About this time last year, I was cat-sitting in Brooklyn in exchange for a place to live rent-free when I was contacted by none other than Jane Lee of yet-unnamed The Great Collide. I hadn’t spoken to Jane in years, but she had just moved down to Tennessee with these two dudes from school to start a band. The problem, she explained, was that the band was short a bass player, and she asked if I was interested in coming down to visit. I didn’t own a bass, and I had not played the bass since high school, roughly around the time I had last spoken to Jane. However, I had also spent my post-graduate months searching for a job to no avail, and I thought, what the hell, let’s give this a shot. Armed with my newly purchased $100 Craigslist bass and my keen sense of adventure, I bought a one-way ticket to Nashville.
I flew down with high hopes but few expectations; it wasn’t until I bonded with Drew and Wyatt over Clueless and a case of Miller High Life that I started thinking, maybe this could work out. After the band asked me to join (via a PA announcement at a minor league baseball game), I moved into their basement and started writing, practicing, and playing with the band.
After making as big a decision as moving to a new city and pursuing music with such haste and spontaneity, I sometimes think about what I would be doing had I not moved to Nashville. In truth, I would probably be making more money doing something a little more stable. But I also would not have professionally recorded an EP, gone on a tour that we put together ourselves, or even stepped foot in the South. Or have met such wonderful people. Cue tears.
So yeah, pretty much what Wyatt said.
-David
