8.25.22
Dear Friends,
I was going through some old Pinky stuff and came across the bios we wrote for the website Jeff put together. I don’t think you can access them anymore, but the ones I saw did make me chuckle. As I have mentioned, we had way too much fun with being in that band and part of that was putting together these ridiculous bios for our pseudonyms.
Speaking for myself, in Pinky, I was Crandall Berry. The fellas, spearheaded by Drewcifer (AKA Andy AKA Drew) started referring to me as Cranberry for a bit because I was always drinking this mixture of unsweetened cranberry juice and water. If you’ve ever had the straight cranberry juice, you know why I cut it with water. My ex-wife and I had tried this diet that my mom suggested and part of it was to drink a lot of this mixture.
I really liked it, so I kept drinking it for a long time, hence “Cranberry” being a nickname. When we concocted the idea of having pseudonyms, I put together a back story for Crandall “Cran” Berry. My make-believe father was Ken Berry from Mayberry RFD and Mama’s Family fame. Lance was the son of Sammy Davis Jr. making him Jr. Jr. and so forth. I’m trying to remember what Jeff, Drew, and Eric’s backstory were, but they were funny, too.
I’m pretty sure we went with fake names because of our band name. Some of the criticism we took for the name was that it was too long. Others, especially promoters, didn’t want to put our name in print on their ads for shows so it got shortened a lot to PTWKAF. I kind of liked that acronym, to be honest. We also got a few comments about it being sexist and gross and rape-y.
To those, I would always refer to the feminist nod I mentioned in part one and say that it was sticking up for strong female characters everywhere. TV was not exactly a place where women could be in charge very much and, really, still isn’t. I don’t think anyone ever bought my story, no matter how convincing I tried to be.
We did, however, get mentioned in a few of the listicles that talked about crazy band names. That was a treat. If you google us, I think you can still find a few, but don’t waste your time.
I enjoyed my time as “Cran Berry,” though.
When Drew quit the band, we played a few shows as a four-piece and it was okay for a bit, but we were lacking that overpowering guitar sound, so we went in search of a new fifth member. Eventually we settled on our friend, Andrew, from the band, Vadoom. If memory serves, he was in the band for about a year.
2006 is kind of a blur, really, because 3/5th of Pinky got their wives pregnant that year. We were a very fertile band for a while and teased Eric about that a lot. Eric was also my best man when Rhondi and I got married that year and I will always be very grateful for that. He got to come to Maine with us and he did an awesome job being my best dude.
During that year, though, Andrew was battling some pretty severe health issues and had to leave the band, so we recruited Steve (AKA Papa) from Hillbilly. He added something to the band that we had not really had before which was a pretty adventurous lead guitar player. Andrew could do a lot of things that Drew couldn’t (or didn’t) do, but Steve is a really gifted player.
While it was fun to have Steve in the band, I don’t know that it was really a fit for any of us and even though I love the guy like a brother, Steve was a bit flaky in those days. He was going through a lot of stuff in his personal life and we kind of ghosted each other if I remember correctly. At this point, Pinky had been going for five or six years and while we had added a handful of new songs, it was getting a bit stale for me.
At some point, I decided I didn’t want to sing lead anymore. I thought that might help me get out of my doldrums, so we had our friend J.R. from B.Y.O.W. join us for a while. I don’t remember how long that experiment lasted, to be honest. We played a handful of shows with the expanded six-person lineup. We were practicing over by the Yucca, sharing a room with NSK and another band, which was our buddy Neil’s. Something ended up souring him on sharing his practice room, so we ended up with no place to jam and it seemed like a good time to semi-retire Pinky.
We had recorded our second record, The Apology, and had our buddy, Jay, play the lead guitar. He’s one of the best guitar players I’ve ever jammed with, and he added so much to the band. Most of the shows we’ve done since 2007 or 2008 have been with him playing with us. Drew also came back into the fold for a short while and added some stuff to the record, too.
I had a great time on that recording and was stoked to add several guitar tracks, too. One track in particular, “The Fuck You Part” has some of my guitar stuff on it and I love listening to it.
From a fun standpoint, The Apology has some great moments. We were pretty playful on it and I think it comes through. Our friend, Ben, from Casket Life (and many other bands) did a limited run of CDs and we did a big release show at Yucca with Blanche Davidian (who I was playing bass with) and Smoky Mountain Skullbusters. It was kind of a farewell, but we didn’t stay down for long.
For much of the next decade, Pinky would pop up here and there.
See you tomorrow.
The last ever Pinky show....
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