Chapter 3: Four Girls and a Garage
I was a senior in high school in Year 37. If I had to pick just one year that truly set the course of my life, it would have to be that one. That was the spring that Taryn and I met Katy and Bella. I’d already known who Katy was, as her mother was former socialite royalty, but I didn't know her personally. I’d never met Bella at all, since she was a freshman, and let’s face it, senior snobbery is strong when it comes to dealing with freshmen.
Taryn and I had detention for something stupid, I’m sure. Taryn insists we got busted skipping class, but I recall having perfect attendance that year (I felt like I had to make up for the some of the previous years). I wonder if I could go back there and ask. It was only ... many decades ago, surely they still have records. Whatever it was that we did, we did it together, I distinctly remember being called to the assistant principal’s office together. When he gave us detention on the same say, Taryn just laughed at him. “Do you think that’s wise? You’re always saying how horrible we are when we’re together. Just imagine how much worse when we’re surrounded by like-minded people. Not the smartest move.” The comment earned her another day. By our senior year, most of the administrative staff either hated Taryn or was a bit afraid of her. It was silly, she wasn't really your typical troublemaker, she just has a natural, easy intelligence and was usually just bored. As sarcastic as she is, she just enjoyed baiting teachers a bit, just enough to throw them off their game, unless it was a teacher that was capable of giving it right back without being malicious about it. Then they’d be besties and Taryn could get away with anything. The best part about it was that simply being her best friend meant I was covered under that same protection.
Sitting in detention that early spring day, Taryn greeted the proctor by his first name and immediately pulled out a tiny CD player, as he was instructing us to sit quietly. It was one of her equally sarcastic buddies, and I really don’t think he would have expected anything different from her. She played this really obscure band that she and I had heard at a local music festival on a random weekend with her parents way up in Buffalo. They were good, but even according to the members of the band they really only had local fame, having played in other cities only a few times (I followed up on them once, they had split up since, and were all with different bands, all of whom have found mediocre success). In the back of the room, this tiny, angelic-looking blonde just blurts out, “Oh my Kobe, I love this song!” Of course, we all turn to look, and she’s just beaming. It was hard to tell what was more shocking, the fact that she knew the song, or the fact that someone so sweet and innocent looking could possibly be in detention. Taryn, not believing her, asked her a few questions about the band to see if she really knew the song, and apparently passed the ‘test.’ That’s how we met Isabella Lucey.
Katy Rayment was also there. As I said, I knew who she was, but I didn't really know anything about her. Unbeknownst to us at the time, she sort of idolized Taryn, and had actually managed to get detention on purpose knowing that Taryn was nearly always there. When she saw Taryn interacting with a freshman, she figured this was her chance to jump in, and she played the best card in her hand, mentioning that she thought her mother knew them. Her mother she was one of those Upper East Side Old Money Socialite Princesses. You know the ones, famous for no reason at all, just for being born. (I know what you’re thinking, I shouldn't knock the power of a famous last name, I know it helped my children in life, but I would die of mortification if they got swept into that lifestyle.) We were all intrigued, and Katy stated she was pretty sure she heard her mother mention them at dinner recently, and would try to find out more. To be honest, we never actually found out if she knew them, because every time we spoke after that, conversation turned to other topics. Other things were starting to fall into place.
As we continued to listen to the album that day, Bella admitted that she took guitar lessons just because of hearing that band. Taryn was the first one to suggest that we should all jam together. I think she was just tired of playing with Nordin. He’d treat our sessions like actual band practice, when Taryn and I were just dicking around with new songs or riffs or fills that we’d learned. He could be kind of tiring sometimes. It took Bella several weeks to accept the invitation. By that point, both she and Katy were comfortable greeting Taryn and I in the halls, and at one point Katy shyly told me she was also a guitar player, so I invited her to join us too.
The four of us played together at Taryn’s place for the next few years. Her place was the most centrally located, and she had a lot more space. The best part was the large terrace she had out back, which was perfect during the summer. Over time, it became a lot less screwing around and a lot more legitimate practicing. We all used to sing little parts of songs here and there, not really putting any effort into it, but slowly Katy took over lead vocals like a natural, making us sound like a real band. During Bella’s senior year, we realized we had something great going, and we decided to take our little band seriously.
At that time, we were a cover band, and Bella spread the word around school that we were available for parties. Katy started talking her mother into getting us spots at bars. It was mostly first-come-first-served open-mic type events, but they were willing to reserve spots for us. Shelby Schneider was the first person to “book” us to play at her New Year’s Eve party. We thanked her in the liner notes on our first album. To this day I wonder if she ever noticed. Having a “real” gig meant that we needed a real rehearsal space. We didn't have the money to rent anything out, but we knew about this one abandoned garage nearby. It wasn't really abandoned exactly, just unused. Belonging to a nearby mechanic, the place had been empty for as many years back as I could remember. So I took Bella, who had the sweetest face, and we asked the guy who owned the shop if we could use it. I have to admit, I was stunned when he said yes. He seemed like he’d be the kind of guy who’d be like, “Yo, you know broads can’t be no rock stars, getouttahere,” as he scratched his balls or something. But I think he had another thought pop into his head, something I even still believe today: It meant having young, hot girls around.
Having our own rehearsal space was a start, now we needed a name. The most ridiculous ideas started flying, even worse if we’d been drinking. (Taryn became a pro very early at drunken drumming.) At one point, fresh out of creativity, I threw up my hands and said, “Why not Four Girls and a Garage? That’s literally all we are right now.” Taryn actually liked it. Katy had no real opinion. Bella thought it sounded stupid and tried to amend it to Garage Girls. Katy felt that sounded like we were grungy biker types that should be playing metal. At the time, even though we were only doing covers, we put our own vibe to them, sort of a punk-pop feel. Probably too upbeat for a name like Garage Girls. Taryn was the one to joke that it made us sound like a motorcycle club, like Hell’s Angels or something. I remember looking at Katy and blurting out in reference to some other random joke from earlier, “Hellfire! Hellfire Angels!” and she shook her head, “Angels of Hellfire! It could go either way, we could be angels from hellfire, or made of hellfire.” We all nodded like a bunch of psychotic bobbleheads, beyond thrilled. We had a name! Shelby Schneider had been referring to us as ‘Bella Lucey’s band with Taryn McLoughlin,’ just going to show how strong Taryn’s ‘cool kid’ rep was, even two years after graduation, but as we played her party, celebrating as Year 39 became Year 40, we unveiled our name.
We saw a lot of those kids from that party at some of our first few real shows, and we were so grateful for the support. I had tears in my eyes at the sight. The other thing we were grateful for? Getting paid. We did Shelby’s party for free. We did a lot of parties for free. We weren't stupid. Getting our name out there, getting people to come see us and talk about us was the number one priority at the time, but once we started getting booked at bars clubs, that meant we earned a bit of a paycheck.
Of course, that’s when trouble started. It only took three months. That has to be a record.
Still with my father’s shrewd financial sense (at least he gave me something good), I felt we should be pooling every single cent we earned into one business account and saving it. If we were going to be a real band, we needed to invest everything in it. It’s not like any of us were going to be running around the city buying cars and penthouses on what was coming in. It just made more sense to keep saving it for the band. A hundred dollars a person was nothing. Four hundred dollars towards a van, or better equipment, or studio time, was worth everything.
Everyone disagreed, but to varying degrees. Taryn thought we should invest 75% of all the earnings, then split the remaining 25% amongst ourselves. Katy felt 60/40 was better. 60% into the band, then 10% apiece. Bella’s initial idea was that we split everything and save nothing for the band. Her rationale was simple: if we needed something for the band we could just split the cost. Finally, after realizing that putting money into the band meant we wouldn't have to come up with the money individually, she relented somewhat, but still to the individual benefit. Her new proposal was that we were five entities and that we would split everything evenly. 20% to the band, and then 20% to each of us.
It was the first time I’d ever seen Taryn be intentionally rude to someone. She used to give a lot of teachers a hard time, but she never crossed a line, and if that teacher wasn't having it she backed off. The same went for other students. Taryn was never a bully, and in fact went out of her way to talk to kids that were usually left out. She’d tease them, but in that way that friends do to each other, and she would subtly ignore and avoid the other popular kids that teased those kids maliciously. But to have her just be outright mean? I’d never seen it. It was fascinating. Bella pitched her 20% to everyone idea, and Taryn calmly stood up, got in Bella’s face, called her an immature, greedy child – among other things – and walked out.
It took a couple days before the two of them were in the same room again, and we ended up compromising with a 70/30 split, the majority going to the band. After we started making more money and got the band account built up, then we would think about changing that. Since Taryn and I were the oldest and we ended up doing most of the planning, we were ‘elected’ to be in charge, and we went to the bank to open two accounts. One regular business account, and one investment account with a small portion of the money. In the end, we realized how important it was that we’d had that disagreement, and made our way through it. How many bands don’t survive that? The rest of the spring, and into the summer, we played as many shows as we could, and watched our investment grow.
This is also around the time I met Richard Urban. I'll save our meet-cute for later because that’s really a different story, so for now, just know that we met and started dating, and over time I learned he was a drummer and that he'd recently parted ways with a band.
When Bella announced that she’d signed a modeling contract, we thought it was no big deal. We were still small potatoes, mostly performing around the city. The majority of our shows were in Manhattan, but we even got out to Staten Island, Brooklyn, up in Harlem and the Bronx (thanks to Tatum, who was living uptown at the time), and we even scored a few gigs in Connecticut and up to Boston (those were hard because of Val, but more on that later). It’s not like we were a national touring band though, so there was no reason her modeling would interfere with the band's schedule, and it was highly unlikely the band would ever interfere with her modeling. In fact, the two things could benefit each other - the more exposure she got as a model, the more exposure we got as a band, and vice versa. But she had other plans, and a few months later she told us that she was quitting the band to model full time. Last we heard, she moved to LA. None of us ever spoke to her again, and unless she changed her name, she never became a major model. I looked her name up for years, with scant results, most of them referencing Angels of Hellfire and even Jackie O High.
Katy really stepped up on guitar, seamlessly executing the lead lines in such a way you could hardly tell we'd lost our rhythm guitar. She was developing polyps, so to ease the strain on her vocal cords, we began sharing lead vocals, trading off during songs, then trading whole songs, and in the coming months, I was singing lead for nearly the entire show. I wondered if she was giving up her lead role.
That's when she dropped the news. The polyps she told us she had didn't exist. The truth? She'd been diagnosed with lung cancer. She then nervously lit a cigarette, without a shred of irony, and Taryn burned herself taking it away. To say it was a shock is an understatement. She was twenty years old! In this tiny, ashamed voice, she told us she'd been smoking since she was about twelve, and had been up to a two pack-a-day habit by the time she was fifteen. Like any of us at that age, she didn't think the odds would ever be against her. That night, I convinced my cousin Victoria to stop smoking, and even Tatum switched from cigarettes to weed.
She started going for more frequent treatment, and we carried on for another few months with a lighter schedule. I took over lead completely, but playing guitar was becoming too much for her. Leaving town for shows was out of the question, as we had to stay close to her doctor, and now that we knew, we refused to let her miss an appointment. We found out later that when she was still hiding the disease from us, she was skipping some of her appointments to make it to shows.
Eventually, we had to sit down and have a serious talk: What next? We were just starting to get real recognition as a band, clubs in cities that we'd never been too were contacting us to book us to play, clubs that we played regularly were giving us bigger cuts of their sales – this wasn't the time to give up. But Katy was more important. We chose to risk it and take a break. This gave Katy time to get better, and give Taryn and I time to find a temporary stand-in. We figured this person would hold Katy's place until she was ready to come back, and then we'd figure out where to go from there. We could become a foursome again, or the replacement could leave. We held a few auditions, and this is where we picked up little Claudia Eisner. She was cheerful and could tolerate Taryn's snark-test, so we brought her into the circle. It was a solution, however temporary it might be.
Claudia was starting to play around a bit with the drums during practice, and the found that she was a little better behind them than in front of them. This prompted Taryn to dust off her old guitar skills, and the two switched places for several practices. The shift only improved our sound, and our new lineup was formed. We only managed a handful of shows before Claudia decided she really wasn’t cut out to be a punk drummer. We didn’t feel it was right to hold her back, so she left us to pursue her career as a solo pop artist. A year or so later, she was the second artist we signed to our record label (we were the first). She fared pretty well for herself, before drifting out of the spotlight later. Taryn and I struggled, making some adjustments to our sound for several months – there was no way I’d perfect my lead guitar in time, so I just improvised a bit on the bass. The crowd seemed into the just drum and bass sound for, but we started to hate it. It was gimmicky. It would get old.
And it just wasn't us.
We thought it was the end. In fact, we were sure of it. Angels of Hellfire was done before it really got started. One night over dinner, I lamented to Richard, who tentatively suggested that he join the band, at least until we figured things out. Taryn stayed at guitar, Richard took over on drums, and I stayed at bass and lead vocals. The plan was always for us to just keep this lineup until Katy could come back. The first time we played live, we knew it wasn’t going to be temporary. There was a chemistry there with the three of us that could not be replicated. This was it. When Katy got better, we absolutely had a place for her, but we weren’t going to lose Richard.
In the meantime, he and I grew even more serious and got married. Our honeymoon consisted of our first full regional tour. We played all over New York State and New Jersey, Pennsylvania, down as far as Nashville, and even made it up to Canada, playing on Toronto and Montreal. We started meeting with record companies, getting laughed at by labels, laughing at labels, and we decided to start up our own company. Siren Call Records started out as one tiny rented office in the Garment District, eventually growing to become the corporation it is now. It had one band – us – and we had to rent out studio space on the other side of Manhattan to start working on our album. Luckily, Katy was able to join us, lending her vocals to many of the recordings. We had no way of knowing those would be the only recordings of us together.
In late Year 41, we released our first album and were invited to play a complete North American tour. Less than one year later, Katy passed away. We’d spent the past five years working towards this goal, and now Taryn and I had to take the next step without one of people who took the first one with us, without whom we probably wouldn’t have gotten as far as we did as quickly as we did. It was really in the latter two of those five years that we really started to work towards that band’s future, and Katy’s mother was absolutely instrumental in moving us forward. That much was indisputable.
We dedicated that first tour to Katy. I’m not a superstitious person by any means, but even now I feel as though all of our success over the years came from her.
Taryn and I had detention for something stupid, I’m sure. Taryn insists we got busted skipping class, but I recall having perfect attendance that year (I felt like I had to make up for the some of the previous years). I wonder if I could go back there and ask. It was only ... many decades ago, surely they still have records. Whatever it was that we did, we did it together, I distinctly remember being called to the assistant principal’s office together. When he gave us detention on the same say, Taryn just laughed at him. “Do you think that’s wise? You’re always saying how horrible we are when we’re together. Just imagine how much worse when we’re surrounded by like-minded people. Not the smartest move.” The comment earned her another day. By our senior year, most of the administrative staff either hated Taryn or was a bit afraid of her. It was silly, she wasn't really your typical troublemaker, she just has a natural, easy intelligence and was usually just bored. As sarcastic as she is, she just enjoyed baiting teachers a bit, just enough to throw them off their game, unless it was a teacher that was capable of giving it right back without being malicious about it. Then they’d be besties and Taryn could get away with anything. The best part about it was that simply being her best friend meant I was covered under that same protection.
Sitting in detention that early spring day, Taryn greeted the proctor by his first name and immediately pulled out a tiny CD player, as he was instructing us to sit quietly. It was one of her equally sarcastic buddies, and I really don’t think he would have expected anything different from her. She played this really obscure band that she and I had heard at a local music festival on a random weekend with her parents way up in Buffalo. They were good, but even according to the members of the band they really only had local fame, having played in other cities only a few times (I followed up on them once, they had split up since, and were all with different bands, all of whom have found mediocre success). In the back of the room, this tiny, angelic-looking blonde just blurts out, “Oh my Kobe, I love this song!” Of course, we all turn to look, and she’s just beaming. It was hard to tell what was more shocking, the fact that she knew the song, or the fact that someone so sweet and innocent looking could possibly be in detention. Taryn, not believing her, asked her a few questions about the band to see if she really knew the song, and apparently passed the ‘test.’ That’s how we met Isabella Lucey.
Katy Rayment was also there. As I said, I knew who she was, but I didn't really know anything about her. Unbeknownst to us at the time, she sort of idolized Taryn, and had actually managed to get detention on purpose knowing that Taryn was nearly always there. When she saw Taryn interacting with a freshman, she figured this was her chance to jump in, and she played the best card in her hand, mentioning that she thought her mother knew them. Her mother she was one of those Upper East Side Old Money Socialite Princesses. You know the ones, famous for no reason at all, just for being born. (I know what you’re thinking, I shouldn't knock the power of a famous last name, I know it helped my children in life, but I would die of mortification if they got swept into that lifestyle.) We were all intrigued, and Katy stated she was pretty sure she heard her mother mention them at dinner recently, and would try to find out more. To be honest, we never actually found out if she knew them, because every time we spoke after that, conversation turned to other topics. Other things were starting to fall into place.
As we continued to listen to the album that day, Bella admitted that she took guitar lessons just because of hearing that band. Taryn was the first one to suggest that we should all jam together. I think she was just tired of playing with Nordin. He’d treat our sessions like actual band practice, when Taryn and I were just dicking around with new songs or riffs or fills that we’d learned. He could be kind of tiring sometimes. It took Bella several weeks to accept the invitation. By that point, both she and Katy were comfortable greeting Taryn and I in the halls, and at one point Katy shyly told me she was also a guitar player, so I invited her to join us too.
The four of us played together at Taryn’s place for the next few years. Her place was the most centrally located, and she had a lot more space. The best part was the large terrace she had out back, which was perfect during the summer. Over time, it became a lot less screwing around and a lot more legitimate practicing. We all used to sing little parts of songs here and there, not really putting any effort into it, but slowly Katy took over lead vocals like a natural, making us sound like a real band. During Bella’s senior year, we realized we had something great going, and we decided to take our little band seriously.
At that time, we were a cover band, and Bella spread the word around school that we were available for parties. Katy started talking her mother into getting us spots at bars. It was mostly first-come-first-served open-mic type events, but they were willing to reserve spots for us. Shelby Schneider was the first person to “book” us to play at her New Year’s Eve party. We thanked her in the liner notes on our first album. To this day I wonder if she ever noticed. Having a “real” gig meant that we needed a real rehearsal space. We didn't have the money to rent anything out, but we knew about this one abandoned garage nearby. It wasn't really abandoned exactly, just unused. Belonging to a nearby mechanic, the place had been empty for as many years back as I could remember. So I took Bella, who had the sweetest face, and we asked the guy who owned the shop if we could use it. I have to admit, I was stunned when he said yes. He seemed like he’d be the kind of guy who’d be like, “Yo, you know broads can’t be no rock stars, getouttahere,” as he scratched his balls or something. But I think he had another thought pop into his head, something I even still believe today: It meant having young, hot girls around.
Having our own rehearsal space was a start, now we needed a name. The most ridiculous ideas started flying, even worse if we’d been drinking. (Taryn became a pro very early at drunken drumming.) At one point, fresh out of creativity, I threw up my hands and said, “Why not Four Girls and a Garage? That’s literally all we are right now.” Taryn actually liked it. Katy had no real opinion. Bella thought it sounded stupid and tried to amend it to Garage Girls. Katy felt that sounded like we were grungy biker types that should be playing metal. At the time, even though we were only doing covers, we put our own vibe to them, sort of a punk-pop feel. Probably too upbeat for a name like Garage Girls. Taryn was the one to joke that it made us sound like a motorcycle club, like Hell’s Angels or something. I remember looking at Katy and blurting out in reference to some other random joke from earlier, “Hellfire! Hellfire Angels!” and she shook her head, “Angels of Hellfire! It could go either way, we could be angels from hellfire, or made of hellfire.” We all nodded like a bunch of psychotic bobbleheads, beyond thrilled. We had a name! Shelby Schneider had been referring to us as ‘Bella Lucey’s band with Taryn McLoughlin,’ just going to show how strong Taryn’s ‘cool kid’ rep was, even two years after graduation, but as we played her party, celebrating as Year 39 became Year 40, we unveiled our name.
We saw a lot of those kids from that party at some of our first few real shows, and we were so grateful for the support. I had tears in my eyes at the sight. The other thing we were grateful for? Getting paid. We did Shelby’s party for free. We did a lot of parties for free. We weren't stupid. Getting our name out there, getting people to come see us and talk about us was the number one priority at the time, but once we started getting booked at bars clubs, that meant we earned a bit of a paycheck.
Of course, that’s when trouble started. It only took three months. That has to be a record.
Still with my father’s shrewd financial sense (at least he gave me something good), I felt we should be pooling every single cent we earned into one business account and saving it. If we were going to be a real band, we needed to invest everything in it. It’s not like any of us were going to be running around the city buying cars and penthouses on what was coming in. It just made more sense to keep saving it for the band. A hundred dollars a person was nothing. Four hundred dollars towards a van, or better equipment, or studio time, was worth everything.
Everyone disagreed, but to varying degrees. Taryn thought we should invest 75% of all the earnings, then split the remaining 25% amongst ourselves. Katy felt 60/40 was better. 60% into the band, then 10% apiece. Bella’s initial idea was that we split everything and save nothing for the band. Her rationale was simple: if we needed something for the band we could just split the cost. Finally, after realizing that putting money into the band meant we wouldn't have to come up with the money individually, she relented somewhat, but still to the individual benefit. Her new proposal was that we were five entities and that we would split everything evenly. 20% to the band, and then 20% to each of us.
It was the first time I’d ever seen Taryn be intentionally rude to someone. She used to give a lot of teachers a hard time, but she never crossed a line, and if that teacher wasn't having it she backed off. The same went for other students. Taryn was never a bully, and in fact went out of her way to talk to kids that were usually left out. She’d tease them, but in that way that friends do to each other, and she would subtly ignore and avoid the other popular kids that teased those kids maliciously. But to have her just be outright mean? I’d never seen it. It was fascinating. Bella pitched her 20% to everyone idea, and Taryn calmly stood up, got in Bella’s face, called her an immature, greedy child – among other things – and walked out.
It took a couple days before the two of them were in the same room again, and we ended up compromising with a 70/30 split, the majority going to the band. After we started making more money and got the band account built up, then we would think about changing that. Since Taryn and I were the oldest and we ended up doing most of the planning, we were ‘elected’ to be in charge, and we went to the bank to open two accounts. One regular business account, and one investment account with a small portion of the money. In the end, we realized how important it was that we’d had that disagreement, and made our way through it. How many bands don’t survive that? The rest of the spring, and into the summer, we played as many shows as we could, and watched our investment grow.
This is also around the time I met Richard Urban. I'll save our meet-cute for later because that’s really a different story, so for now, just know that we met and started dating, and over time I learned he was a drummer and that he'd recently parted ways with a band.
When Bella announced that she’d signed a modeling contract, we thought it was no big deal. We were still small potatoes, mostly performing around the city. The majority of our shows were in Manhattan, but we even got out to Staten Island, Brooklyn, up in Harlem and the Bronx (thanks to Tatum, who was living uptown at the time), and we even scored a few gigs in Connecticut and up to Boston (those were hard because of Val, but more on that later). It’s not like we were a national touring band though, so there was no reason her modeling would interfere with the band's schedule, and it was highly unlikely the band would ever interfere with her modeling. In fact, the two things could benefit each other - the more exposure she got as a model, the more exposure we got as a band, and vice versa. But she had other plans, and a few months later she told us that she was quitting the band to model full time. Last we heard, she moved to LA. None of us ever spoke to her again, and unless she changed her name, she never became a major model. I looked her name up for years, with scant results, most of them referencing Angels of Hellfire and even Jackie O High.
Katy really stepped up on guitar, seamlessly executing the lead lines in such a way you could hardly tell we'd lost our rhythm guitar. She was developing polyps, so to ease the strain on her vocal cords, we began sharing lead vocals, trading off during songs, then trading whole songs, and in the coming months, I was singing lead for nearly the entire show. I wondered if she was giving up her lead role.
That's when she dropped the news. The polyps she told us she had didn't exist. The truth? She'd been diagnosed with lung cancer. She then nervously lit a cigarette, without a shred of irony, and Taryn burned herself taking it away. To say it was a shock is an understatement. She was twenty years old! In this tiny, ashamed voice, she told us she'd been smoking since she was about twelve, and had been up to a two pack-a-day habit by the time she was fifteen. Like any of us at that age, she didn't think the odds would ever be against her. That night, I convinced my cousin Victoria to stop smoking, and even Tatum switched from cigarettes to weed.
She started going for more frequent treatment, and we carried on for another few months with a lighter schedule. I took over lead completely, but playing guitar was becoming too much for her. Leaving town for shows was out of the question, as we had to stay close to her doctor, and now that we knew, we refused to let her miss an appointment. We found out later that when she was still hiding the disease from us, she was skipping some of her appointments to make it to shows.
Eventually, we had to sit down and have a serious talk: What next? We were just starting to get real recognition as a band, clubs in cities that we'd never been too were contacting us to book us to play, clubs that we played regularly were giving us bigger cuts of their sales – this wasn't the time to give up. But Katy was more important. We chose to risk it and take a break. This gave Katy time to get better, and give Taryn and I time to find a temporary stand-in. We figured this person would hold Katy's place until she was ready to come back, and then we'd figure out where to go from there. We could become a foursome again, or the replacement could leave. We held a few auditions, and this is where we picked up little Claudia Eisner. She was cheerful and could tolerate Taryn's snark-test, so we brought her into the circle. It was a solution, however temporary it might be.
Claudia was starting to play around a bit with the drums during practice, and the found that she was a little better behind them than in front of them. This prompted Taryn to dust off her old guitar skills, and the two switched places for several practices. The shift only improved our sound, and our new lineup was formed. We only managed a handful of shows before Claudia decided she really wasn’t cut out to be a punk drummer. We didn’t feel it was right to hold her back, so she left us to pursue her career as a solo pop artist. A year or so later, she was the second artist we signed to our record label (we were the first). She fared pretty well for herself, before drifting out of the spotlight later. Taryn and I struggled, making some adjustments to our sound for several months – there was no way I’d perfect my lead guitar in time, so I just improvised a bit on the bass. The crowd seemed into the just drum and bass sound for, but we started to hate it. It was gimmicky. It would get old.
And it just wasn't us.
We thought it was the end. In fact, we were sure of it. Angels of Hellfire was done before it really got started. One night over dinner, I lamented to Richard, who tentatively suggested that he join the band, at least until we figured things out. Taryn stayed at guitar, Richard took over on drums, and I stayed at bass and lead vocals. The plan was always for us to just keep this lineup until Katy could come back. The first time we played live, we knew it wasn’t going to be temporary. There was a chemistry there with the three of us that could not be replicated. This was it. When Katy got better, we absolutely had a place for her, but we weren’t going to lose Richard.
In the meantime, he and I grew even more serious and got married. Our honeymoon consisted of our first full regional tour. We played all over New York State and New Jersey, Pennsylvania, down as far as Nashville, and even made it up to Canada, playing on Toronto and Montreal. We started meeting with record companies, getting laughed at by labels, laughing at labels, and we decided to start up our own company. Siren Call Records started out as one tiny rented office in the Garment District, eventually growing to become the corporation it is now. It had one band – us – and we had to rent out studio space on the other side of Manhattan to start working on our album. Luckily, Katy was able to join us, lending her vocals to many of the recordings. We had no way of knowing those would be the only recordings of us together.
In late Year 41, we released our first album and were invited to play a complete North American tour. Less than one year later, Katy passed away. We’d spent the past five years working towards this goal, and now Taryn and I had to take the next step without one of people who took the first one with us, without whom we probably wouldn’t have gotten as far as we did as quickly as we did. It was really in the latter two of those five years that we really started to work towards that band’s future, and Katy’s mother was absolutely instrumental in moving us forward. That much was indisputable.
We dedicated that first tour to Katy. I’m not a superstitious person by any means, but even now I feel as though all of our success over the years came from her.