1995. Age 10. It was way back in Mitty P. Locke Elemtary School. And it was because of a crayon. I (Brett) was helping Chris (Chris) color a poster of Saturn or Jupiter or something for a presentation he had to give in like two minutes, and he says something about this crayon being a good name for a song. I think, "I like X-Men" and pay no attention to him. He sort of followed that little allusion up by telling me we should start a band while we were in the library looking at that picture of the lady with the huge tumor that we loved so much. He said that he could sing Hootie and the Blowfish songs really well and I, of course, played the trumpet in the 4th grade band, so why not start a band, am I right? And being a band was easy! Mike Strand, who was in the 5th grade class next to us had, I think, a snare drum so he automatically became our drummer. Another classmate, Dimitar, who stole cans from the canned food drive told us our name should be the Cut Green Beans and obviously thats grounds for being in a band, so he joined too. And then our other friend Sam Lauer wouldve felt left out so we said he was in the band. Sam always made fun of us though. We were more of a club than a band. We used to write titles of songs and then titles of albums and then make covers and everything. So our 4th grade lives went on and about 5th grade we decided Cut Green Beans was a dumb name for a band. Chris asked our music teacher, Mr. Fletcher, what a good name would be and he asked us what kind of music we played. We were shocked. That was so funny. But we didnt care, we said we didnt know so he told us to be like the Bee Gees and use the names of the people in the band. By then Sam grew a brain and realized we were dumb so it was just Dimitar, Chris, me, and Mike thus creating DCBM. We spelled it out to be Deciebium. Yes, i before e. We were the kings of hype. In art class we made shirts that said Deciebium, Chris had a hat made, we made fake tapes and catalogs and Chris and me set up Siege Records. We gave everyone in our 5th grade class a job. In our yearbook we got to vote for our "Fifth Grade Favorites" and me and Chris took everyone's ballots and brought them to the office to be put in the yearbook. But on the way we erased everyones favorite band and put Deciebium, so in the 1995 Mittye P. Locke yearbook we are clearly the favorite band.

That summer, up in Sarah Carlson's treehouse, me and Chris decided we were retarded and this would never be a band. We decided to write a magazine. So thats how DCBM ended. I guess. No one really cared. We "made" a greatest hits tape and called it quits. The magazine lasted a week. The band idea was always there though. We never actually "broke up" cause there was nothing to break up in the first place. With 6th grade came the internet. http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/9675 allowed us to taking lying to new heights. We would lie like no one had before. We made the Deciebium website. Pretty much just something to make us look important. My science teacher used to go to it. She said it was neat. We still had never even played instruments yet. But this website, man it was taking off! But then in February, something happened. No one that knew me probably cared but this was what made things happen how they happened. I asked a girl to the Valentine's Dance on a Tuesday afternoon. She realized I was a goon on Thursday morning. The dance was Friday. I was so heartbroken. So I went home and I was listening to 311 and I started to change the lyrics around to "All Mixed Up" to "I Got Dumped" and the next day I showed it to everyone and they thought it was the funniest thing because well, we were 11 years old. All the fake songs I wrote before were just about something not from my life. After I showed this thing to everyone, I started not to feel so bad. And I started to think this was a good thing she hated me. So I think that was a turning point where I realized I really wanted to do this. We decided whoever wrote the songs would sing them. But we wouldnt even play a note until the 7th grade...

1997. Age 12. By 7th grade we werent even a band anymore. We were a skateboarding company, a clothing company, a magazine, a bunch-of-kids-who-thought-they-knew-what-they-were-doing company. I dont know why but one day I decided to start a "side project." I made a website complete with fake reviews and discographies and i called it Bandwagon. I decided it would only be me, Chris, and Mike. Chris would sing and I would play guitar. I told Kyle Laux all about it on the bus went we went on a field trip to the Salvador Dali Museum. So i compiled this book of lyrics complete with fake album cover that said "Never Mind the Sex Pistols, Here Comes the Bandwagon" It was so dumb but Mike used to tote it around at lunch and read it like 12 times a day. I think it was sometime before September when we got together for the very first time (besides an old Deciebium practice where we sang a song to the demo on Chris's keyboard). I had gotten an acoustic guitar from Wal-Mart and for some reason Mike had a drum set. I think it was for the school band. We tried to play a Green Day song and Chris couldnt read the lyrics, and so right then we decided I'd be the singer. After giving up on that we tried to play some song I wrote, I dont even remember what it was. I dont think we played together for a while after that. It was definitely after September because thats when I got my first electric guitar. It wasnt until a few years later though I actually learned how to use it. I'm left handed and never realized that they made left handed guitars. So everything we played sounded like shit because i only knew open chords and played upside down. We got together and the first song we ever learned how to play as a band was "Buddy Holly". It was the only song we could find with drum tabs and guitar tabs! We were so dumb. By then Chris' mom bought him a bass because he needed something to do in the band and we were complete. It took us forever to play it through once and the first time we did it I almost cried. It was so cool. I always was writing stuff and wed try it once and awhile but for the most part it was just Buddy Holly for 3 hours. And that was the only song we ever played. It sounded horrible. So for months and months of playing Buddy Holly, our friend Mike Dijak told us his friend Rene wanted to play with us. I thought Rene was a girl. The thing is I had always had the dream in my head that it would be me, Chris, and Mike forever, so i was reluctant. Rene came to practice with a guitar that one day and played songs the right way. He introduced our dumb band to the wonderful world of power chords. We were blown away. He knew how to play Nirvana and I could um...hit my strings. We all decided he was in the band. In the spring, after 3 years, we would finally perform in front of people. We entered the South Holiday Library Teen Talent Show. We got to play one song. And we couldnt decide until like the night before. We met at NOFX's August 8th because it was the easiest thing to play. That night we dressed in suits and sombreros and entered the world of sucking, unknowingly. A room filled with parents. We got so nervous, I didnt even sing and we were the most awful thing you could have ever seen. We got 4th place. Out of 4 acts. Every Monday that year, our middle school band teacher let us practice in his room and thats where we shined. We played in a little soundproof practice room in the back and kids would pile in there to watch us practice. All we did was play some songs out of a book or some goofy songs we would make up on the spot about some of the kids that were in the room, but everyone went apeshit for it. But all the while another band was making a name for themselves by playing at the school talent show. Derrogatory was there name, and although now we are all freinds and I think Chris Dougherty is one of the coolest kids in the world, we hated them. And they hated us back. They called us "fagwagon" and we scoured and drew on their pictures in the yearbook. It was cute. Because we were bad. Oh, the music industry at Seven Springs Middle School. Just vicious.

The summer came and me and Chris wanted to start being a real band. We presented the idea of playing original songs to Mike and Rene who vehemently opposed it. We slid a couple in there, but for the most part it was still covers. I think the last cover we did was the Beastie Boys. That was fun stuff. A band divided, something had to give. I don't think anyone really knows the real story. We both have our own versions of it. Rene was missing in action alot and we couldnt kick Mike out so me and Chris realized he had to go. We both felt bad about doing it, so we did what we do best when we feel bad about something. Chris wrote a letter that said how much we hate Mike and Rene as people. It was really dumb and not serious but I remember it being written and I remember Rene quitting, but I dont remember if they were influenced by each other. So it was back to the three of us again. It really always had been. We wrote like mad that summer. We had like 12 million songs. Some of them were actaully pretty ok for what we were. Some of them were even still being played by us by the summer of 2000. Another bomb was about to drop though. We got e-mail from some chef in California saying there was another Bandwagon. Sure enough, this band with a guy named Luigi and another named Scooby had our beloved moniker. So we werent really in dire need of a name since we didnt ever do anything. I think we were called Hooray for Everything for about five minutes, literally. Then we were A-Ok. That lasted a few weeks, we even had a whole big A-Ok website and its weird to think back now on these names and think what if thats what we still were called. A-Ok got old fast and the next hitter was Sideline. The problem was our names were too specific it seemed. We were changing so much song to song and wed name our band off of the style of one song. So one night me and Chris were watching the movie Mitchell, and Chris turns to me and says that would be a good name for a band. And I said yes it would. And that was it. I dont know if either of us really were serious but the more we thought about it the more we liked it. I liked the fact that it wasnt something anyone else would really pick for their band (although we found out there was a Mitchell in South Carolina but they've long since broken up) and I also liked that we could make it whatever we wanted. It was all-purpose. Then we got to thinking how our whole city is named after Mitchells. I used to play soccer at Mitchell Field, Chris and Mike lived off of Mitchell Blvd., and then a few weeks later they announced the new high school was going to be called Mitchell High. Oh theres plenty more. So 8th grade was pretty much when Mitchell started. There was a kid named Mitchell in Chris and my PE class and he looked like Red Skull. On December 18th, 1998 we played our first show. A bunch of 14 year old kids on Adam Farrell's driveway. Chris talked the Asthmatics into coming up from Naples. We played 4 songs: Agent Double-O-Dork, Says You, Chasing the Bus, and Truly, Madly, Deeply. It was such a great time. The Asthmatics stayed up all night with us and played Playstation and talked about touring and getting in a fight with Mxpx, and then the next morning they left to go play with Against All Authority. That night being special and all, it was really the next time we played that is probaby a good reason we didnt give up. My friend Dave Heald's band One Step Ahead was playing at a girl named Melissa Vanderlaak's house for her 15th birthday and he asked us to play. We were going to play in front of a bunch of high school kids that didnt even know us, and we rocked out. Looking back now, we were god awful but the kids there that now are pretty much all my friends were so nice we stopped being nervous just a little bit and started to show a little of Mitchell to come. One of the most redeeming moments was that night one of the kids from Derrogatory was there and he couldnt believe how much we'd improved. I felt like we finally did something right and I blame that night for keeping us around. We played the same songs from Adam's party plus two new ones: our old opening song called I Wanna Vacuum With Olive Juice, and a silly little song called Homegirl. In true Mitchell fashion, a million years passed before our next show. We played at the Pasco County Library's Rock N' Read (I wholeheartedly attribute our success to the library system) at Crews Lake Park. It was the first time we ever played on a stage. We played a song called Holiday Strike that we only had for like a couple weeks. It's so weird, I can barely remember that song. We only played it that night. I think that was my favorite show. I just remember Chris dropping his bass so perfectly when i wanted him to sing. We debuted: shoot do stink, holiday strike, and on my own that night. That was april. We wouldnt play another show until high school.....

1999. Age 14. In the 1999-2000 school year, I was split from Chris and Mike; they attended River Ridge High and me going to Gulf High. When I got to that school there were so many people from that party and other parties we went to that summer and it was fantastic. people there thought my name was Mitchell. Jon Moore introduced me to his mom as "the kid in the band." After a summer and an eternity, we were set to play our first real show on August 27, 1999 at Central Skate Park, opening for a band from Pennsylvania called the Overdrives and a band from New Jersey named Dropzone. We played two new songs called The Brightest Stars Are Airplanes and Jaguar Pride for the very first time that night and it was awful. One of the worst shows in the world. They actually kicked us off the stage. I still had alot of fun that night (a reoccuring theme in the history of the Mitch). Our next show was the first time I ever ran off the stage during a song, one of our early trademarks. We decided to waste dickloads of money and record on October 31st at Studio 420 in Tarpon Springs. We recorded Homegirl, Brightest Stars, and Jaguar Pride in 3 hours and we barely even knew the songs. Needless to say it blew and we sat on those recordings for a long time. It was going to be a split with the New York band, the Embarassing Wrecks, but when they pulled out we landed a dream partner in December of 99 with the Simpletons. As we got into being in a band and learning about local music they were the first band we really found out about. We had looked up to them so much and admired and they had broken up over the summer, so to be involved with new Simpletons material was amazing. Too bad it never came out until nearly a year later. Yes, its those recordings plus a spring time recording of The Part I Was Born to Play, that are on our first released recording. Chris and I felt like we should have just threw them out since we had outgrown them so much but Mike disagreed and payed for the whole thing himself in order for it to be pressed and for sale. oh well. In january we would have another milestone. for the first time we would trek out of our safe little Tampa Bay metropolitan area and have Mike's mom drive us to Naples to play. We all knew we had to do awesome because this was going to probably the first and last time these kids would ever see us. Kids around here can put up with it cause they know us. But it seemed when it mattered most we came through. The coolest thing was that when we were setting up everyone was making fun of us and at the end of the set when i jumped in the swimming pool the very same kid that was making fun the most was the first to shake my hand and say how awesome he thought we were. one kid told chris that he had never smiled that much in his life or his face hurt or something cute like that. so we spent the night there after having a grand ole time with Table 9 at the Naples Waffle House with our lovely waitress named Charlie. I brought my portable TV for the ride home to watch the Tampa Bay Buccaneers play in the NFC Championship game against the St. Louis Rams. When we got home, the Bucs had been wrongly defeated but we had a record label. Naples' own Distant Rise Records (then called Superstar Entertainment, then later on called Absit Invidia) wanted to put out our split. Those springtime months were such an uphill ride. We played at River Ridge on their huge stage in front of 700 kids and did cartwheels and then played with the Whyioughtas and Nevertheless and Althea and As It Stands and Sixteen Hours the next day. These were local bands who had been our heroes for so long and wed always waited for the day wed be any where near them.

But at the top of this hill is where we fell. Our two shows with the most prominent bands weve played with (No Motiv and Hankshaw respectively) made us really rethink what the hell we were doing. We were still playing two of the songs we played back on Adams driveway and hadnt changed a damn thing in our set since forever. We really hated ourselves and you can read the news page for all the details on the situation that came about. Nevertheless, we came back. On October 21st, we returned at the State Theater of all places. The State Theater was a local club where I had seen my first concert. To play there was like "Oh my god we made it."

That seems like a nice place to end the story of the genesis of Mitchell. It's not an exciting story. Or one that even makes us look good. It's about some 10 year old kids starting something thats kept going to this day. Some scattered memories that may seem cute to some people. Especially our friends. I like the part about playing in a punk band at age 14 and having your parents drive you to your own show. There was no real plot, there still isnt. It's just like one of those movies that you dont see for the intriguing storyline or characters, just to make you laugh and go home smiling. Boy howdy, that was corny.