EDITOR’S NOTE: Today we’ll be covering my high school band The Days of Stillness. We re-released our old recordings this week onto the world wide web, and as part of the process I got together with the guys to reminisce about those golden days of our late teenage years and what it was like playing in the band. This “oral history” will cover our memories of the six songs found on the EP– the writing process, the recording process, and the live shows where they were played. You can listen to it on your streaming platform of choice.
We hope you enjoy this walk down memory lane as much as we did.
#1: “Another Lesson” (recorded June 2006)
ROGER: “I actually had this weird trepidation to click the link when you sent the songs over to me. I haven’t listened to these songs in like fifteen, twenty years, and was kind of anxious about what it would sound like. But as soon as this came on it really brought me back. Was a cool moment with so many great memories. And it actually sounds pretty good, certainly better than I was expecting it to sound.”
MARK: “This song was heavily influenced by Taking Back Sunday. On this one we really wanted to get that double singing back and forth style. I actually don’t remember the inspiration for the song or what it was about. We were coming from some of our early material, songs like “Gotta Get Away”, and I hadn’t really explored the top end of my vocal range yet. I remember standing at the mic during practice trying to hit the high note in the chorus, kinda feeling self-conscious about it, and then out of the corner my eye I saw Jason and Sourav standing to the side of me encouraging me to just fucking go for it. I went for it, nailed it, and that was all she wrote. It was kind of an “unlock” song for me vocally.”
JASON: “When I think of The Days of Stillness I think of the guitar work first and foremost. Sourav and Mark were really the driving force of the band in that way, both in their skillset and how they effectively were the ones who laid the framework for our arrangements. We built our songs around “riffs” first and foremost. It certainly wasn’t the bass guitar considering my skill set at the time [laughs]. This is a very long-winded way of saying that what I always loved most about “Another Lesson” is how the lead guitar parts from Sourav really drive this song. There’s all these really interesting and thoughtful elements to his lead playing, from the chorus lead line to the second verse riff, everything kind of sits in its place. It’s also the song where I think we best explored a “soft-loud” dynamic really well. The song takes you on a pretty wild musical journey that was always a ton of fun to play live. Probably our most complete and sonically interesting song front to back in my opinion.”
SOURAV: “This song definitely had the high school angsty relationship thing going on with the chorus hook. The guitar stuff I actually was going for a Thrice meets Northstar meets pop punk kinda thing, something I always tried to sort of blend in within my musical style. The second verse I tried to create a vibe and ambience with the guitar similar to Thrice’s guitarist Teppei, where he creates a sort of counter-harmony with the vocals and arrangement that adds to the mood.”
#2: “Gotta Get Away” (recorded Summer 2004)
MARK: “I remember we were in my garage writing it. That one took us awhile to figure out how to approach– we were sort of perfectionists with our songwriting, which is funny to say in retrospect listening back twenty years later. But was a moment where we started to really find our sound as a band. It felt like our first “real song” to me after we completed and finished it.”
JASON: “Which is hilarious because it’s literally just one verse and a two choruses [laughs].”
MARK: “That’s right [laughs]. I think this was also the song Sourav broke his string on during a show at the Gaslighter Theater in Campbell, which was our first real show outside of school rallies and community centers. I think we got like $30 for playing that show which felt like a million dollars at the time.”
SOURAV: “It was actually my guitar strap that broke [laughs]. I had hit a jump heading into the last chorus or something and it broke completely off. So I had sit my butt down on my amp and play the rest of the show sitting down. That was a tough look [laughs]. There was like 120 people there which was awesome. That was the only paid gig we had I think.”
JASON: “What I remember most was the tiny studio we recorded this song in. This was our first recording session we did, I think around sophomore year of high school, and was our first recording experience. How we connected with the producer was one of those things that only happens with the exuberance of youth. We were practicing in Mark’s garage and had the door open cause it was a hot summer. There was a 13-year old kid riding his bike around in the neighborhood. He biked past like four times in a matter of minutes, clearly working up the courage to approach us. Eventually he came up to us, introduced himself as Jacob, and said he had a studio down the street and would love to record us. Little did we know the studio was so small we had to literally crawl on our hands and knees in certain spots to reach our amps and pedal boards.”
MARK: “Jacob’s parents came and picked us up in their blue family van and loaded our gear into the back of it so we could get to that first session [laughs].”
ROGER: “I vividly remember that tiny ass studio [laughs]. There was certainly a DIY element to the whole thing, duct-taped soundproofing and foam shit all over the walls. I remember walking up to the backyard and it was just a shed in the backyard of his parents house. The studio was super cramped and we could barely fit all of our gear into the space. I was cramped as hell with the drum set when I was recording this song. Literally had barely enough room to move my arms [laughs].”
SOURAV: “Jacob was a character. There were chickens in the backyard running around, a couple roosters, they had a poultry farm back there or something [laughs]. He had this wild orange stark red curly hair on his head and he was significantly younger than us. And yeah the studio was incredibly tiny.”
#3: “One Good Reason” (recorded June 2006)
JASON: “We always had this blend of classic rock influences combined with mid-aughts emo and pop punk that was basically required material for kids our age. Basically a blend of our father’s music and our own. We loved to mix those two elements together as much as we could, find that elixir of pure rock and roll meets punk rock type energy. “One Good Reason” was our love letter to classic rock bands like AC/DC and Thin Lizzy.”
MARK: “I vividly remember the beginnings of this song. We were sitting in the bedroom, getting ready for band practice one day. Jason showed up and picked up my guitar, played that intro riff, and the look on his face was like “dude this is sick” and we took it to the garage. And once Sourav and Roger showed up we banged that song out in like an hour. That was one that came together really quickly for us.”
JASON: “I’ll never forget the absolute howitzer of a solo Mark put down in the studio. He had stayed out late the night before the session, walked in super groggy and out of it that morning, but he sat down with his guitar and nailed that in one single take. I remember looking at Sourav and being like “WTF how did he just do that?”. And our producer Randy, who was this grizzled music industry vet in his late 40’s, kind of looked at Mark trying to figure out what the hell just happened cause there’s no way this 17-year old hungover kid just pulled something so impressive right out of his ass.”
MARK: “Once I laid that solo down I was vibing, and our producer Randy turned down to Jason and said “Do you wanna lay down some vocals” and Jason got in the booth. He was just chilling there and hitting some of the backup lines. And right before the solo comes in Jason hits this guttural scream right before the solo starts. Sourav and I looked at each other and realized that was exactly what that moment called for. I also remember Randy saying giving me a little “woo” in the beginning of the song to kick it off [laughs]. And sure enough that “woo” is forever at the beginning of that song.”
ROGER: “Like the guys said, big AC/DC influence here. We were kind of known for our covers of “Back In Black” during our live shows. Those were always some of the most fun things to play live, such incredible energy from us and the crowd. We played that song in front of the whole school on the day of the homecoming football game or something. Probably our biggest rock star moment [laughs].”
SOURAV: “Playing that rally was actually one of my top highlights from high school to be honest. It was epic. We definitely played “Back In Black” on that one because Mark and I both grabbed solos and that was always a big part of our approach. I remember doing some crowd work and making my way towards the group of girls in the crowd during my solo.”
JASON: “You were always working the girls at the shows [laughs].”
SOURAV: “Absolutely, gotta give the people what they want [laughs]. There was a guy in the crowd, a substitute teacher or something, who after the show tried to sell us his PA system afterwards. He was really impressed by our approach to that song. Or perhaps he was just trying to offload his PA. Probably a bit of both.”
ROGER: “When we were in the studio we took a break to listen to the first mixes– this was in the days of CD’s so our producer Randy had burned us a first version to listen to in between recording– and we took it to my car to listen to it in his driveway. I remember all of us listening to the playback of this song and I somehow ended up on the roof of the car rocking out to it [laughs].”
SOURAV: “I was definitely nervous for this because it was our first time in a real studio. I remember tweaking the volume knob trying to change the tone of my guitar and Randy the producer kind of looking at me like what the heck are you doing kid. But that’s the fun part of the process.”
#4: “Song Four” (Recorded June 2006)
SOURAV: “This was our magnum opus from a guitar perspective, easily my favorite collection of riffs and guitar parts that we wrote. This song always hits for me. Saosin and Thrice were definitely the influences here. I think Roger’s drumming was great in this song, the double bass pedal was a new addition to our repertoire and he nailed it. The rhythm section was really tight in this one.”
MARK: “I remember playing it for our metalhead friend Ben Rutter after we recorded it and he was really down with it. The fact that someone who is a die-hard metalhead validated our approach felt really good at the time. This was one of those songs that we came up with as the band was going into the studio and we couldn’t finish the vocal track in time for recording. I remember leaving the studio with everyone on a mission to come up with some lyrics and a melody for it. We’re still on that mission apparently [laughs].”
SOURAV: “The whole thing just hits. Like Mark said I don’t even remember what the lyrics were or if we ever even had them. But it still works.”
ROGER: “The thing I remember most about this song was playing it at our last gig. It was a Battle of the Bands type thing. Located in a gym at a local high school or something, maybe Fremont High or something like that. I remember when we played this song live I accidentally flubbed a number of the fills during the song during that competition [laughs].”
JASON: “This is my favorite track of yours from a drumming perspective, similar to what Sourav said. I remember you getting out the double bass for this one and really leaning in on that process.”
ROGER: “Yeah that was a new experience for sure. Song Four was a fun song, one that we kind of explored a different sound on.”
JASON: “Like the boys said Thrice was definitely a huge influence on the sound. Their album The Artist in the Ambulance was one of our favorite albums at the time, still is frankly, and we wanted to write something in that vein. We also were also into a local band called Plans For Revenge that had a post-hardcore meets emo sound with a ton of breakdowns and shreddy guitars. I remember seeing them live at a local show and thinking how cool those guys were and wanting to write something like that [laughs]. None of us could really fry scream though so we were shit out of luck on the vocal front. I actually don’t remember if we ever got any vocal ideas down or if it was just perpetually a jam. It kind of works as an instrumental now in my opinion, the instruments tell their own story. I kind of like the way it all played out in that sense. It’s perfect in it’s incompletion.”
#5: “Where The Hell Is Sourav” (recorded Summer 2004)
JASON: “Another experience at Jacob’s tiny studio here boys. The chicken farm hot box [laughs].”
MARK: “Oh my god. Lke Roger said earlier it was so damn hot. We would have to leave in between takes cause it would get so fucking steamy in there [laughs].”
ROGER: “I think Sourav had the right idea about showing up late that day [laughs].”
JASON: “A bit on the backstory of this song– we were scheduled to record that day and for whatever reason Sourav was nowhere to be found. This was pre cell phones, no way to get in touch with him. We tried his home phone, I think we may have even driven to his house at one point, but he was quite literally a ghost that day. So me, Mark, and Roger wrote this song off the cuff live in the studio and put it to tape. It’s honestly my favorite song of ours for that reason. It’s become a phrase we use with our friends, even twenty years later. “Where the hell is Sourav?” is literally a part of our group’s lexicon. I love that about it.”
SOURAV: “We are really lucky to have had these moments and still be in touch with everyone still. That’s one of the things that I’m really appreciative of, how we still stay in touch and have those kinds of moments.”
MARK: “I remember Sourav showing up with like 30 minutes left in the recording session. No comment on where the hell he was. We showed him the song that we had written and I’ll never forgot how he was like half pissed that we spent the entire day working on this stupid song, which is hilarious considering he was the one who no-showed, but how he was also kind of excited and honored that we had written a song about him.
SOURAV: “I remember walking into the studio and the guys were playing that song and I actually do remember being a little pissed about it [laughs].”
MARK: “It’s so good. To this day he has never explained where he was during the whole process which makes this song even more hilarious to me. So where the hell were you Sourav?”
SOURAV: [ANSWER REDACTED]
#6: “Story” (recorded June 2006)
JASON: “Mark and I were both dating two girls at the time who were best friends. We kind of had a perpetual double date thing going on with them and the four of us would spend a lot of time together. Real head over heels high school romance type situation. But as these things tend to go in your teenage years both relationships ended around the same time. We were sad about it, so we wrote this song to work through our big angsty high school feelings [laughs].”
MARK: “I remember writing Story with the most emotion out of any song I’d ever written. For our other songs we just kind of tried to come up with lines and bars that we thought sounded cool and interesting, but weren’t necessarily connected to my own personal lived-in truth. Story was different in that sense. We put a lot of our truth into that song. It hits the hardest for me in terms of me connecting with it.”
JASON: “You can hear that in your delivery during the outro that closes out the song. That whole thing was sung straight from your soul. Still an all-time bar for me. That outro is my favorite singular moment in our entire discography because of that earnest approach.”
SOURAV: “Instrumentally and guitar wise this is all Northstar to me. I loved their lyrics, melodic flow, their guitar parts, the way they sort of approached their song arrangements…”
JASON: “Those girls were actually the ones who introduced us to Northstar [laughs].”
SOURAV: “You can’t make it up [laughs]. Northstar was the one band in my opinion that I wish had made it big, they really deserved it. I don’t know how they were trained but they have a jazzy kind of sound to them, kind of free-flowing and natural. Nothing sounds cookie cutter, it’s all very organic and unique in how they play their guitar riffs and flow from one section to the next. I was actually just listening to their song “The Pornographers Daughter” tonight in prep for this convo and that intro is exactly what I was going for in this song. A massive influence here.”
MARK: “When you’re building a song you’re kind of noodling on some guitar parts in the same key and tempo, writing a riff here and a riff there, and you try to stitch them all together eventually. I remember it was a little bit of an effort to remember the parts and play them in succession when we were working this one out over a few months. But there was a moment when we were jamming in Roger’s garage and everything kind of clicked and came together. When we got through it we were like ‘fuck yeah, that’s it.’”
ROGER: “I guess this song has all the high school romantic tie-ins. When I was working at Krispy Kreme I had a little fling with this girl who was my boss’ niece [laughs]. My boss was actually quasi-supportive of this at the time, which is weird in retrospect. At any rate, I remember having a hard time with the drum tracking at the end of this song, there was a certain part of the song where I kept missing the kick at the end of the song. I had literally been screwing it up all day long. But the girl I was seeing showed up at the recording studio with her friends when we were close to wrapping up. And sure enough as soon as she showed up I nailed that drum part I had previously been butchering all day on the first take with her in the studio. Sometimes you just need a little motivation to get it right.”
MARK: “I remember watching Sourav and Jason together in the booth laying down backing vocals. I was sitting by Randy with Roger. That dual singing part really gave the song the lift it needed at the end, some power and a lot more full vocal sound which made the song for me. Certainly another Taking Back Sunday inspired moment there.”
PARTING THOUGHTS & FAVORITE SONG
MARK: “I’ve been trying to find a way to express how much the band means to me over the past few days. Coming from a broken home, an unideal situation on that front, it meant a lot of me to get together on the weekends and have that bond. Having the band at that period of my life just meant the world to me. It truly felt like family. As for my favorite song, that would have to be “Story” because of the really raw emotional connection and how it was one of the first songs we wrote that had my personal truth in it.”
JASON: “Some of my fondest musical memories will always be with you guys. I wouldn’t trade any of those moments for the entire world and I’m so thankful we had the opportunity to get together and reminisce. Gonna be playing Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days” on repeat the rest of today. Favorite song for me is “Where The Hell Is Sourav” because of the backstory behind it and how it still makes me laugh twenty years later every time I hear it.”
SOURAV: “The whole EP is very emblematic of a young band trying to find its way. All these songs they say a lot about what kind of bands we were in at the time, a sort of snapshot into our collective musical journey. We had a lot of fun. Favorite song for me has to be “Story” because of the lyrics and the background of that song being so personal.”
ROGER: “This was such a trip to walk down memory lane and I’m so happy we did this. It was great catching up all these years later. Favorite song for me is gonna be “One Good Reason”. That song still slaps! It just puts a smile on my face listening to it.”
CREDITS
Songwriters: Mark Nichols, Sourav Roy, Jason Matthew Plank, Roger Kapul
Lead Vocals and Guitar: Mark Nichols
Guitar and Backing Vocals: Sourav Roy
Bass and Backing Vocals: Jason Matthew Plank
Drums: Roger Kapul
