We never meant to become a band.
It began with long and arid badland roads. Frigid nights huddled around the fire with the Aldecaldos. Johnny's body slick with sweat as he sat between my legs, back pressed to my torso while he improvised some slow riffs.
Regardless of the fact that the only guitars we managed to get our hands on were these battered up acoustic things that we borrowed from Cassidy, we were still considered the loud ones of the family. It's three a.m., why the hell are you still playing and the entire camp doesn't need to know when you two are fucking were both common chidings. It got to the point where Saul made a rule that Johnny and I had to go to our car and close the doors if we wanted to bone or have a jam sesh between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.
We kinda just did covers of songs we liked. Mainly Plasmatics and R.E.M. and Caliburn and SAMURAI covers. We’d practice in our tent during the day, then would gather ‘round the fire at night and entertain the company.
It was Johnny who started writing songs, though. Told me that all the shit he’d been through was inspiring. Bleeding hearts and artists, y’know how it is.
His first ever song written post-2023 was called Cold-Wired and… honestly… it wasn’t entirely ear candy when played on an acoustic guitar. The first time he played it for the ‘Caldos, he was met with what can only be described as stunned silence. I could’ve sworn that even the sagebrush stopped rustling in the arid wind. Then, through the silence, a voice—
"That was the worst shit I’ve heard in my entire life."
I’d better introduce Vincent Graves at this point. Since we're both named Vince, I like to call him VeeGee. Frontman of my old band, Caliburn, my best friend in the whole world, and Johnny’s number one hater. It's ironic, really, that the two men I love more than anything would likely tear out each others’ throats like rabid dogs if left alone in a room together.
But, anyway-- needless to say, it's hard to make money as a nomad unless you're constantly taking gigs. That's why half of the nomads I know are petty thieves, and Johnny is no exception. Swiped what he could from Scav camps till he made enough for an electric guitar. Good model too-- a vintage DeLuze Orphean, just like the one he used to play. Fuckin' old geezer.
I, on the other hand, took a bit longer to get an electric. I'm more of a jack of all trades when it comes to instruments-- that means that I don't give as much of a rat's ass as my output does about whether or not I'm playing electric or acoustic.
Speaking of outputs, think I oughta mention that I didn't really consider Johnny my output at the time. I know, I know-- I did just mention us loudly fucking each others' brains out in the middle of the night. But the truth was that we didn't fuck in the same way that we do now. Nowadays I usually top him, baby talk him, cuddle him, but back then, he insisted on topping. In hindsight, I think that was just his way of flirting. After all, he could've gone for any one of the hot chicks around camp, but he, without fail, chose me. Poor guy had so much pent-up bravado that his idea of flirting was dicking me down every night and hoping that I realized that he wanted to make this a serious thing.
All this to say, that's how it went for a while. Him being a showoff on his new DeLuze, me EQing Cassidy's guitar to sound like whatever instrument we needed to fill in the holes of the songs we were playing, and the two of us hunched over a laptop together, arguing over whether the lyric Johnny had just written made grammatical sense (it didn't). VeeGee joined us around the fire often, which Johnny absolutely despised, but I wasn't about to leave my best friend out of our new pseudo-band.
There wasn't any point where we 'officially' became a band, but if I had to pinpoint an exact moment, I'd say it was the time when Johnny and I went out busking in Atlanta just for shits and giggles. Had some punk-looking kid come up to us between Liberum Arbitrium and Butcher Baby, couldn't've been older than 15. Asked us what we were called, said he wanted to keep up with us.
I told the kid to hang on for a sec, pulled Johnny off to the side, and we squabbled for a couple of minutes over what to say to him. I remember staring at the ground in panicked thought, my eyes flicking between the cold concrete and the necklace that Misty had given me so many ages ago. And, almost like divine intervention, a name popped into my head-- Lands and Grooves. The striations on the inner barrel of a gun.
I turned toward the kid and said the name. We didn't have a netpage at the time, so we just gave him our number. Told him we'd reach out if we ever did anything big.
Johnny was a bit pissy for the rest of the day about the fact that I'd chosen a name for our band without consulting him first, but when I asked him if he had a better idea, he pulled up blank. Honestly, I think he secretly liked the idea and was just too proud to admit it.
So, yeah. Lands and Grooves, a genesis. And little did we know that it would only get wilder from here on out.
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