GET THE WILLIES

Behind the Music

The story of The Willies is a long and sordid one. OK, it really isn't. In fact, I can't even remember most of what I did back then because I was in such a dazed and crazed drug state at the time. OK that isn't true either. That was Steve.

Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put stuff in here as well as I can remember it at the time and update it as stuff pops back into my head. Feel free to email me and fill in the blanks and make corrections.

First about me. My name is Jeff Preischel. I'm first because I'm older than my brother, Steve, who was also in the band. Growing up together we got along pretty well but whenever we had a fight it would always end with Steve having a bloody nose. The more things change....

Anyway, when I was attending high school in Eden, NY I used to play bass in a band called Sweet Cyanide. We were pretty good, actually, even though we only played cover songs for the most part. There was a lot of talent there: Marc Feliciano (guitars), Matt Smith (guitars), Paul McDonnald (vocals), Ken Bellote (drums), but at the time we were mostly clueless.

(Jesus, people. Don't any of you know how to use the internet? I can't find a damned thing out about most of you.)

Somehow I think this whole thing inspired Steve to want to play guitar at some point. Don't ask me. I was heading off to SUNY at Fredonia to get my BA in String Bass. After a year, tho, it stopped being fun and honestly, I was probalby going to end up being very, very poor playing string bass. If you're going to be poor the rest of your life you'd better at least be having fun at it. So I switched my major to Sound Recording Technology so I could have fun playing with all the neat gadgets in the studio.

Along the way Steve headed off to U.B. to get some degree or another. I don't have any idea what his major even was supposed to be. But he met a girl named Marcia (VERY important! She was the inspiration for many of Steve's songs) and probably started playing more guitar to impress her. Then he started writing some songs. And on some cold wintery day in 1988/89 I took my Yamaha MT-100 4-track recorder over to his house on Lisbon Ave. and we recorded some stuff with my Yamaha RX-21 drum machine, my bass, my guitar, my RockMan and the cheap microphone I'd had since my glory days with Sweet Cyanide. I'm sure there was some beer involved. I think we recorded "Save Me" and an obscure, never-heard-by-the-general-public-for-a-good-reason song called "My Pretty Face".

Summer, 1989
Somewhere around the summer of 1989 Steve and I were trying to get a real band started. We were trying to audition for a lead guitarist, a bass player and a drummer, put some ads out here and there, and were practicing in the upstairs of the barn at the house we grew up at in Eden, NY. It was during this time we met Aaron Flynt, an excellent guitar player from Hamburg, who had a great style and sound and knew how to play without overplaying, which was very common about that time. We also had a couple of guys (who's names escape me. I think the bass player was Crash and the drummer named Vince) who were promising, and we practiced in the barn and (when it got cold) in the old schoolhouse at Saint Mary's Church about a mile down the road. We even ended up going into the small 8-track studio at Fredonia to record a couple of songs to try to get into a day-long show that was put on by the SRT students. I had to engineer and play, and I had just had my wisdom teeth pulled the day before. It actually sounded pretty good, even though the reverb times were a bit long (no surprise considering I was all doped up on Codine). Out of that came our first real recordings, a cover of The Ramones "No Go" and an old Sweet Cyanide song called "Rejection". Maybe someday I'll find them and get them onto the site.

Summer, 1990
I think it was the summer of 1990 that we were living at Heath House and that I interned at Select Sound Recording Studios in Kenmore, NY. Fellow SRT graduate Ken Feldman was engineering there and I swapped some slave labor for studio time and got Kenny to do the engineering. Out of that session came "The Whole Damned World" and "Here Comes The One" as well as two old Sweet Cyanide songs called "Holiday Fling" and "Rejection", which was much better than the previous version. That's also where those goofy snippits "I Give You...The Willies" and "Marcia Electronics" which ended up on the "Get The Willies" CD came from. "Rejection" and "Holiday Fling" have never seen the light of day since then. We had Dave Hershey (who was playing with Marc Feliciano in Lollipop at the time and I was recording them for my projects at Fredonia) sit in on drums and had Aaron play the guitar parts that were too hard for me at the time. Heck, some of what he played is still too hard for me. I know there was video footage take there. I'm not sure if it still exists, but I believe it was taken by Steve Sisk and/or Randy Metras, who were old college roomates of Steve's. Guys, if you're out there, drop me a line and let me know if you still have the footage. We also had a few ads out looking for a bass player and a drummer. One of the bass players that we auditioned was a guy named Joe Bates. His name will come up later, as we did not choose to go with him at this time. Mostly because there was this chick who was kinda hot who wanted to play bass and at the time we thought it would be really really cool to have a chick bass player. So we had pretty much decided to go with her by the time Joe had shown up for the audition. I did not remember this; someone else relayed this story to me. See, later in 1992 when we were looking for a bass player who could actually play we put an ad out again and again Joe Bates showed up. Only he recognized us and we didn't recognize him from the last time. His thought apparently was "Oh, geez. Not these guys again."

Fall, 1991
Steve kept writing, I kept recording his ideas onto the 4-track and making the songs better, and in the fall of 1991 I hooked up with another recording major named Zoe Putzbach and convinced her to record us as her senior recording project. That fall we recorded the basic tracks for "Save Me", "Plywood", "I Caught My Girlfriend Kissing Santa", "Opportunity Day". "When I'm Afraid" and "Looks Like She's From Another World". We finished "Save Me" and "I Caught My Girlfriend Kissing Santa" in time for the holidays that year and we made what we called "The Christmas Cassingle". We got around 100 cassettes printed up and gave them away as presents that year. Teresa (aka "Tree"), a freind of Marcia's did the artwork for the cover which kind of looked like Santa getting crucified on a pair of lips. It was great! Unfortunately, the place I got the cassette inserts printed lost the original and all I have left are a few copies of the cassette itself. I'll try to get that cover scanned in the future. I remember sitting in the attic at Jennie's house on Central Avenue in Fredonia, freezing my ass off, smoking cigarettes and printing the lables to go on the cassettes with this electronic typewriter I had. Good times. Aaron didn't play too much on those recordings, but we were able to borrow his Marshall head so we could get some decent guitar sounds and he did play most of the electric guitar parts in "When I'm Afraid". It was only because of him we got the good slide sounds, the solo and the chorus-laden verse parts. Dave Hershey again played drums. I prepared Opportunity Day for the most part in the MIDI studio at the university, and only later did we add the guitars, cello, flute, tympani, snare, choir and bells. That winter we again submitted an audition tape for and got into the SRT all-day concert. Heck, we even had a coveted 9PM slot. All we needed now was a band. So we threw together myself, Steve, Marc Feliciano on bass, Dave Hershey on drums and a guy on guitar who I played in another band with at Fredonia named Dave...oh crap. Now I can't remember his name. I think that's how it went. Dave may have been on bass. JEEZUZ IT WAS OVER 10 YEARS AGO! It actually went over rather well, I thought.

That spring I finally graduated from college with my appropriately named BS degree. By this time Steve and Marcia were living on, oh, I don't remember the name of the street, but it was the house that eventually burned down. I stayed with them a couple of weeks until I found a place of my own - with a guy who, when I asked his name, actually said "Call me Ishmael." I kid you not. Then the house burned down. See, some of Steve's friends were coming into town to see The Dead play and Steve and I were out drinking at Broadway Joe's waiting for them. We'd downed about 3 pitchers when Randy came in and said "Steve, your house is on fire." We were like "Yeah, right!" and he said, "No, your house is on fire." That kind of put a damper on the evening.

Summer, 1992
That summer we put out the ads again for a bass player and a drummer. At the time we were also having Dave play lead guitar. We got responses from one Joe Bates (see above. We were always impressed on how well he knew the songs we wanted to play. Now I know why he knew them so well - he'd remembered them from before!) and from one Cave Wilson. Cave and I had actually played together in the high school jazz band and even before that once we played two Judas Priest songs in a cover band. We started playing in the basement at Cave's parents' house out in Eden and we were starting to get pretty good. Dave decided that he couldn't make the trip from Fredonia any longer tho, so we were again looking for a lead guitar player. I contacted Aaron again and he agreed to join us. We moved out from the basement to a rehearsal space above a bar on Main Street in Buffalo. We had this little 10x15 room we would work stuff out in. Some things I specificly remember from this time:

  • Working on this great song. I didn't know what the title was for sure so I said "Let's play that cool new song we were working on last time. You know, that one about candy" Steve said "That one about candy?" and I said "Yeah, it has something to do with candy. It goes something like this...." and I started to play the riff from what eventually would be called "Candy". Steve got a good laugh out of that since the word "candy" is only mentioned once in the entire song.
  • Ripping Aaron a new asshole in front of someone's girlfriend and Jean Cummins (who was visiting at the time) because he didn't know his guitar parts. This was probably one of the first of many times I was a total dick. He had his act together much better next time, tho.
  • Working on the octave guitar parts at the end of "I Fell Well (I)"
  • "Thoughts Of Being Big" Included "I Fell Well (I and II)"

That fall we played a gig at the Sundowner at SUNY Fredonia. The gig went well enough, but it would be the last time we played with Aaron. He was a great player but his heart was in the blues, not in the alt-rock we were playing.

Spring, 1993
In the spring of 1993 Steve and I moved into a house on Lisbon Ave. Joe and a couple of his friends lived upstairs and we moved rehearsals to our basement. I'd guess we were starting to play out a lot more then. I don't have any of the old flyers anymore. What I do have are the old reviews of our stuff. I'll post them as I go along.

Songs and stuff that need to get included here:

  • Cut up
  • The Southern Song
  • Doin' Nothing
  • Somebody's Coming For You
  • You're Lucky Too
  • Be Here Running
  • I Just Sit Around
  • Been Around Some
  • Submarine
  • I Can't Read
  • Anyways

Places we played:

  • Broadway Joe's
  • The Continental
  • Mohawk Place
  • BJ's (Fredonia)
  • That gig in Erie, PA the night of the low-speed OJ car chase
  • That gig in Potsdam where we stayed at Cave's old frat house. It was way, way too much like a stereotypical frat house.
  • Gargoyle
  • The New Years Eve gigs (The indoor pool party and the "Cave's really really drunk" gig)
  • Outside the dorms at UB in February.
  • The Showplace Theater
  • Blind Melons
  • That gig in Syracuse with Ansley Court
  • The Musician Magazine gigs in Buffalo and Syracuse
  • The Icon
  • That ski lodge where we first heard Ansley Court
  • Nietzsche's
  • Cave's Garden Party Gigs at the Allentown Art Festival
  • Mickey Rats

So a few weeks ago I was in Buffalo and I went to see Cave's bands playing at The Continental. Man was he surprised to see me. We ended up hanging out until 6 in the morning. He had all this old stuff from The Willies. The song lists he had; I didn't even remember some of the things on the list. I've got some of the tapes now. The aforementioned Kenny Feldman actually has two reels of 2" tape we started to record at Fredonia Fall 1995 that never got finished. He's transfereing them to CD for me now so I can work with them. There may be some unreleased stuff released yet.