somewhere around february of 1995, dave stern and i decided to start a band (they were both previously in the outstanding hardcore outfit swiz). dave found jake clump through mutual friend sam velde, i found zac eller at the bar. by may or maybe june we were practicing. our first song was called "past tense." i wanted to call the band the ohio blue tip, but was out-voted. the 7-inch was named "ohio" as a consolation. we rushed to release a single for our u.s. tour in september (which had us stranded in ohio for way too long, making us all happy i lost that first argument). ian and jeff at dischord liked the songs and offered to help release the single as a split with hellfire...

we toured the u.s. a second time in may while we waited for our debut album's release. zac decided he didn't want to be a drummer, and quit after 66 shows. we all saw that coming, but could not have anticipated that he was only the first in a long line of cursed drummers. a split 7-inch was released on maggadee (old friend bill dolan's new label) in coordination with a bluetip/kerosene 454 tour in the fall of '96 (the first of many tours we did together). k454 bassist john wall booked the tour with 65 shows in 63 days. we were playing catch at a rest stop the second day of the tour when i threw the football really hard and broke dave's left ring finger. it was flipped back at the second knuckle like a lighter opens. jim wall took a picture. jake kept saying '"tour's over...", and most of us believed him, but ..r inspection, i figured his finger was just dislocated. he rested his hand on a big rock and i re-set it. we played a few hours later with dave sporting a popsicle-stick-and-duct-tape splint. joe gorelick (from the newly disbanded garden variety) had joined as our drummer just before the tour. while travelling, joe would take his time perusing the aisles at rest stops, and was consistently the last to get back in the van. it seemed his travel bag was mostly filled with impulse purchases, magazines, candy and snacks. this was an endearing quirk; we had hoped that after the gruelling tour he would move to d.c. and be our drummer forever. he quit instead. oddly, it was after 66 shows. for years the nickname "gorelick" would get stuck to whomever was last to leave a rest stop.

after joe quit, we had the offer to tour with tool and the melvins for 10 shows across the u.s. in the spring of '97. jake, dave and i scrambled to find a drummer and managed to borrow sean gilchrist from beltaine. three practices and 8 songs later, we were playing to seven thousand people in hockey arenas across the mid-west. the promoters would throw big sheets of masonite (crappy particle board that turns to mush when it hits water) over the ice, the venue would heat up, and by tool's set, the whole rink was a fog bank. we were pleasantly surprised with how receptive the audiences were; throughout the whole tour i only had one drink thrown at me... a gin & tonic. the cup was plastic, and i like gine & tonics, so i didn't get too upset. while playing wings stadium, someone threw pennies during our second song... i caught a glint of where they were coming from, pinpointed the guy, and spent a large percentage of our 30 minute set berating him in front of thousands. the crowd suddenly realized: a) there was a band on stage, and 2) that band seemed to use the phrase "fuck you" a lot... kids love that shit. we sold a lot of candy that night. the melvins had no interest in any of their backstage catering. they bwere very nice and gave most of it to us (with the exception of the "lunchables" packettes which they specifically requested). last show i brought all their fruit on stage in case of further attacks, bit i didn't need it. in fact, the whole tour was pretty cool. even seeing bouncers violently carry off our roadie justin for taking a picture, forcing us to stop playing mid-song and yell at them over the p.a., was funny in hindsight. tour ended. we still had no drummer.

aaron ford was a young man from nashville who dropped out of college to play drums for us. he hit very hard. we did our first seven-week tour of europe in the fall of '97 with k454. aaron was not happy. we got home and began writing in hopes that new songs would help ease the tensions. writing does not ease tension. we ended up with a few songs and began considering the plan john wall was working on: a package tour of japan featuring k454, bluetip, naht (a japanese band) and sweetbelly freakdown (a reunited swiz which had dave and i in it already... less space). bluetip, sbfd and k454 would play shows out to the west coast, leave from lax, hook up with naht to tour japan, fly back and tour home. no band had enough of a name, but as a package it was easy. it would end up giving us all a chance to do something that would be very difficult alone. the compilation "touring japan" was conceived to offset the cost of plane tickets from los angeles to osaka. bluetip and k454 shared recording time... the songs and coming tour didn't make aaron any happier. he tried to quit two days before we left, but we wore him down and got him to do all the shows up to and including japan. he refused to do any more. while headed west, we passed through salt lake city and met andy patterson who flew out to california and finished the remaining 10 u.s. dates.

dave bryson joined us in the spring of '98. we worked hard at writing throught the summer and went into the studio with j robbins (plus a mess of songs) to record our second album "join us/dischord no.116". after finishing recording we hooked up with the farewell bend for a tour from florida to maine. our blue chevy van died in the middle. it had been in service since the first swiz tour in '88. we abandoned it unceremoniously at the chesapeake house rest stop on i-95, loaded all our stuff in the fwb van and continued the tour. a second european tour followed (also with the fwb). dischord (usually very "hands-off" with their bands) took pity on the financially strapped bluetip, givins us (and lungfish) enough money to buy another van. we saw one that said "runs great" on the side, so we bought it. there was enough cash left over to insure it for six months (our first policy). bruce falkinburg had offered us free time at his new studio. not all was cheery, though. this recording marked the beginning of a long period of disagreement in songwriting. dave stern quit briefly as a result. while recording a song intended for a 7-inch in coordination with our upcoming august '99 tour with at the drive-in, our hostile democracy yielded compromises no one was happy with. the song's arrangement as recorded was totally fucked and a perfect reflection of the band's inability to agree at the time. dave bryson threatened to quit if we put it out. the song was dropped imediately out of frustration, but parts later ended up in two new songs.

dave stern quit after the atd-i tour. he called a few hours before the first practice back and said "i'm coming to get my stuff..."

i said "forever?"

"yeah... guess you saw that coming"

when dave bryson and jake showed up later for practice and noticed the empty space where dave's amp used to be, i told them what dave said. we wrote a new song (not about dave).

though we were sad he left, jake, dave and i didn't hesitate deciding to continue. with one less dissenting opinion, writing was freed up considerably. brian clancy (from the downer boys and the teeth) filled in on guitar for our third european tour (most of which was with nra). his first show was a prison in antwerp, belgium where the warden wore a studded discharge-looking belt. we jokingly asked the warden if there were any murderers, he said "yeah, your soundman..."

brian decided to join the band.

upon returning, i moved to nyc and traveled back and forth to d.c. for practice. i would listen to practice tapes as a drove the 4-plus hours each way. on the jersey turnpike in my '81 t-top mustang, passing oil refineries in the wee wee hours, my mind getting hazy, left me feeling a bit too much like i was living out a bruce springsteen song (though i don't know anyone named wendy nor was i laid off from any factory). luckily, i never crashed and we finished writing songs for the "hot(-)fast(+)union" cd.ep and our third album "polymer/dischord no.121" (recorded simultaneously), toured japan again, toured europe again, toured the states again (this time with atd-i and the international noise conspiracy).

bryson quit.

areif sless-kitain joined.

we toured europe again, we toured the states again....


then he worked on putting together the scrapbook album of oddities and ends that i (kind of) lifted this biography from.

and then kind of fell apart.

and then went on to form retisonic, with aforementioned previous garden variety/bluetip drummer joe gorelick and now jim kimball on the bass. check em out.

Source : http://www.myspace.com/bluetipfan