Cill's Random Box 1995-2000
DocFoz 2000-2002
FIneas Fog 2003-2005 

This is how I remember it. 

1995. Hastings on Hudson, NY. We were 14 and started out playing at 47 Hillside Ave in Josh's Basement. By 'we' I mean Josh, Marcel and I on guitar, bass and drums respectively despite Marcel, with guitar in hand declaring, "I dont play bass".

Things got serious when the Chaplins finished the basement (thanks for that) and we pooled our $ to buy an actual PA system. We were Cill's Random Box back then (named impulsively for a converse shoe box with a bunch of random shit that our friend Eilis Cahill, nicknamed Cill at the time, had written "Cills Random Shit Box" on). 

We played mostly blues and garage rock from the 60s such as The Blues Project (first song we ever jammed on was "The Way My Baby Walks" by them) and an assortment of Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Jefferson Airplane covers. Mandy Paquette sang with us (first on White Rabbit) and so did Nina Bernstein, trading off songs. Zach soon joined helping to write our first original song, 47th Ave. Jam. 

We found our way into Dobbs Ferry's Stolen Moments studio and recorded a mix of covers and originals including a hybrid called "East West" taken from The Paul Butterfield Band song by the same title to which Zach added words he had just written for Mr. Blum's english class (the teacher also gave us our first name, the awful "Fryz With That") Zach sang them over the Butterfield bass line helping to create a song that holds up surprisingly well considering it was recorded by a bunch of teenagers who didnt really know what they were doing in the studio or otherwise.

In the coming years, we played all over Hastings, Westchester County and New York State starting out at local school pep rallys and bonfires, talent shows, senior shows, church basement Greenway Cafes, Spring things, Starbucks, 7 Willow street. We wrote a number of new songs often inspired by the prospect of that distant horizon of going away to college and leaving everything behind. These songs included "What I Came To Satisfy" and my favorite "Carry Me Away" which is just Zach on vocals and acoustic guitar imagined originally to be a an epic opus of instrumentation but is probably best that was never achieved.

Before Zach left (a year before the rest of us) we were asked to open for Big Brother and the Holding Company by a hippie couple on hillside ave that heard our basement jams wafting down the street and into their window. They were friends with Big Brother & The Holding Company and were helping to plan a 4th of July festival at the Burke Estate in Hastings.

The day came and in great 90s fashion, there were long jean shorts abound, white Yankees baseball caps and the local access TV channel covering the event. We were nervous to play with the band 'that backed up Janis' and to play on a "real" stage but upon finishing our last song felt relieved when Neil Hess, the town representative and MC for the fest informed us that Big Brother had requested an encore which we happily obliged with a blues jam called Truckin' Fool that we had once messed around with. 

Big Brother also invited us upstate later that year to open up for them again which we gladly did. Zach was already away and Mandy took lead vocals along with Marcel and Josh singing some covers including Good Lovin by The Rascal ending with Come On Over (with the words changed to be from a female POV). 

After our set, Bernard Perdie, who was in attendance came up to me in the dressing room saying he enjoyed our set before saying "that last song. that was the cold sweat beat. I invented that beat." Awkward silence. "But you played it well kid, you played it well." He also claimed he cut the original drums for Good Lovin with The Rascals but I cant find any proof.  

Marcel ended up doing website work for them in the year that followed and I was given the heads up that I was on the guest list at their London show when I was studying abroad in 2002. I wasnt. But they came out during the opener and had beers with me and my date, which is obviously way cooler. 

Next came DocFoz, a sort of second stage for the band that grew out of some new influences that are often found in the idea breeding ground that is college. Zach, away at Ringling Art college brought us some new sounds and ideas which we formulated into some songs, Josh was close to Zach in Miami and kept the songs going cross state. Within just the window of holiday breaks we wrote songs and recorded them at a studio in Pelham, NY. It was nearing the start of the Pro Tools era which we fell right in the middle of tracking onto DAT tape but mixing on the computer which was installed during our mixing process. 

We asked Hastings friend Jacob Cooper (now of Silver Threads) to play Trumpet on "Iridescent Shadow" to go over my attempt at a timbale solo (really on an open snare), Mandy lent her vocals on it and also on "Spaces" while Josh got fancy and played an electric toothbrush solo on 'Iridescent' (using the magnetic waves to create feedback loop) Ever After All and Sunrise are probably my favorite of the bunch but I have a fondness for them all and in some ways are among some of the best produced music Ive ever been part of.

Last came Fineas Fog which emerged out of the fact that somehow, with us all finishing school, and in Zachs case graduating and living in Amsterdam, we somehow all were still on the same page about wanting to play together. Well, except for Marcel who would have loved to but was living in Sweden at the time. Josh was still in Miami when Zach came up to visit me in Amherst and we started scoping out places we could all live. The plan was to get Greg, the singer I had joined with for our college band, Johnny Stevens and the Johnny Stevens Band, to play bass and sing harmonies. He was down. 

Here's the Johnny Stevens story:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3A86F78921AE442A

Soon enough Zach and I had found the perfect spot. Among the nice but rather normal houses of Amherst and neighboring Belchertown we found the 'Earthhouse' an eco house built into the side of a hill. I liked to explain it to confused family and friends by saying that basically there was another house above and behind the earth house and when the guy who lived there mowed his front lawn, he mowed our roof. It was basically a modern hobbit house with the front and right side exposed with the back and left under the dirt. A shaft from the back wall kitchen let in air and light and the three of us: Josh, Zach and I lived there with Greg commuting for practice. Suffice to say we were excited to live in our retreat in the woods, reunite the (new incarnation) of the band in person but it wasnt until a week or so after Josh moving up that we fell in love with it....

It was after a night at the Moan and Dove, a local bar with every beer known to man, that we arrived back at the house with all our instruments just recently set up . Josh and/ or Zach took up audio lookout at the end of our driveway as we tested the loud factor by smashing away inside. Nothing. You could hear basically nothing; the earth is a pretty damn good insulator. We were like pigs in mud. Electric mud.

We wrote and recorded there for about a year and half with Josh and I working day jobs as DHL delivery drivers and Zach working at the local art shop. Harder angstier songs came out inspired by the now classic rock of our youth such as Nirvana, Pixies and albums like The Bends. Or current bands like the Modey Lemon. 

We recorded "Conjuring Surprises" "80s Gigolo" (I know, right?!) "Pollution" and "Mental Masturbation (also, I know, right?!) at a local studio in Shelburne, MA ran by a friend of Greg who was splitting his time between NYC and MA(this got some desire-for-the city gears turning). 

We played local battle of the bands, gigs in Northampton, setup our new state-of-the-art Myspace page, frequented Greg's weekly open mic at Seven O's and made plans to take over the world with our new EP. That didnt happen so we figured we had to change things up a bit and decided to all move to New York City in the fall of 2004. 

Our first gig was at the famed CBGB's on the night the Yankees were playing the Red Sox for the Pennant. It takes a lot to make the CBGBs crowd go jock but it happened that night and the show wasnt the rock history milestone we imagined. But we had fun at the legendary spot which later helped to inspire Greg, Josh and I to do this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ySy8PBkXjw

We continued on playing shows at LES spot Arlenes Grocery, Lit Lounge before Greg, Josh and I started an open mic on the Upper East Side bringing a lot of our Seven O's covers to the city. 

Our last Fineas Fog show was at the 169 bar which was videotaped on their surveillance type setup seen here:

http://tinyurl.com/o5kwbjn
http://tinyurl.com/lcmvvkt
http://tinyurl.com/koxlqvc

Out of most good things, other good things grow and Greg Smith & The Broken English emerged out of this one with Greg and I first kicking it off with "Vacuum Fate" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPfbFV1vHuo) and later with Josh joining in on lead guitar. 

Smokestack Relay also emerged a few years later; a gypsy psychdelic project with Zach singing over Josh's compositions which he also orchestrated, recorded and engineered with me providing drums on a few cuts.

Find it here: 

https://soundcloud.com/smokestack-relay

http://www.reverbnation.com/smokestackrelay/songs

Lastly, I'll just say that if you've made it this far, you are interested in what we did and I'm glad to share it here in these archives as a way of preserving this music over the years that has held up ok considering we never knew exactly what were doing. And still dont. Wouldn't have it any other way 

Sean

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Singer-songwriter Greg Daniel Smith honed his art on a family farm in New England and dedicates his craft to the working class heroes that helped shaped him. Reflecting the influence of both his humble rural roots and current home in NYC, Smith's six-piece band, The Broken English, combines folk, rock, country and soul to deliver compelling songs with gritty, boot-stomping enthusiasm.

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Initially founded in 2002 as an offshoot of the celebrated Knitting Factory club in lower Manhattan, Knitting Factory Records, along with the new Knitting Factory club in Brooklyn, was reborn in 2009 with the acquisition and re-release of the Fela Kuti catalog. KFR also encompasses the catalogs of Instinct Records, Shadow Records, Shimmy Disc, and Evolver Records.

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