November 1, 2005

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THE ORAL HISTORY OF THE PROMISE RING
The Promise Ring were the best, or they were the worst. An oral history of one of indie rock’s polarizing bands.

People had, and still have, strong opinions about The Promise Ring. The Milwaukee quartet, who disbanded in 2002, were part of one of rock’s great traditions: the polarizing band. Their fans supported them enthusiastically, and their detractors disparaged them equally enthusiastically. Regardless of where listeners stood on the matter, there was no denying The Promise Ring’s startling success, which began with the 1996 release of their debut, 30 Degrees Everywhere. The album and its successors put Jade Tree Records on the map and played a major role in the label’s rise to prominence in the mid-’90s.

That time period also saw the synthesis of the emo sound, which developed in different regional strains by like-minded bands around the country. The Promise Ring’s version had an intrinsic link to pop music, with bouncy, catchy songs, hooky melodies and generally positive outlook. While other bands moaned over angular post-punk riffs, The Promise Ring famously sang “Happiness is all the rage.” Even their look seemed to embrace a kind of cutesy Midwestern innocence, and for many people, the group personified the second wave of emo.

For a band so famously known for their good-time attitude, The Promise Ring had more than their share of drama. Over the course of seven years, the band would face everything from allegations of sexual misconduct to a brain tumor to a near-fatal van accident. The cutesy image the band cultivated eventually became an increasingly heavy cross to bear until they completely revolted against it with their swan song, Wood/Water. This time, they polarized their own fan base, most of whom were confused by the album’s understated pop. It was the group’s lowest selling album, but a vocal minority consider it their crowning achievement.

In November, the four members of The Promise Ring will reunite for a one-off show at the Flower15 showcase in Chicago. Flower, the booking agency who used to represent The Promise Ring, will donate 100 percent of ticket sales to Possibilities in Lie: Art for Youth (P.L.A.Y.), an organization that gives sexually and physically abused children a creative outlet. Before they even reconvened to practice, former members of The Promise Ring and the people who knew them talked to Alternative Press.

The Band:
Scott Beschta: bass through Nothing Feels Good
Dan Didier: drums
Jason Gnewikow: guitar
Scott Schoenbeck: bass up to Wood/Water
Davey von Bohlen: vocals, guitar

Friends & Accomplices:
Norman Arenas: friend, member of Texas Is The Reason and other bands
Tim Kinsella: friend, member of Joan Of Arc, Cap’n Jazz and others
Tim Owen: co-owner, Jade Tree Records
J. Robbins: producer, Nothing Feels Good, Very Emergency
Darren Walters: co-owner, Jade Tree Records


1995: A Picture Postcard
Didier: I went to high school with Scotty Beschta, the first bass player, so me and him were, for a long time, playing together. We were even high-school band together, so him and I started this band called Ceilishrine, basically right out of high school, but maybe even a little part of our senior year. We toured a little bit of that, playing in Madison, Milwaukee, Indiana and Chicago, and we ended up meeting and playing with Jason’s band, None Left Standing… So being around there once that band broke up, and once we heard None Left Standing was breaking up, we thought it’d be a good idea to start a new band with Jason. We were originally going to have another member of None Left Standing in this band, but at the last minute he actually moved to Indiana for his girlfriend, and so we were like “oh shit,” left high and dry, trying to find someone new, and that’s when Davey came into the picture. Because at that time Scott and I were going to college at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and just sort of knew of Davey and knew he was in this band Cap’n Jazz and was looking to be in a more local band while still being in Cap’n Jazz. So we gave him a shot because he was close with Jason before.

Gnewikow: [Didier and Beschta] were total straightedge hardcore kids… I was kind of wary because their kind of scene was a lot different than the scene Davey and I came from. I remember there being some trepidation about whether or not we should do it, but I guess eventually we just played.

Von Bohlen: We didn’t really get along that well. I barely knew Dan. Scott Beschta—neither one of those guys did I know before the band. Scott and I never really hit it off, I guess socially. I mean it wasn’t awkward or weird, but it wasn’t the best situation, so I felt closer to Cap’n Jazz situation… I was stretched pretty thin at the time. Once we all got in the same boat together, things just clicked a lot better. This all transpired two months from the first practice to us recording our first 7-inch.

Those guys were pretty gung-ho; they felt there always seems to be a weak link, the one person who ends up screwing everything up for everything else. People play roles. People are stronger personalities, weaker personalities. That’s just socialization, you know, and so they felt the perfect answer was for everyone to make a strong, serious commitment to the band for a good amount of time and don’t have a weak link. Take the strong links from everywhere else. That was the theory, so they were pretty ready, and so once I joined up on that thing, it all went pretty fast.

Didier: We were at Scott Beschta’s old his house, where he used to live with a bunch of roommates and always put on shows in the basement. It was called The Fletch. When we were all together during one show, we sort of went up to his room and started compiling names. We had this long list of names, and we basically just whittled it down, and for some reason, [The Promise Ring] won. We had this democratic vote of picking band names. It was almost like the college touney; these are the names that we had and battled them against each other, and just took a vote for each one, and that one won… I was never really a big fan of the name, but it didn’t really matter to me. [I’ve been] dying to try and remember other band names; there had to have been better ones! [Laughs.]

Kinsella: I remember they were very Sunny Day Real Estate-ish the first couple shows—just sort of quiet/loud, mid-tempo. I can’t even remember what songs were on the first 7-inch, but I think those were probably more like that.

Owen: Because of Norm [Arenas] doing the fanzine Antimatter, he had gotten a demo from The Promise Ring… and he played it for me, and he was way into it, but I just thought it was really bad. The vocals were really bad, and it was just like a demo, but he was talking it up. I guess it would have had to have been, I don’t know how many months, but it was definitely within the same year that they sent him the recordings, which ended up turning into the Falsetto Keeps Time 7”, the first thing we released with them. For some reason it just struck a chord instantly. And I was just like, “This is really catchy. This is really good. This is night and day from the demo.”

Walters: The melody to “A Picture Postcard” is what really drew them to me. I remember when Tim had a tape of that song, and we were listening to it. I was kind of like, “I don’t really know what’s going on with this guy’s voice.” I was definitely skeptical of Davey’s voice, especially at that time. Because I know for a lot of people, they tend to lump all these bands into one big genre, but that warbly kind of thing, I guess it was there if you consider Guy form Rites Of Spring—this kind of off-kilter thing was more kind of the bad early ’90s hardcore stuff. I wasn’t sure how it fit in, but the melody of that is very simple. There’s not a lot going on when that melody’s just playing through, and it just stuck with me. “I’ll be damned. It’s really simple, and it can keep me captivated, then there must be something going on here.”

Owen: Literally the night I had gotten [the “Watertown Plank”/”Mineral Point” 7”] or the next day, I just called them out of the blue… Back then it was just so easy, just because it’s not like it is now. There’s not a ton of labels, not a ton of bands—you could just approach someone, and they’d be flattered, like, “Whoa, hey, this is cool!” And it wasn’t all about “What can you do for me? And how much money do you got?” [Laughs.] “When are you going to get me on The Fuse?”

Walters: Seeing them live and meeting them just set fire to the whole thing. They were one of the best fucking bands I’d ever seen and some of the nicest guys. I’m not sure if Tim had seen them or not. I think we had almost kind of figured out “Yes, we’re doing this for sure,” but hadn’t really met them. I went to meet them, and they blew me away… because I was like, “This is not a hardcore band; this is an indie-rock band.” [They had] a shitload of energy, especially the bass player at the time, Scott Beschta. He was just absolutely nutso. I was just like, “Man, these guys are great,” and people were responding. After the show—it was kind of a funny tale, considering they would write about it later on—I bought them all Coca-Cola, and we had some candy bars, and we all just bonded over junk food and Star Wars tattoos. I was like, “These guys are great.” As a band to me, they were like the total package.


1996: Heart Of A Broken Story
After releasing a 7-inch with Jade Tree and quite a bit of touring, The Promise Ring quickly headed to Idful Studios in Chicago to record their debut full-length, 30 Degrees Everywhere, with Casey Rice from post-rock band Tortoise. The band would spent only five days recording. Jade Tree released the album in September of 1996.

Didier: I remember I was scared shitless. At that time, you’re in the world of Idful, you’re in the world of Sunny Day Real Estate and Tortoise and all this stuff. John McEntire tuned my drums, and I was like “Oh my god!” There was still a lot of awe in what we were doing, at least for me, because it was so early in our band’s life that I got impressed really easily. [Laughs.] I would guess there was a part of me that was just really fearful of this sort of situation, but I remember having a good time.

But I also remember throughout the recording process being like, “Oh wait, this isn’t really going all that well.” It seemed Casey Rice, who recorded it, had just got off of tour in Europe with Tortoise, and he was sort of like in between some things, so I don’t think his mind was really in the right place. Plus having us rushing ourselves with this record also didn’t help. It was just kind of all over the place, but it was fun. I had great time doing it, but there was just a point in the recording where we were like, “OK, we kind of let Casey drive it.” At the time, who were we? None of us really knew a lot of the big-time recording stuff. It was just kind of like “OK, sure.” There were so many times where were like, “You know, Casey, maybe we should retake that” or “Maybe he should try that again?” and he was like, “No, no it’s punk rock.” He had it in his mind that we were just this punk band or something like that.

Von Bohlen: The recording of that record, we were being told we were a punk band, and this is what a punk band sounds like. There wasn’t quite that synergy between us and the recording process that we have come to know as comfortable and a good situation, but at the time we didn’t know, either.

Gnewikow: The weird thing that always struck me about 30 Degrees Everywhere is that, at the time, I felt we were a pretty good live band, but we just weren’t very good musicians. There was a lot of stuff getting everybody kind of together. I think we sounded better live—a lot better than the record sounded, obviously, because the record sounded like total garbage.

Didier: One of the most sobering moments of my life was the drive back listening to it on the way to Milwaukee. Here it is! This is our first record together! This is it, the first full-length! And we played it, and were like, “Hmm, OK.”

Von Bohlen: That’s part of the conversation [laughs] on the way home from that recording: “Well no problem with the sophomore failure!” … It was definitely the most disappointing thing we had ever done, in hindsight the most disappointing thing we were ever part of, but that’s not to say I’m not totally proud of it. I think there are a lot of really great songs on it and lot of great ideas that maybe just didn’t happen in the way that they could’ve. Hindsight’s ugly that way.

Walters: In my experience, most bands are very dismissive, especially if they no longer exist, of their careers. I realize that’s their first record, but take into account they’d recorded a bunch of classic Promise Ring songs prior to that album. I remember seeing all those songs live—you really couldn’t get any better than those songs. The problem was they went in, Davey was sick, they were under the gun to get it done, you know, it was all those factors. And I think production-wise, it just didn’t turn out the way it should’ve. If you can get past the flaws, that album, I won’t say it’s great, but it’s a pretty damn good album. Was I satisfied at the time? Of course. I don’t think any of us heard the album and was like, “Oh this is terrible.” We were excited. I think it’s a testament to the fact that, if the label and the band look back at that and are like, “OK, there are some obvious flaws,” and we were still able to sell, I think initially, 30,000, 40,000 copies [laughs]—I think that says it all right there. Clearly the audience wasn’t picking up on the flaws that we were… and it just couldn’t be denied. There’s just so many hooks on that record.

Robbins: There are things that just got lost in translation because I think that record had to be done so quickly, and they were such an inexperienced band, and I mean you can’t help hearing it in the record. The record really sounds like they had to get in and out of the studio in a couple of days, and they weren’t clear on what it ultimately needed to be. They just kind of did it, and then it was done, and it was like, “Oh wow, I guess we let a lot of things go, huh?”

Owen: I don’t remember the exact month the record came out, but just right away when that came out, Darren and I knew “OK, it’s time to do this full-time” because it was just getting so crazy and so busy just with that one album… Definitely I think it put the label on the map for sure.

Didier: Some of the reviews were just fucking horrible.

Von Bohlen: Magnet used to be incredibly rude to me… They referred to my singing style as “not unlike an old man on the shitter with rusty pipes.” As much as it doesn’t bother me, because it’s actually funny, it’s truly…like that’s a direct quote. I know it was said in that exact way. I must be somewhat sensitive to it, because 10 years later I still remember it.

Arenas: To me, Davey’s vocals certainly weren’t more obtuse than Tim Kinsella’s [laughs], and you know I would say they were definitely more tuneful. Everybody kind of made a big deal about the lisp when The Promise Ring record first came out. I personally thought that was great; it was a totally unique voice. That’s how he talked! You can’t just erase it when you sing. I personally appreciate those things, the little idiosyncrasies that make an artist special.

Von Bohlen: I didn’t realize how bad I was. I don’t realize how bad I am now, you know what I mean? Improvement shows you where you were, and that’s not to say that I look at it negatively, because I don’t. I was thinking it never seemed to me that I shouldn’t be [singing]. There are things that I think are strong points, and I’ll be the first one to admit my weak points, too, but you want to do something, you do it—especially at that age. You don’t really think, “Am I capable?” If you ask yourself if you’re capable of doing something or worthy of doing something, you’ll never do anything. You just kind of close your eyes and run fast. [Laughs.]

Gnewikow: It’s like it’s weird because, yeah, [Von Bohlen’s vocals] are not good, but Davey doesn’t have a traditionally good singing voice. So by that sense, it’s not like he became Pavaratti; it’s not like he was totally horrible then he was totally great. He wasn’t good as he was toward the end. I don’t really remember [bad reviews] affecting us much… There were reviews, but it was mostly like fanzines, and you didn’t come into contact with it as much. There weren’t like online reviews, and so like it was like less of an impact. I’m sure it had some of an impact because we definitely tried to make the next record a lot better.


1997: Is This Thing On?
The Promise Ring toured relentlessly after the release of 30 Degrees Everywhere, including a tour in late 1996 with Texas Is The Reason, who had just recorded their full-length with Jawbox’s J. Robbins. Determined to make up for what they considered a lackluster debut, The Promise Ring hired Robbins to produce their second album, which they recorded at Easley Studios in Memphis. Nothing Feels Good would propel The Promise Ring into the national spotlight and prove even more successful than Jade Tree’s already high expectations. But just as the band hit their songwriting stride with Nothing Feels Good, they also had to make a difficult decision.

Didier: We started to think of songs as songs, not just sort of like pieces of melodies and pieces of things that are thrown together, you know what I mean? There was a lot more thought.

Beschta: I think our comedic side came through a little bit, and it was a bit more playful and fun. I can’t think of any other word for it, but that would be the word for it. We just naturally got to know each other better, and around then is probably when we were most comfortable with each other songwriting-wise.

Von Bohlen: I think Jason actually was quoted as saying there was no songwriter on that record in [the classic punk albums story from AP #205], which I would take issue with. When I saw that, I was like, “Really?” I remember writing songs like chop, chop, chop, but I will agree with him in this: There is a lot of intuitive playing together on that record, which wasn’t like, “Hey I’ve got this part. Let’s play it until you can find a part,” really mathematic, running-something-into-your-brain type of writing. It was really natural, so we were playing together at a really high level. There was just a relationship musically that no one could really explain.

Gnewikow: It’s kind of a mystery to me. It’s pretty random. What it probably mostly was is we started to play better together as a band, and everyone did get a little better. Dan wasn’t the greatest drummer when we got together, and I was—and still am—a horrible guitar player, but I think that we figured out what worked for us, like how we could make the kind of like economy of our band, make the most out of what we had… The songs for that album are kind of weird because I definitely remember going into record it and thinking, “God, this is totally weird. These are really random songs.” But it definitely really came together on the record.

Von Bohlen: We were driven to make a better record—make no mistakes, prepare, practice, analyze, prepare again… We were just way driven. We were hungry. That record is really urgent. There’s something that was going on in the band at that time.

Robbins: I mostly just really remember their energy. They had this, like, super vitality, and also the songs were so good, you know? I think they did have a pretty clear conception about, maybe not the overall sound of the thing, but I think they had a pretty clear conception of wanting the energy and the, like, kind of go-for-it-ness of all the songs and the special qualities of the songs to really come across.

Gnewikow: It was like a lot more fun, but there was also like tons of anxiety and tension in the band anyway because of Scott, so it was weird on both sides.

Beschta: At least for me, it was a lot of cigarette smoking. I was just really tense. That was near the end. We had written all the songs, which was great, but it was a tense recording time. I was just smoking cigarettes like crazy and being really dry about it. It wasn’t a big celebration like it should have been, but I think the songs were captured properly.

Didier: At that time, Scott Beschta and me hated each other, so the one thing that always sticks out in my mind of that record was the fact that I had to, like, convince myself to go down there and be like, “OK, you’re going to be living together in the studio, in the hotel and stuff with this guy. Do whatever you can to not blow up or anything like that—whatever you have to do. Bring a book.” We just tried to distance ourselves from one another, at least I tried to. We were together making music together for so long; it just happens where you get really sick and tired of the person. He felt the same way with me.

Gnewikow: It was like total Only Child Syndrome, even though I don’t think [Beschta] was an only child. [Laughs.] It was just very much like “me, me, me,” really overly sensitive and like super reactionary to, like, anything. Any little thing would set him off, and it was kind of like we were always walking on eggshells and trying to manage the situation.

Von Bohlen: I think that adds to the tension, especially when you’re writing a record like the one we were writing… I think it’s that avoidance that gives energy to that deflection, you know what I mean? Maybe we could have made the record rival Sgt. Pepper’s if we didn’t have any sort of band conflict—or maybe it’s the band conflict that made our band what it is. Lord only knows, but it definitely was part of what was going on. It was us on the record, so I mean I’m happy with that record and certainly would consider it a positive because it helped us make that record.

Kinsella: By the time they recorded, it was like every song was hit. It sounded a lot better production-wise. I thought it was them achieving their ultimate potential at the time—that was sort of a perfect moment. Not to say they got self-conscious later, but they lost some of the excitement, I guess. I think it’s obvious in the later records; they’re a little mellower.

Walters: To me, everything about that record is classic: the lyrics, the design, just the feeling—it seemed to embody the spirit of, I think it was, 1997. Everything about it was perfect. They were dressed perfect, they had the perfect pictures, we had the perfect way to market them. It was all about varsity jackets and candy and Mustangs and Cherry Coke. It was very Happy Days-ish. This all wasn’t overkill yet. But I think this was the sheer synthesis of all those pieces coming together. I’m amazed to this day. To me, even though it came out in the fall, it was the ultimate summertime record. I had begged Davey to write a song for me, and he wrote the first song on that album, not necessarily for me, but it’s “Are you there, Delaware?” We loved that. We hired our first publicist. We made our first video. Those were big steps for Jade Tree as well. The Promise Ring was the band that threw us very far into the modern age of music.

Arenas: I do think that the MTV exposure in their case actually worked. Because that’s another thing: In that era, it was a big deal for a band to get on MTV. It’s not like now; you turn on the TV, and Alkaline Trio’s on every five minutes or whoever. It was like people would stay up late on Sunday nights to watch 120 Minutes, and even then 120 Minutes would cater more to grunge. You’d be more likely to see Smashing Pumpkins than you would to see Sebadoh. So for The Promise Ring video to get the airplay that it did, that was huge. And then for them to be invited into the studio for an interview, I remember just thinking, “Oh my god, that’s unbelievable!”—especially considering Jade Tree was still basically being run out of an apartment at that point. It felt really good.

Kinsella: It was shocking to all of us, all their friends. It seemed like every six months there was a new, shocking version of hugeness, like, “Damn, our friends are in this crazy popular band!” Then we’d get used to it, and six months later something new would happen, and we’d be like, “Whoa, they’re in a really popular band!”


1998: Tell Everyone We’re Dead
The band fired Beschta before Nothing Feels Good came out (see sidebar); in fact, the liner notes have a band photo with Beschta’s replacement, Tim Burton, who didn’t play on the album. Burton would go on an American tour with the band (as well as make a video for “Why Did Ever We Meet?”), a decision the other members would quickly regret. They planned to kick him out at the end of the winter tour, but as they drove home from a show in Nebraska, von Bohlen lost control of their van. It careened across a ditch separating the sides of the highway and rolled over several times, ejecting everyone inside. Miraculously, everyone survived. When the band released their Boys + Girls EP that fall, the first song on it was called “Tell Everyone We’re Dead.”

Von Bohlen: It was like 4 in the morning. Mostly what I remember is a truck; there was a truck coming in the distance when we bit it. I don’t remember actually physically getting up; I woke up when I was running up the hill. I went up, and of course, from this point my telling the story until the end of it I won’t forget anything. I ran up to the van, which is laying upside down, wheels spinning, some of the wheels had come off already. The axles had broken already. It looked pretty ugly. I ran up to the van where Dan and Jason and Tim were still there. And of course the truck couldn’t make it across; there was too much debris, like all of our equipment and wood and metal and wheels, so traffic was stopped. I don’t recall there being that more than one or two trucks and ambulances that had just left the scene of another accident. We were helped pretty much instantly, which is probably fortunate for Jason because we were still a good 15 miles outside of Omaha. I’m not sure how it would have all transpired, but Jason was in pretty rough shape—couldn’t really speak, really bloody. We put a pillow under his head.

Didier: When I woke up, I was still with sleeping bag and still with my pillow under my arms in the snow, and I was sort of facing away from the van, which was now upside down and the wheels still spinning. I thought that was really weird. It didn’t seem real. There was actually a point after waking up and seeing gear on the freeway, and Jason just sort of sitting up next to me in a total daze, and seeing Davey run around and seeing this sort of object in really far away from me—which ended up being Mike [Schoenbeck, tour manager, brother of Scott] who was thrown really far away. It didn’t really dawn on me, because you wake up in that daze, and you’re like, “Oh can we just turn the van over and get going?” For a second we’re like, “Oh wait, this isn’t so bad—oh wait, yeah, it’s fucking horrible.” [Laughs.]

Von Bohlen: I was just really worried for Jason. I mean, the rest it’s just the rudimentary dead/alive body count thing going through your head. Are we all alive, you know? After we got [Jason] as comfortable as he was getting, I had to go look for Mike … the bass amp had apparently smashed him, and he got thrown from the van totally already unconscious. He’s a big guy; he’s probably at least 70, 80 pounds heavier than me and quite a bit taller as well, and he was totally out when I got to him. He was a good 30 yards in a different direction from the van laying in the snow—and that’s the picture I don’t forget!

Everything past that is kind of a whirlwind. I mean, then we were all shipped to the hospital. Jason was shipped to a different hospital more in the city, and, you know, we were all taken care of little by little… So the three of us were released around 8 a.m. that morning. No shoes, no anything, but everyone was really, really great. Of course they released us to a social worker, who called U-Haul for us and got us a U-Haul truck go to the salvage yard that had towed our van, get shoes and whatever we needed, and then we took the U-Haul and went to he hospital to see Jason… because at this point no one knew the status of whether Jason was alive dead or anything, which is a pretty awful feeling. His folks were there when we got there. He was pretty much medicated, morphined. We told him what happened. He was at that point already pretty stable, which is good, but it was fairly emotional seeing his folks and stuff.

I’ve definitely resigned the fact that I did the best that I could in that situation, but I’ll never feel totally right about that. It was late, I was fatigued, I was giving up the wheel at the next stop kind of thing. We were in a rush for no reason.

Didier: To this day, I am absolutely amazed no one was killed. That is insane, because when I woke up, I thought everyone was dead.


1999: Things Just Getting Good
After they all returned to Milwaukee, they kicked Burton out of the band (and took some shit for it, considering he broke his arm in the accident) and hired their longtime friend Scott Schoenbeck to replace him. By this point, The Promise Ring were a bona fide phenomenon; rumors circulated that a major-label deal was imminent, but they still owed Jade Tree another album. Although the band were more than pleased with Nothing Feels Good, they were wary of repeating themselves. They had also come to consider their emo poster-boys image a burden. That weighed heavily on their minds as they wrote their third album, Very Emergency, which Jade Tree released in September. Of course, that image would alter anyway when Gnewikow acknowledged his homosexuality.

Gnewikow: I don’t really remember when it was; I guess probably after Very Emergency came out. I think it was either Tim Owen or [former Jade Tree publicist] Jessica Hopper had, like, approached me and were like, “Hey, will you do gay press if we get it?” And I was like, “Yeah, yeah.” So kind of did a bunch of stuff around that album, and there was like a little bit of a hubbub then.

I never even sat down any of the guys and was like, “I’m gay!” It was just this very like drawn out, organic thing that went from like a secret to an assumption to an unacknowledged fact. It was just out there—very weird.

Von Bohlen: [Our image] never hurt us, and what doesn’t hurt you is rarely a bad thing. I’m sure I’ve been quoted as saying this, and it’s still true: No one in this life wants to be summed up in one or 10 or 20 words. You know, we are complicated human beings, and we want to be respected as such… I at least always felt like we were trying to learn from ourselves and how to be better musicians—and to be labeled “This is all your are. This is all you’ll ever be” coupled us with every other band that was not trying to be anything more than just another band like this. And so in that way it was a negative, but it’s brought people to hear our songs that we made. No one can change the songs we made, so in that way if it’s just a word that people use, great, we’re still in control of the larger subject. So in that way it’s positive, it’s negative, but the negative doesn’t really exist outside of perception, so it didn’t ruin our band by any means.

Didier: We just want to make songs that we like, and we just want to make really good songs, and whatever people want to call it, they’ll call it. You can’t really stop that, so let’s just be happy with the music that we create and let the chips fall where they may. So when we were doing Very Emergency, to me that’s what I felt like: This is just us being very deliberate in delivering a pop record, our perception of a pop record. Yeah, that sort of [emo] peg that we had was just sort of impetus for us to sort of not go down that road.

Schoenbeck: I think probably around the time I was joining, it seemed like there was just more of a focus on songwriting, whereas before it was just how anyone starts band: You’re playing parts and trying to put stuff together. There was definitely a more conscious effort on song structure and stuff like that, even writing songs for those initial tours at rehearsals and stuff.

Von Bohlen: There’s a theory behind what you’re doing always, and sometimes it’s not always clear, which is sometimes better. I don’t know if it’s better or worse, really. That theory was definitely like, “Let’s not complicate what is not complicated,” and so we want to really focus on the melodies of instruments and create a really simple arrangement of those melodies that spoke to the song, you know? That was a large topic of the band; we did not want to get in the way of the music.

Gnewikow: A lot of the stuff that we wrote before was like Davey would have a little bit of an idea, but it was a lot less structured. On Very Emergency, it kind of got to where it became so that he was writing most of the songs in more of a finished matter, and then we were just like working them out and writing our own parts for them, but they were a lot more, like, straightforward.

Schoenbeck: It was the first band I joined where it was like more thought out, and actually people were trying to make something good, not just, “This is your part. This is your part. All right, go” [and] finish in 2.5 minutes. And they were just really smart about business stuff. I just always really admired that when I came in the band; everyone was really focused and smart about that stuff.

Gnewikow: It was an exercise, for better or worse. At that point, we were like, “All right, we are obviously a serious band. Is that what serious bands do? They like really try and work on their song arrangements and stuff like that?” It was that combination of that and what we were all listening to too.

Robbins: When I got the demos for Very Emergency, I was like, “Where did all the tension go?” There’s no tension; it’s all resolution. I remember talking to Davey about it: “Uh, where’s all your tension? It’s like resolution, resolution, resolution,” and he was like, “Yeah, exactly.” It seemed to me like it was an attempt on their part to just be as direct and as kind of “no bullshit” as they could. It’s not a move that a lot of people would make; I found it very compelling. Usually, bands start out writing very simple material, and then they sort of get fancier and fancier, and this seemed to me like it was a conscious attempt to make the songs as linear and as direct as they could… I really appreciated that they made a decision to do something that’s so simple. In a way, it’s maybe more conservative, but because of context, it actually was a pretty wacky move, I thought.

Didier: In a good way, it felt formulaic, but in a bad way also. We all had our roles, and we all did our thing, and it was very easy, you know? The songs sort of lent to that.

Schoenbeck: A couple of songs got old again through the back end of the album. I always feel like there were songs that were similar to each other—like the fifth song was kind of a mellow one, and the 10th song was kind of the same. Rock song, then each five songs kind of ended with a similar mellow song. But I thought it was great because we had consciously said, “Let’s set out and write a 10-song record straight up,” and I thought it was accomplished.

Von Bohlen: The thing that I think about when I think about that record: It put us in a place where we had no other course of action than to change. We just couldn’t make that record again, which is great because I don’t ever want to make a record twice anyway. None of us do. I think that’s kind of one thing that bonded us. I think that’s positive; I don’t think of that as a negative. Maybe it’s laid out as a negative. It gave us the world; it gave us every direction to go in from there. It was a corner, or it was a dot on the map—a dot you can go in any degree relative to that point, and that sort of maybe opened up the door to the next stage of our band.

Walters: For me, that album’s a downer only because it follows Nothing Feels Good. It just didn’t embody the same spirit. That’s not to say I don’t like it, but this is where the real strain comes in because now you have a popular band, and they know it, and you have a popular label, and we know it, and now you let the ego power struggles begin… I don’t want to paint them at all as demanding people, but you know in the time everybody’s trying to get what we both want; we’re trying to keep the band in line so to speak, and the band’s trying to keep us in line.

Gnewikow: We definitely got into a lot of fights [with Jade Tree]. Being on a label, it growing when we’re growing, was totally weird and hard for everybody. There were points where we would like want this thing, and there would be like a lot of bickering and arguing about it and not always in the most productive way. I remember the European licensing thing was a big thing. We had been to Europe a bunch of times, and we were like, “You know what? If we’re going to be doing all these tours, you’ve got to get it together, because other bands like The Get Up Kids are going, and they’re having like huge shows, and they’re doing really well. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be doing that.” We didn’t have any distribution or marketing over there, and that was like a big point of contention. We were just like, “C’mon, help us,” and I think they didn’t necessarily take the criticism so well, and it became sort of like a pissing contest.

Walters: The perfect example was they wanted to do a video for Very Emergency [“Emergency! Emergency!”], which we eventually did do, but it was like, well, ultimately did the other videos do anything? Well, not really. Now I think 120 Minutes is out or on its way out—its importance was fading. College radio? What are they really doing?… [The record layout] was expensive because it has all these cuts, and they wanted the stars to be velum, whatever the hell that means, you know it was like, “Dude! Who do you guys think you are? The fucking Rolling Stones? No way!” So you just had stuff like that… Again when you get in the thick of it sometimes it’s very, very hard to take into consideration what’s happening around you. All right, now this band’s all demanding. What happened when we were all friends? I think that’s the real thing that comes out of it. We’re sitting there thinking, “These guys never wanted shit, and now they want the world.”


2000: Emergency! Emergency!
In May, eight months after the release of Very Emergency, The Promise Ring released the Electric Pink EP. But that month also brought an unwelcome (or welcome, depending on who’s speaking) surprise. Not long after the van accident in the winter of 1998, von Bohlen began to experience constant headaches, which only worsened as time wore on. Touring for Very Emergency proved increasingly difficult, and on the eve of a European tour with Burning Airlines (J. Robbins’ band at the time), von Bohlen reached his breaking point.

Von Bohlen: Making Very Emergency was physically difficult for me. It was a long process for me. The accident happened in 1998; by the same time 1999, I was in pain every day all day… [Laughs.] You get very comfortable in your situation in that I didn’t notice. At some point it’s how you feel; that’s life. I didn’t know that I was in that much pain until it was gone. It lasted 14 months before things went so badly that I couldn’t ignore it any longer.

Gnewikow: It had been frustrating because that was, like, a huge friction in the band, just because Davey was always so miserable. After a while, you’re like, “This person’s been saying they’re miserable and getting headaches every night, and we can do this or we can’t do that, but there’s no reason.” You’re like, “What is going on? Is this in your head? What can we do?”

Schoenbeck: It was actually the morning we were leaving for Europe to do that tour with Burning Airlines, and he said he couldn’t. We went to pick him up, and he was just curled over.

Von Bohlen: The night before is when I like physically collapsed and threw up all night. By morning, when they came to pick me up for the airport, I literally couldn’t raise an arm. Just literally, physically, I couldn’t see past the doorway, and I couldn’t lift a hand off the bed. So I’d obviously deteriorated.

I had a lemon-sized mass in my head, which somehow, they forgot to look at. I’d only had like 700 MRIs, and they are looking at the images as they are being done, so the person doing the test knows I have a tumor, but the doctor just doesn’t look at it. It just seemed like there’s a real leak in the oil here. Now that I know it, I’m way more furious than I was at the time.

Schoenbeck: I thought he was going to die.

Didier: That was tough. I mean, it was great, and it was horrible. It was great because Davey had finally found an answer to these headaches that he had for all that touring we did on Very Emergency. Davey was a wreck: headaches, throwing up, he was sick, he was never healthy, which didn’t help anybody. [Laughs.] And so it was good to know that’s the reason why, and there’s a way to get it fixed.

Von Bohlen: I was checked into the hospital and then medicated and sent home until Monday because they couldn’t fit me into the surgery schedule—which was fine because the steroids worked great, and I could see enough, and I felt great. I was physically able to hang out. We had a funny cookout, and everyone—friends of mine and family and stuff—came to hang out with me before my brain surgery. It’s really weird because it was an emergency, but a really slow one, where we all had time to hang out. Once again I was probably in worse shape than I remember now, but it didn’t seem odd to me at the time. [Laughs.] My wife always says no one wanted to leave because it felt like they shouldn’t. I was taking it as a celebration [laughs], like, we found out what was wrong! For me I was like, “Oh goddamn I’m happy!” For them, it was this is the worst news ever.

Didier: Obviously, your mind goes in a thousand directions at once. But as it went along, it was non-cancerous. It seemed like, yeah, it was horrible news, but little good news started piling up. It was totally treatable, we can get rid of it, it’s not cancerous, all that stuff.

Gnewikow: I think that the urgency of the band had sort of worn off at that point. I think, at that point, it had been so frustrating, I partially didn’t really care [if the band ended]. I don’t know. This is not the most happy time in our band, even before this.

Didier: It seems like a lot, but it was a much-needed break because we had been full-steam ahead from the beginning of this band until then. Now it was time to sit back and think about something else for once—and not the band, and actually think about Davey’s health and, then in the broader stroke, our own health and our family’s health and everyone around us.

Von Bohlen: I went into surgery telling our manager at the time if he gave up our Summerfest [a massive two-week annual festival in Milwaukee] date, I would kill him. I went into surgery on May 8th. I think our Summerfest date was late June or early July, and I was like, “I will be ready no matter what,” basically saying my feeling like, “If you give up that date, you don’t believe that I can recover from this, so don’t you dare do that if you want to work with me again.” So that was my feeling on it. That continued to be my feeling through the next two surgeries.

I was in the hospital for maybe 10 days. I wasn’t ready [for Summerfest], but it was a big deal, and there was a lot of people there. I was not prepared, my voice was terrible, I was exhausted. I wasn’t physically ready, but goddamn, I was ready.

Just three months after their returning to the stage at Summerfest, The Promise Ring received a support-tour invitation from an unlikely source: Bad Religion. Opening for the punk-rock veterans was an undoubtedly odd fit for The Promise Ring, who had virtually nothing in common with Bad Religion. But the band had never done a real support tour, and they had grown bored with preaching to the converted. They decided to accept, and the tour began that October.

Von Bohlen: We were implementing change, and this was one of the ways in which we were doing it. We wanted to play in front of a different band’s audience. We were playing all new songs from [what would become Wood/Water], so we wanted to play in front of an audience that would have really no prior knowledge of who we are. When that Bad Religion thing came up—“Well if we don’t sink on this tour, we will win any crowd that isn’t already against us.” It was a bad theory because we didn’t realize how much fun we weren’t going to have.

Gnewikow: We were totally on crack for doing that. It was ridiculous thing. It’s like, why didn’t everyone tell me that was such a stupid idea? Where were my friends? [Laughs.] Do me a solid: Tell me I’m an idiot.

Schoenbeck: It was miserable. It was really cool because every time everyone freaked out and was throwing stuff at us, we’d play that “Stop Playing Guitar” song, like super slow, and they would just get so mad. It was pretty funny.

Von Bohlen: The five or six things that stick out in my mind are the things that were thrown at us that you really shouldn’t give away. Somebody threw their keys at us, and the keychain had pictures of their baby on it. [Laughs.] It’s like he’s with Santa and everything. Is it really worth that? [Laughs.] You can’t hate us that bad—you just can’t, or you shouldn’t. So there was that one really sticks out in my mind. Somebody flicked a cigarette at me from really close range; it was at one of the smaller shows in a smaller town. It bounced off me or whatever, and then Jason flicked it back and hit the person. There was just a lot of that. People were just really fighting tooth and nail to get on the stage. They never got there, but had they ever, I wonder what were they going to do? Punch me? I just didn’t really understand. I was egging them on, I’ll admit that, but only because it seemed so ludicrous. Go get a drink! Go check out the cool T-shirts!

Gnewikow: After a few of the shows, we were like, “These people don’t give a fuck. We can totally go out there and suck and it doesn’t even matter.” [Laughs.] We were rolling dice for like Maker’s Mark shots before we went on stage, and the bottle would be empty. It was really messy and ridiculous, but also really fun.

Von Bohlen: It was just rather sad for us/me to see people [Bad Religion] who weren't exactly psyched to be doing what they were doing, and just taking the easy road and a paycheck. I don't want to single them out too much, as a snapshot of any band/person can yield a false image, but it just gave us a strong feeling that we wanted to make sure that never happened to us.


2001: Stop Playing Guitar
The fun ended early on the Bad Religion tour when von Bohlen took ill with an infection in the bone of his skull, which doctors removed in November 2000. The Promise Ring found themselves sidelined for the second time that year as von Bohlen recuperated, though they returned to playing not long after the surgery. In the spring of 2001, the band began recording demos for what would become their final album, Wood/Water. Their contract with Jade Tree complete, The Promise Ring seemed intent on finding a new home. Despite rumors that had circulated since the release of Nothing Feels Good, major labels never really expressed an interest in the band.

Didier: To me, that seemed like the biggest misconception of this band—like, “Oh, majors are knocking!” Not on my door! People came to shows, and we had dinners and stuff, but as far as solid offers, we were never really offered anything.

Von Bohlen: We would have been totally open to at least discussing it. We weren’t going to let ourselves get screwed; we didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. We at this point are not green. We know that we’ve worked really hard for our fan base, and we weren’t going to sell it for nothing. And we were also aware of staying indie while you’re on a major label was both contradictory and silly and doesn’t work. We were aware of the game, and it just never really came. There was a few like nibbles, but no one ever just sat down and said, “I want to sign your band.”

Didier: [Jade Tree] seemed like a well-oiled machine at this time. We’d make records, we’d spend this x amount, we’d get recouped in this amount of time, and we’d get royalty checks in this amount of time. It seemed like it was a good relationship. So that was great, but it also sort of led to us not wanting to be on that label anymore. You get to this sort of situation where, well, you could do this forever. Obviously you couldn’t, but we could do this for a longer period of time; we could just do the same thing over and over again, but there’s always that part of you that’s like, “That’s not really fun. That doesn’t push us into any sort of new territory.”

Gnewikow: The whole thing of our band from the beginning was always exciting because we were always doing something new: a new tour, we’re playing this other venue that’s bigger, we’re doing a video—and that had ceased to be true.

Didier: We reached a certain point with Nothing Feels Good and with Very Emergency. Another part was like, “Well, if we release another record, it feels like it can go down from there.” It seemed like these wheels that were in motion produced this thing that only went so far, so if we don’t try something new, we don’t know if we can go farther. We can obviously go backward, in which case we sort of did record-sales-wise, but I think as far as pushing ourselves by leaps and bounds by, I feel, what we did in the past.

Walters: Tim and I had this big power plan: We’re going to go to Milwaukee, we’re going to tug on their heart strings, we’re going to bring a business plan, and we’re pretty much going to say, “Look we’re going to do whatever. We want you to say; we realize you may go.” Give ’em the “we’d love for you to stay, understand if you go.” Because ultimately we’re like, “We love these guys, and we don’t want to lose them, but if they’re going to go, we can’t wish them ill will.” …I remember going to Milwaukee, and you could just feel it. I think we probably even stayed in Chicago, if I’m not mistaken, and drove out to Milwaukee and only spent a day there. Kind of like “Yeah, we’re not staying at Jason’s house like we normally do,” and it was like everyone knew what the setup was: Here’s the label coming out to talk to their band. We sat at their favorite vegetarian restaurant and laid it out, and you knew it’s kind of over.

Von Bohlen: We were like, “We’d like to try something else in this world, no regrets or no ill will towards you guys; you guys have done everything possible for us.” I think they responded with a little bit of rejection, but I think they understood. The thing that really pushed us away is, I think, they felt that we could not succeed better than we were. I don’t know if they’ll admit to that, or if they actually were feeling that, or if it was just the feeling we were getting. That pushed us to leave for sure because it’s like, “How can you believe that?” That’s not the assumption we’re working under. We’re working under the assumption that the best is yet to come… That was kind of like, “Well, then we should leave.” “Yeah, you should leave then.” And that was kind of it.

Didier: We weren’t going to leave until we knew what our options were. I remember Tim and Darren flew out to Milwaukee to have lunch with us, and we told them Epitaph is interested in us, and so they knew that we were looking around, and they were like, “Well, we love you guys, whatever makes you guys happy.” This sort of happened at the same time, you know; we wanted to leave, and we found something, and we left.

Walters: I think they might have mentioned Epitaph, and I was like, “Hey man, who the fuck’s going to turn down that?” I thought it was strange, and it still think it’s strange to this day that they did it.

Von Bohlen: Before I knew that I was sick, we had recorded demos for whatever label was willing to hear them: seven songs, three of which were Very Emergency The Next Generation. They were very much in the vein of Very Emergency… They were better, and they were more advanced. We had a greater mastery of that sound. And then four songs were in an area that we had never explored before… We had never made that intricate of demos before, where we were free to go into the studio for a month and make music, and we made music 50-50, like “Which direction do we head?” We were at an impasse where we set ourselves up for a total change. When are we going to get a chance to do this again? So that’s what we did. The label, which turned out to be Epitaph’s side label, Anti-, were totally in support of us: “Go do what you do. What you do is really good.” So we did that.

In the fall of 2001, The Promise Ring headed to England to record with big-name producer Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur, Morrissey). The band would spend six weeks recording, a marathon compared to what they were used to, but a sprint for Street. Just before they left, though, they had another change in personnel. Although he had written nearly all of what would become Wood/Water with the band, Schoenbeck was asked to leave. Ryan Weber, a friend of The Promise Ring’s, took his place.

Didier: At that time he just seemed like he had one foot out the door. He didn’t really seem excited; I don’t know if it was a reaction to him not feeling that he was part of the band still or the fact that things were happening. I don’t really know what to pin it on, but it just didn’t seem like he was into it, or if he was really into it, he didn’t really show it, you know? At that time, you’re all in, or you’re all out, because this is a huge change, and we kind of all have to be on the same boat here. So yeah, we kicked him out so the boat didn’t capsize.

Schoenbeck: I just felt really pushed aside when the writing started. Just everything was not good, I guess, when the band’s not up and running. You’re just trying to do all this stuff. Perhaps I projected being unhappy a little more than I was.

Von Bohlen: It’s all part of that implementing change thing, really. We were making different music, and Scott really started to feel like he wasn’t part of that. We really felt like Scott’s heart was not in the restarting of the band, because that’s what we felt like we were up against. We just really felt like we were on a different page moving in opposite directions, and that’s just not something we could, at that point, possibly deal with. Especially when I’m going to go up there and playing an acoustic guitar—this is something where a unified front is totally necessary.

We’re famous bad communicators. We’ve grown out of it a little bit, but I think especially the four of us together, just there wasn’t any open dealing with things. And so no one really knew how anyone else felt; it was just kind of what you could assume from actions. Scott wasn’t moving in that same direction; he felt he was being pushed, and I’m sure he’ll say that, which may be what was happening. It’s hard for me to say. And this is probably where the new guy gets new guy’ed. The three of us had been through it all, and one of us wasn’t necessarily sacrificeable, and that’s where it happened with Scott.

Schoenbeck: [I was] 100 percent on board. I’ve heard them say that I wasn’t, but I don’t think that’s an accurate thing. The record is recorded; there’s only two songs I didn’t write my part for. There weren’t that much changes from the demos.

Gnewikow: He just seemed sort of detached. Stephen Street came [to meet us], and he’s like, “I don’t know. I’ve got this thing, and I don’t think I can make it.” And I was like, “Even outside of the band, you don’t wanna meet with Stephen Street? You don’t want to have lunch with him? You’re too busy? [Laughs.] I think I can open my schedule up.” I think we were like, “All right that’s weird.”

Schoenbeck: I think they didn’t need to spend all that fucking money they spent on Stephen Street at all, and that’s one of the things, too, where I’m sure I was salty about. The whole time, I always admired those guys for being smart [with] business, but at the end I didn’t think things were being thought through.

I guess I’m just more realistic: Sometimes you just gotta know what you do, and blend it together, and not try to be the records you’re listening to at the time. That’s my only big thing, which maybe they’re offended by that. I think after touring, you totally get sick of what you’re doing. You’re not listening to that or wanting to be that on tour. You’re listening to Beth Orton records 24/7. I think maybe that had something to do with it. I respect Davey’s writing so much, and I guess maybe I thought Jason was pushing everyone in a direction he wanted, rather than Davey and his songwriting naturally went.

Von Bohlen: It was like, we’ll get this done, this has to be done, why wait? Why, like Nothing Feels Good, let it fester through the recording process and have a bass player on the record with a picture of a different guy? That was our teaching tool there. I think anyone in the same position would have done the same thing.

Didier: It was a very weird feeling to be there recording this record, being such a big gamble that it was. But there was no other place I wanted to be, you know what I mean? It was weird. This is what I want to do, I’m doing exactly what I wanted to do right now, but it’s scaring me. People are either going to think this is great, or it’s shit.

Gnewikow: It was amazing—totally stressful, but totally great and fun, easily the most exciting time in our band since Nothing Feels Good became popular. We were doing it, and it was totally crazy. What are we doing there? We’re in England recording for six weeks with Stephen Street. That’s everything I totally wanted out of it.

Didier: We’re doing what real bands do, but we’re using this bass player that’s sort of borrowed. We’re sort of in this weird space; you just start feeling things starting to unravel in a way, you know what I mean? Whereas I felt like we’re a real band, but I also don’t think anyone’s going to really pay attention to this record. [Laughs.] But I love the record. You could kind of start to feel it: This is career suicide for us, but we’re not going to make a different record.

Gnewikow: I almost feel like, totally post-everything, people sort of spun Wood/Water as this disappointment and failure, but when we finished making the record, the guy from like the Dutch label that was doing it, Anti- Europe, he flew over while we were doing mixing, and he was totally super-psyched, and we were all totally psyched. We were like, “Awesome, we totally did it, we made a good record, we’re so happy.” And the record label here loved it. I mean it was definitely like, “This is a weirder record, but it’s not like we can’t market it the same way.” We were all really excited, but we came back, and it was like the excitement had kind of gone.

2002: Say Goodbye Good
In March of 2002, von Bohlen had his third and final surgery, this time to replace the infected bone doctors took out in 2000 with a plate. About a month later, Anti- released Wood/Water, to mixed reviews and a whole lot of confused fans. By October, The Promise Ring had broken up.

Didier: Jason wanted to break up the band have this record released under a new name. So yeah, obviously, it’s not like we didn’t think about it. It wasn’t like we were so high on our horse [we thought] we could do no wrong. As I said before, this is going to be career suicide, or it’s going to be the best decision we ever made. In some regards it was, like artistically, it totally pushed us in a different direction, but again we sort of shot ourselves in the foot career-wise. And walking around in a limp, what I learned making that record, is worth a lot more to me than sitting on my laurels.

Gnewikow: I just felt like people that liked the band before would hate the record, and anyone who might like the record who had heard of our band probably associated us with something that they didn’t like.

Von Bohlen: I think we knew there’d be some adverse conditions, but at the same time, we felt like we’re doing us—this is us making our music. If people don’t see that, then they were just fans of a certain kind of music that just happened to attach itself to us.

Walters: I know Jason would hate me for saying this, but I’m sure as hell glad I didn’t release that record, because I didn’t like it at all. And of course I got, “Oh you’re crying because they left.” But I don’t think that. They tried to escape their legacy.

Arenas: To hate that record is to say that you were really shortsighted about The Promise Ring. [Laughs.] …I loved Wood/Water, so happy they put that out. If The Promise Ring had broken up after Very Emergency, it would have felt incomplete to me. Wood/Water was like the perfect final note for that band, because that record sounded

PUBLICATION
Alternative Press

AUTHOR
Kyle Ryan

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