| Sifting Through the �Drunks and Weirdos� for �Silence� �Eventually my criteria for potential band members became simply that they be willing to show up and practice. I put this over talent. I had to�� �Ou-our band should be called Wa-War Zone�, said the rapper with the bad stutter. As Adam stared at the middle-aged stranger he wondered how he had not detected the speech impediment over the phone. �B-because that is wha-what it will be like on stage,� the man leaned in with narrowed eyes and growled, �D-don�t let this cane fool you.� Adam Bray, a twenty-two-year-old electric guitar player, spent over three years auditioning musicians in Baltimore for a modern heavy rock band before teaming up with singer Steve Renwick to create �Silence�. According to Adam, Baltimoreans are primarily interested in hip hop, top forty bands, and punk, and the scant number of musicians responding to his ads forced him to lower his standards. �Eventually my criteria for potential band members became simply that they be willing to show up and practice. I put this over talent. I had too, because the people who had responded to my ad so far were a bunch of drunks and weirdos.� Maybe this is why Adam ultimately found twenty-two-year-old Steve Renwick through a friend, and not the paper. The two of them created a repertoire of songs and then struggled to gather members for the rest of the band together. �One night Steve and I drove an hour into the country to audition a bass player. This guy had literally tens of thousands of dollars of sound and lighting equipment in a shack in his backyard, and no idea how to use it. We were in a space the size of a closet with a PA system blasting about 7000 watts and stage lights blaring in our face.� But Adam�s favorite contender for a spot in their band was a man who had built a reputation among local bands for coming to auditions without knowing how to play his instrument. �After I figured out that the volume knob on his guitar was turned all the way down, he began to struggle with �Enter Sandman,� the first guitar riff anyone learns. After a few moments I said, �It appears that we�re a bit of a mismatch,� and he just stared at me. I commented about how late it was and he pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels and said, �We haven�t even gotten to drink yet.�� Unlike the countless bands he played with and musicians he auditioned, Adam was not looking to get drunk and have a good time. He saw being in a band as job that needed to be taken seriously. He had a game plan, and attributes the success of �Silence� to strategic composing, �We try to mix catchy percussive elements with the catchy melodies of Alternative, as well as the �thump thump� of very heavy bands like Korn.� Eventually his persistence unearthed other serious musicians in a heavy rock unfriendly city. On nights when "Silence" practices they work rather than drink, but when they are not practicing they are playing on stage. |