I still haven't written enough about Shay since he died this year.
I really want to celebrate him here more with stories like he deserves and I'll use this space for him more as I slowly come out of shock.
But today I was thinking about what Shay and I called Bigfellas 1.0 era with Tim Gadzinski singing his ass off and we embraced being the best band with no following status.
That era was actually captured fairly well in the first music video and a really early recording of ours, "In The Daytime."
The Song
You can read "the story behind the song" in the white section below.
But at the time I wrote it I though we were capturing the zeitgeist of day drinkers in sunny San Diego.
Looking back on it, it was just as much about me and the guys in the band (and my other friends) spending most of their time without a whole lot of adult responsibilities despite being adults.
We didn't play it a ton as a group once I permanently abandoned playing guitar in the Bigfellas and moved 100% to keyboards.
That was mostly strategic about set up and tear-down - when you have no roadies and playing a lot of shared bills, there wasn't much point in setting up for two completely different instrument configurations.
R.I.P. to us playing it as a group.
Our First Music Video - And Idiots
This video was made by my friend Mike Stutz.
He's a great director and even better friend.
Somewhere around the turn of the millennium Mike gathered a bunch of us together to make an improvised movie.
It was post Best In Show but pre Curb Your Enthusiasm.
The movie was called "Idiots" and it didn't quite come together for an actual release and we didn't really know how to get into film festivals anyway.
But it was a fun as fuck group effort towards getting the gang together to put on a show.
You'll see Bigfellas' Tim Gadzinski and I in a lot of this footage.
It makes me nostalgic but also thankful for having such friends who could make me laugh my ass off.
As for the movie and the footage, I feel like after a week I started to learn how to act a little; unfortunately the shoot was only for 8-9 days.
If nothing else, this is a home movie with some truly funny bits.
But right now with Shay gone too soon and Tim living in Wisconsin and me in California, seeing Bigfellas 1.0 band footage and Tim and me on camera, it just reminds us how fucking fun it was to be with Tim and Shay in any situation.
People sometimes marvel at why people stay in bands and spend all that time without a ton of stage success or pay.
This reminds me that when you can be creative with great friends who make you laugh like this, the questions is why WOULDN'T you do this all the time?
