Ancient History

We started up in 1990 when I (Dan Kozak, guitar/vocal) got together with Steve Witty (ex-drums, ex-Third Rail) and Brad Crandall (ex-bass, ex-Madhouse) and my old school friend and housemate at the time, Jeff Venverloh and started doing some jamming. I knew Steve and his brother Dave through their sister Anne, who I'd been housemates with and who'd been in 11th Hour with old friends Barrett Jones, (now a well known producer as well as leader of Churn and owner/operator of the Laundry Room studio/label in Seattle) and Phil Veillette (now big time endocrinologist). I'd roadied for 11th Hour and engineered some of their recordings, repaying the favor to Barrett who'd always recorded Age of Consent, the band I was in c. 1982-85, with Reuben Radding, later of Dain Bramage (featuring one Dave Grohl on drums) and many other bands/projects, Peter Levine (later of Flowerhead) and Sam Imhoff (who I also played with in a recording project c. 1996 called Hookah). Brad had other things going on in his life, so Steve and I invited his brother Dave (also ex-Third Rail) to borrow Anne's bass (he was a guitarist by trade) and come over to jam. Come about June of '90, Dave showed up with a bass of his own and we knew he was serious. We recorded a tape on 4-track cassette a week later and got on with it.

We played our first show in Oct. of '90 at Max's on Broadway in Baltimore, on a bill with the Goo Goo Dolls (who no one had heard of either). Shortly thereafter, we parted ways with Jeff and I took over lead vocals, documented on another 4-track cassette recording, the first to go out to many places (discography). Our first show as a trio was in Dec. '90 at the 9:30 Club (the only time we played the old F St. location).

Photo: Jeff Venverloh

Dan at d.c. space

In 1991, we played more shows, lots of them at d.c. space. We recorded our first, self-titled cassette at Barrett's Upland Studios, with production help from Peter Mansinne, later the main man behind Aorta, Inc., Works On Blue's (now Dexter Love) label.

In 1992, we played more shows, lots of them at d.c. space. One of the more memorable was in December, the last month that the space was open. We opened for No Man, the band featuring Roger Miller, ex- Mission of Burma, (a formative band for me) and performed a version of Roger's Einstein's Day with the author in the audience. We released another cassette (sort of released--it was available at shows for a while), Boxspring VI, the title a play on Beatles VI, the fact that it was our sixth recording session and the fact that it had six songs on it. One of them was Prism, which would be our set closer for quite a while. Shortly after that, we hooked up with Ian McCaleb, who became our singer for about 18 months.

Carwreck c/w Non-Disclosure Statement

On Feburary 6th, 1993, we played another in a series of shows at the Roratonga Rodeo (now the Galaxy Hut), our main regular gig since the close of d.c. space and then took some time off to record a 7". The sessions were marred by bad weather and illness and the original schedule for demoing some songs, picking 2 for the record and then recording them quickly became a thing of the past. Once the recording was done, we tried to get back in the swing of things, playing a show at 15 Minutes in August, celebrating the release of the Carwreck c/w Non-Disclosure Statement 7" . It was our last show with Ian. The differences had been brewing for a while. We regrouped as a trio again, playing our first show as a trio (again) at the Bond St. Cafe in New York City on Dec. 17, 1993 with our very good friends Beautyfeast. We had ended up playing only 3 shows in 1993.

Tarot

1994 got off to a strong start with many more live shows and the recording of the Tarot tape. This was both a demo that we sent to record companies and a release available at shows. A notable track was our version of the Beatles" Good Morning, Good Morning (from Sgt. Pepper's) which is the only cover we had ever put on a release and has stayed in the set to this day.

We returned after the 1994 holidays to get ready for a pair of shows (Republic Gardens and the Black Cat but received the news that these would be Steve Witty's last shows with us. The change had been coming for a while and in a lot of ways it was a relief to us all to have it out in the open, but Steve's shoes proved difficult to fill. The rehearsals and Republic Gardens show went really well, but inclement weather caused us to cancel the Black Cat show. After nearly five years of the same core lineup, we were looking for a drummer.

None of the early attempts at finding a drummer were fruitful, and in the spring Dave and I became involved with Propeller, a recording project with my old Age of Consent bandmates Pete Levine and Sam Imhof. This stretched through the fall of 1995, but we were still thinking about getting Absolutely Boxspring back together, since Propeller was a long distance proposition and hardly the same as a working band.

Scott Frey is invisible on the left

Photo: Lara Kozak

In early '96 we got together with another old friend of mine, Scott Frey (ex-Last Laugh, ex-Bedlam Hour, ex-Rear View Mirror and probably some I don't know about, currently in Stovepipe) who'd recently returned to the area. For a while we were back in action, playing a show at the Black Cat with our friends Works On Blue in the spring. But this was our only show with Scott, who just wasn't up for being in a band at this time.

In August, on the verge of giving up looking for a drummer entirely and calling it a day, we answered a Washington City Paper ad and discovered Colin Diemer, the man we'd been looking for all along. Colin brought fresh energy to the band, witnessed by the fact that half of all the material we've played live with him was written since he joined the band. His live debut with us was at Phantasmagoria in November. A three song demo we recorded with Colin is now available through SuperSonic Boom.

So that's the story to date. Come see us live and participate in the next phase.