. Well, everything EXCEPT for not hitting as hard. Because that was my style – I guess I was not willing to sacrifice my style, even for the sake of my wallet.

When we entered Motaland Studios on that Saturday March 13, 2004 morning, I was short a crash cymbal and hoping that Bart had something laying around that I could use. And I was in luck!

In the corner of the drum room, I spied a beautiful, 20 inch Zildjian marching crash cymbal. This thing was huge and heavy, meant to be used as part of a pair of those big crash cymbals that drummers smash together in marching bands. I asked him if I could use it and, knowing my propensity for wanton cymbal destruction, he reluctantly agreed.

I set that beauty up on my cymbal stand and was immediately in love with the huge, nasty wash of sonic deliciousness emanating from it. Smitten, I tried to buy the thing from Bart at any price, but he was adamant about keeping it. I could have just started buying marching band cymbals and using those for crashes, but after researching the price difference between marching band cymbals and regular ones, I instantly changed my mind.

The recording of the basic tracks went smoothly and I don’t remember playing each song more than once or twice, so I’ll talk about the tracks themselves.

“Let’s Go Out” was a straight forward rocker, fairly typical for this era of Reno Divorce. I always tried to add some flair to tracks like this, so you can hear in the A section of the verse, I play around with some funky hi hat accents before opening up the hi hat on the B section and playing a four on the floor beat. The transitions between the A and B verse, the pre chorus and chorus, and the bridge and guitar solo gave a nice opportunity for catchy little fill and I made each one a little more intense than the one before. The last one between the final pre chorus and chorus is my favorite, with the drum fill starting early and then leading to a pause before we kick in to the last chorus and double time outro.

You can definitely say that our Backyard Babies influence was showing pretty strong here and I really dug Brent‘s melody guitar part that he plays in the intro and outro. If you listen closely, you can also hear a Reno first: there’s an organ part in the intro and chorus. Well, not really an organ – more likely a Casio organ. But hey, it’s punk rock – organs are not in the budget.

The lyrics were super poignant for this time period as it was one of Brent‘s first songs written after the passing of his father. The opening line “Honey it’s no secret, that I’ve had a bad year/Watched my problems multiply, and my loved ones disappear” hit hard and set the tone for a song that, while very dark, was ultimately about setting problems aside for a night and living one’s best life.

And let’s not forget about those backing vocals. I don’t think Tim sang on “Let’s Go Out” because the backing vocals were so high, so I’m pretty sure they were all Bill and Johnny. But they were powerful and the organ added a nice little touch underneath. All these elements came together to craft one of my all-time favorite Reno tracks. Check out the video below to hear this rare track that is not currently on any streaming services.

“Rocks Under the Hill” was about mining blood diamonds in Africa, which was in the news at this time. I mentioned earlier that I was at a Zeke concert the night before we tracked this one, and you can definitely hear that this was our attempt at that kind of sound. All the elements are there: fast tempo, ripping guitar solo, crazy drum fills, short and tight run time, and a killer half-time part at the end. Honestly, the track is over before you even realize it.

I loved coming up with the drum parts for this one. The opening drum fill was a little nod to Black Flag’s “Slip It In” and the sixteenth note snare fills in the fast parts are all Zeke. During the guitar solo, I added some extra eighth note beats in groups of three on the kick drum to make it punchier and more than just a typical polka beat. Also, each time I did the fill during the chorus, I made it a little crazier.

And while I’m not quite sure I achieved what I was going for, I did my damnedest to play behind the beat like Donny from Zeke on the half time part to make it sound heavier and groovier. I say I tried because I was often guilty of playing ahead of the beat and it was really an effort for me to pull back.

Then a nice little Dave Grohl-inspired fill ends the half time part where it slows down to a stop before the stick clicks kick off the ending Zeke freak out. Another super fun track to play and write. I remember feeling we were at the top of our game at this time, having overcome the sophomore slump that I personally experienced on You’re Only Making It Worse, not to mention all the lineup changes. We were back and we had something to prove. And prove it we did!

After mixing the tracks, we decided we were satisfied with Bart‘s sounds and ended up booking some time in April 2004 to go back and record the next four songs. Since this article is getting a bit long, I will have mercy upon anyone reading and talk about that recording session in Part 2 of this article. Stay tuned and until then, check out “Rocks Under the Hill” below!