This song was from an EP we did that most people probably never heard.  We only made a few copies of the thing, maybe I'll put the rest of them up here too.  The EP was just called HUMANS BOW DOWN I guess but I always thought it should've been called ROCK ISLAND REFUGE.  That was really the name of some Lego set, but I liked to think it was a private island where people went to rock.

The Air

We used to do a lot of improv stuff at shows.  Partly because we didn't have enough finished songs, partly because a lot of the time it was more fun than playing the songs we did have.  It is always nice when playing the wrong thing turns out to be the right thing.  This one was done by me (Steve), Chris Wolfe and Matt Tomlinson in my bedroom in Clifton in 2002.  I had a Boomerang pedal and some synth modules right in there with my guitar and pedals and stuff so that made for some interesting moments in this one.

Improv In Steve's Room (Oct 02)

This song was fun to write and play, and I got to sing about myself hearing myself sing about myself.  So that's something.  We recorded this for A MIRROR but it didn't really fit quite right, and even though we played it at a lot of shows the recording was never really finished.  All of the guitars and bass here were just scratch tracks through a Pod or something, I think we abandoned the song before we got to the point of tracking guitars.

New Cells

This is another one that didn't really fit on the record or the EP that came before that.  The title is a straight up RIP OFF from Carl Sagan's show/book COSMOS.  I can think of worse people to rip off though.  The bridge section of this is one of my favorite things I've ever done.  This song is all sappy and softy until the bridge, which is right up there with my favorite things that I've played.

We Live Between Spiral Arms

In 2008, Chris Wolfe and I got together to record the songs that we'd started working on after A MIRROR.  The bummer was that I realized I had a lot of work to do in terms of working out guitar parts and lyrics and I felt like it made more sense to spend the time working on new music rather than trying to finish old stuff.  Regardless, this was one of our favorites and even though I never finished the lyrics (and had to replace Cpenn's guitar part with a weird piano because I couldn't figure out how to play it right) I still like this one.

Sister (demo)

I really don't remember much about doing this one.  I think it was maybe from a show at Art's Billiards on Short Vine back in the day....Art's Billiards usually meant giant glasses of whisky (like, a PINT of whisky) so the fact that I don't remember where it came from means it probably came from Art's.  This is another with just me (Steve), Chris Wolfe, and Matt Tomlinson.

Improv (Dec 01)

this is the first song from our first EP.  Props to Chris Wolfe for the backwards guitar idea before the verses.  Props to Steve's fingers for making it through this song.

Sharpening My Arrows

The Last Time

Steve Wethington, Chris Wolfe, Chris Pennington, Matt Tomlinson.  We were Humans Bow Down, but not any more buddy.  

humansbowdown