From South Buffalo to the Bay: The Dethbed Origin Story (Part 1 of 3)

Every band has a creation myth. Ours doesn't start with a garage and a borrowed amp. It starts with two guys in Buffalo. Joe got me singing for the first time, in a guitar store, paid in whiskey, in 1983. A year later, in 1984, Rick "Ricky Baby" Andolina got me into my first real band, the first one I ever helped put together. That's the 716 connection. Everything else in this story, all three parts of it, traces back to those two guys, and it's still going because of two more: Ace and Curran Evans, the 925 connection, who've known each other since school in Livermore and are both still out here writing and playing with me today. We even wrote a song about it, "Live in the Dream," because that's exactly what they've let me keep doing.

Where It Actually Started: Cyco Joe

I met Joe in a guitar store in South Buffalo. He offered to give me lessons, and instead of cash, we settled on whiskey. That was the deal, and if you're wondering whether whiskey holds up as a currency for guitar lessons, I can confirm it worked out great, for exactly as long as you'd expect.

I wanted him to teach me Exodus' "Bonded by Blood." Bad idea, in hindsight, for the amplifier. He got so fired up playing it that he started bashing his guitar into the poor thing like it had personally wronged him, no crowd, no stage, no reason on earth except the song demanded it. By the time he was finished, the amp was less a piece of musical equipment and more a cautionary tale. That's how he earned the name Cyco Joe. He had nothing to prove to anyone: there was no one there but me and a dying amplifier, and he still went all in. It was raw and true and real, a genuine heavy metal moment, delivered to an audience of one very confused, whiskey-paying student who never did figure out how to fast pick.

That whiskey also made for a crazy ending to one particular night, or a terrible beginning to the next morning, depending on how you look at it. After putting away more of it than either of us should have, I crashed at Joe's place. I got the top bunk. I'll spare most of the details, except to say Joe was not thrilled the next morning, and it had everything to do with the bottom bunk being directly underneath the top bunk. We were kids then, and his parents never let me sleep over again.

I became a vocalist by default, after failing at pretty much every other instrument I tried. Joe was also the first guy who talked me into singing a cover with his band. The first song I ever sang, in front of anyone, was Fastway's "Say What You Will."

Tirant Sin and the Cannibal Corpse Connection

On Halloween night, October 31, 1986, I played my first and only show with a band called Tirant Sin, a garage show where I wore a mask, alongside Rich on bass, Bob Rusay on guitar, and a young drummer named Paul Mazurkiewicz. I remember playing covers from Exodus, Maiden, and Metallica, with a few heavy originals peppered in. Right after, I rushed across town to Club One to play a second set with Mylan Sheath, an all-covers gig that included Trouble's "Psalm 9." That flyer's still up on the DB925 History page. It's one of the only photos of me with long hair before I ever shaved my head.

It wasn't long after that show that I decided I just didn't want to scream so much, and the day job was calling me hard. I chased it for a couple of years: door-to-door cable sales, with a first thousand-dollar paycheck at 20 that felt like the responsible path, whatever anyone wants to call it. Over $2,500 today, if you're wondering.

It would be four years later when Paul went on to become the drummer for Cannibal Corpse, one of the biggest death metal bands on the planet, releasing their debut, "Eaten Back to Life," with Chris Barnes on those deep, raw, guttural growls. They got a better vocalist and went on to become world-famous. I'm not saying I made Cannibal Corpse. I'm just saying they didn't get famous until after I left. What pulled me back into music was the memory of that Halloween night, two shows in one night, and it was Cannibal Corpse getting signed to Metal Blade Records that really lit the fire under it.

Around that same time, I formed a band of my own, The Real Rulers, with Cyco Joe on bass, Justin 'The Carcass' Kubiak on guitar, and Johnny Panic on drums, which became RULE!, the name I later got tattooed on the right side of my head. Drummers John Misso, Dave Riccio, and Kevin O'Connell each took a turn behind the kit as the band evolved, and every one of them helped keep it moving forward. Roger 'Raji' Gilkey and DEEP also spent time in the lineup, Raji on guitar and DEEP on bass.

The lyrics evolved right along with the lineup. Early on they were more juvenile, songs like "Comatose" (about overdosing), "Drink Fast," and "The Fat Man's on the Run," which was code for whoever had the weed on a phone call back when we were young and paranoid about who might be listening. By the time we wrote "New Way," the lyrics had turned away from partying and toward something closer to self-help: "dollar detour to hatred, crucifix of the rich," followed later by "seek the path hidden within your mangled minds with prayers of better days," prayers there meaning manifestation, not religion. That direction never really left. Whatever I've written since, the words have stayed pointed the same way, at figuring myself out more than anything else.

This was the music I actually wanted to play. We all wrote the songs together, and it was as much about my spirit melting into my bandmates' as it was about the songs themselves.

In 1992, Paul got me a meeting with 'the man' at his record label while I was out in California for work. I sat down at Metal Blade in Van Nuys, but I didn't close the deal, and I flew back to Buffalo empty-handed. RULE! still got to share the stage with some of my favorite bands, Corrosion of Conformity, Overkill, and Tool, before our time in Buffalo was done.

Pimp Slap the Atmosphere and the Road Out of Florida

I left Buffalo in 1994, the year the Bills lost their fourth straight Super Bowl in a row, two of them back to back to the Cowboys. That was enough for me. But the joke only tells half of it: I'd gotten hungrier to travel, and the lineup I had in Buffalo wasn't built for the kind of touring I wanted to do. I headed down to Florida, starting out on the east coast in Daytona before relocating to Lakeland, which became home base while we played shows all over the state.

That's where Pimp Slap the Atmosphere came together, with bassist Migwell, drummer Bezl, and guitarist Mike "Louis" Polito rounding out the lineup. It's also where I found out the hard way that music is actual work, not just fun: at one point we played 30 shows in 31 days, touring with Ben Meyer and Gardy Loo. No days off, no easing into a groove, just show after show after show.

We were a band of grown men living together in a band house, full-time musicians who still sold cable door-to-door two or three hours a night just to pay the bills before practice. Of every band I've ever played in, that lineup remains the most dedicated group of players I've ever shared a stage with.

Pimp Slap the Atmosphere never really made it, and if I'm honest, it wasn't for lack of songs. We recorded constantly, off the cuff, in studios from Florida to Greensboro, North Carolina, but we almost never released anything. We were having too good a time to be disciplined about it. Any time there was a heavy downpour overnight, we'd be up at the crack of dawn picking mushrooms out of cow patties, eating them fresh until a book scared us straight with a line about mother larvae, after which we started drying them instead.

The one time we actually did it right, we owe entirely to Omar Barbour, who invested in us to release our seven-song CD, recorded and produced by metal legend Scott Burns at Morrisound Recording in Tampa, the same studio and the same producer behind death metal records by Death and Obituary. That CD is proof of what we could have been if we'd taken our own songs half as seriously as we took everything else.

The PSTA years only lasted a few, but by 1998, the same year the East Bay's 510 area code split and 925 was born, I'd driven clear across the country to California. I've lived in Dublin, in the 925, ever since. It's also where I met Nora, working that same cable job, the love of my life and my soulmate, though I didn't know yet how much further that story would go.

Define Divine

It took a long time to find a lineup of grown-ass men in California who could actually get their schedules together, a problem that's followed this band for decades. I missed playing too much to just wait it out, so I flew back to Florida to play with Define Divine, from 2004 to 2006.

That lineup deserves its own mention: Shawn "Shizz" Bowen on guitar and G.J. Gosman on drums, both former Neurotica members, alongside former PSTA drummer Bezl, who moved over to bass, where his backing vocals and stage presence were a real asset. Bezl's still a great drummer to this day: his hand drumming skills have gone out of this world. Once we started playing shows, I don't remember anyone ever missing a rehearsal, and we played a good number of shows together, the same kind of dedication PSTA had.

The band came to an end when my wife became pregnant with our first child. There wasn't really another choice at that point. I moved back to California for good to build our family.

Naming all these people isn't a footnote to this story: it's most of the point. Every one of these names is someone that, if I saw them today, I'd give a big hug and mean it. These are the people who helped me actually live out the dream of playing on a real stage with real musicians, jumping around like a madman, celebrating life in the moment. Talking about myself was never really the goal here. Thanking them is.

That's Buffalo and Florida, whiskey lessons, a Cannibal Corpse connection, and a lot of stops and starts. Part two is where it actually turns into Dethbed: Rick, Ace, and the guys who built this thing with me.

Read the full DB925 history and explore the music at Dethbed Music