Every Alice -- back to earth ... at least for now!

(Pictured above. Every Alice on Earth in 1991, in a burned-out firehouse at Orr Park, the place we will be playing tomorrow. The photo was taken from my then and now best friend, Clare Vance. Below: Cleaning off the rust at our first practice in 6 years.)

Tomorrow my first band, Every Alice on Earth, reunites for the first time in five years. We got started in January of 1991 when I was a freshman at University of Montevallo. Eric McGinty and identical twins, Peter and Paul Wilm, were sophomores at the time. We were remembering last night at practice that our first practice, before Eric joined, was in Fuller dorm and an R.A. told us to keep in down and kicked me off the hall for being in a men's dorm after 9:00. My how times have changed. It's weird to think that 15 years ago we had another Bush in the White House, everyone still listened to tapes, and there was no such thing as e-mail or the internet for the masses.

Highlights of our band career so far have been:

* Playing with the Chickasaw Mudd Puppies, an Athens, Ga.-based band, at the Montevallo student center and at The Nick in 1992. The pups were a Michael Stipe-discovered and produced act who had a short, but interesting career and a fantastic live show that featured a rocking chair and stomp box (a wooden platform with a mic inside).
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* Our show at the university's annual Spring Fest twice, once with The Lemonheads as the headliner. My sister and I briefly spoke with a very intoxicated Evan Dando.
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* Playing with Man or Astroman? and Shallow at a bar in Montevallo at the beginning of their careers. Man or Astroman? went on to record many records, tour the world and even had a song on a Sunkist commercial, or so I heard. Shallow, more affectionately known at My Bloody Birmingham, changed their name to Verbena and released a major label album produced by Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters.
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* A fraternity show at Sewanee, Tenn. (University of the South), where someone threw a bottle rocket on stage. We got them back as Paul was passed out drunk on their couch before the second set and a few other stunts we pulled that probably shouldn't be mentioned for legal reasons. (Sorry Kim, thanks for booking those shows for us nonetheless -- two of the few shows we actually got paid for during that time.)
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* Winning the Battle of Bands competition in 2000, during our second embodiment, at a bar called Local Star, now closed and part of the beigeness that makes up Highway 280. One night of the competition fell on Halloween and we dressed as the cast of the Blair Witch Project, with who ever was drumming in a dome tent. It was a brilliant idea, mostly executed by Paul, who brought in bags of dead leaves and a fake tree (if memory serves). The best moment of the night was a Wilm brother fight in which Peter could be heard, zipped up in the tent, screaming his head off at Paul.
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Tomorrow we reunite with our friends, all who saw us during our early '90s shows, most were in someone's apartment. Some of us have less hair, gray hair, more pounds, kids, spouses and mortgages, but we aren't too old to remember the glory days, before we had enter career world, in Montevallo. Pictures will be posted.