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Aaron
Powell, like many of my friends in Orlando, is a Hoosier transplant.
Raised in Bloomington and educated with an M.A. in Linguistics at Indiana
University, Aaron came to Orlando in the Spring of 2002. He moved into the
Amelia Street house with our mutual friend Jeff Bullock, and accepted a
teaching job at Valencia Community College West Campus. In Bloomington, he
honed a songwriting and performing style of his own with his band Taxi
Boat.
Our
collaboration started in May of 2002 when Aaron and I composed our first song,
"Confronted." Pleased with this song, we continued in a similar
vein of writing narrative-style songs about characters who were conflicted
by their desires. We chose the band name after watching A
Clockwork Orange. From August of 2002 to the present, we've played several venues around Orlando, including
Tatame Teahouse and Sake Lounge, Underground Bluz, Stardust Video and Coffee House, Room Three Nine, Bodhisattvas',
Fairbanks Tavern, Austin Coffee House, and Ballard and Corum's. As much ridicule as I get from friends and family
for this project (because of the name and because of my lumberjack
drumming), I'm really proud of what Aaron, Jeff, and I accomplished. Aaron
and I wrote twelve of the songs from May through August of 2002. During
that time I was a full-time student working on my Master's degree, working full time as a
teacher at Memorial Middle School, made time for a two-week sojourn to
China, and learned to play amateur drums and sing simultaneously. Aaron
and I recorded all of our parts live on October 26, 2002 at Jeff's house
on Amelia Street while Jeff engineered the session. Jeff later recorded
his bass parts on a separate track (in single takes to keep the live feel)
and finished mixing and mastering the project in December of 2002. The project was christened Ootheca,
which was inspired during a game of Trivial Pursuit. I think the question
was, "What do you call the egg sac of a praying mantis?" By
January 2003, we were playing the entire set live at various venues.
Shortly
after the completion of Ootheca, we experimented with a new song,
Weave and Wind, featuring Jeff on the
drums, myself on the bass and piano, and Aaron trying new styles on
his red Fender Bullet. This was our first attempt at recording the tracks
individually for a more polished sound. In the Winter of 2004, Aaron and I submitted
Your Brain
to "The Brain Cabaret" at the Orlando Science Center, with
lyrics by Orlando actress Heather Leonardi.
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