Abandon Hope
You’re about to discover twisted trail from Nathan Wade’s sordid past. Dating back to the early ’90s, the stories you’ve unearthed may bewilder or horrify. Abandon hope all ye who enter here…
Music For Theatre (1999-2005)
After Nathan moved to Seattle, he began a six year run as a sound designer and composer for live theatre. Honing his arrangement skills and letting his imagination run wild, two of Nathan’s idols–Tom Waits and Italian film composer Ennio Morricone–served as inspiration for his soundtracks. Often playing and recording all the instruments himself, Nathan was occasionally given enough money to hire a live band for the job; this was how Nathan met Ken Nottingham and Dave Forrester of Creeping Time. It was also necessary to hire someone with a mobile recording set-up, allowing the temporary band to record live in a room (usually in a single day). Enter Eddie J. Williams.
Nathan met Eddie after answering an ad in a local weekly rag and the two hit it off. Eddie would travel from his home on Bainbridge Island to capture numerous live sessions around Seattle (even recording in the former paint factory that would become Chroma Sound Studio). It was only natural that, once Nathan left theatre to pursue his own music, he would call upon Eddie and Creeping Time to record his most ambitious project in years: The Dead Leaves Sing.
Dutchmaster Tea (1997-1998)
In his last year of college, Nathan began the studio-only project Dutchmaster Tea (an inside joke referring to steeping a used Dutchmaster cigar in a glass of boiling water) with his friend and roomate, Mike Ladd, who was to record a full length album as part of Ball State’s Music Engineering Technology program. The two conceived an elaborate plot that involved flying to Minneapolis to record Nathan’s friend Christopher McGuire (John Vanderslice, The Mountain Goats, 12 Rods) on drums, then inviting numerous musician friends to flesh out the album (Nathan’s Dad sings on a couple of songs, as does Kryngle alumus, Doug Fant). Utilizing BSU’s deluxe studio in Muncie, Indiana, Mike and Nathan obsessed over the songs for many months, and why not–they had free, nearly-unlimited studio access at their disposal as well as microphones that cost more than a year’s worth of college tuition. The resulting patchwork quilt of an album was interesting–to say the least–and all over the musical map.
One year later, a follow-up album was recorded in the Minneapolis loft where 12 Rods rehearsed (and had recently scored a boat-load of recording gear after signing with the V2 label). Mike was once again engineering, Christopher back on the drums, and their friend Jerry Bellian played percussion & drums, and Bill Shaw played bass (soon to join 12 Rods). After a week of rehearsal, the band spent two days recording 10 songs live in the loft, an experience that would inform almost every project Nathan was involved with thereafter. At a later date, Joshua Carter added keyboards, Nathan overdubbed a extra guitar parts, and then performed a 15 hour vocal marathon, often writing lyrics minutes before singing them [note: never ever try this!]. The result was Dutchmaster Tea II, another highly diverse album with songs that ranged from the truly depressing to the comically surreal.
Krysco Kryngle (1994-1996)
The bizarre band name was pulled from a David Letterman TOP TEN list: â€top movies shown at Times Square during Christmas time†(back when Times Square was notoriously sleazy). This was Nathan’s live band at Ball State University and, along w/Doug Fant and Jamie Musselman, the power trio specialized in oddball pop rock–and a lot of Police covers–with their signature three-part vocal harmonies. Starting out as a five-piece, the bassist left to marry his impregnated girlfriend, and the second guitarist was…not very good (and kind of scary), but they rehearsed in his trailer until they fired him. Doug, already an accomplished guitarist and pianist, turned out to be a great bassist as well. Trimming the musical fat from the band and finding out that Jamie could do a mean Robert Plant impression, the three tenors proceeded to: 1) work on their vocal harmonies and hone their chops, 2) play numerous gigs around Indiana, 3) land a booking agent who sent them to well-paying but wildly inappropriate venues, and 4) promptly break up. Such is life. The only surviving recorded material was a reverb-saturated, studio demo that led to a surprising number of gigs; there were also two pre-Dutchmaster Tea songs that featured Doug on guest vocals & Jamie on drum machine, recorded by Mike Ladd.
Blake’s Cinema (1993-1994)
What happens when you join Patrick Manderson, a hyper, tech-savvy keyboard player obsessed with Prince and 80’s synths, and Nathan Wade, a fairly laid-back alt-rocking guitar shredder obsessed with Soundgarden and Nine Inch Nails? Blake’s Cinema, of course! As Nathan attended his first year at Ball State University, the duo met up twice a week to record songs together. Their collaboration began with the extremely bizarre “Squeeze†(a Jesus parable/musical trilogy) and ended with…the extremely bizarre, ultraviolent “Lard On A Stick.†In between, they finished at least two dozen songs and sound experiments (with just as many unfinished ideas), and after numerous attempts to make a live band out of Blake’s Cinema, the whole enterprise eventually collapsed. Patrick and Nathan lost touch with one another for many years and the music lived in limbo for over a decade. Word has it that the two have found each other, as well as a large parcel of tunes from their glory days (all 365 of them?).