Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the band that I was in from 1995 through 2001 - Bickley. Bickley was a punk rock band. Bickley eventually became many things - a regional (if not national) success, a way of life, a series of truly crazy experiences, and complex web of urban myths. Bickley also became an aesthetic for the guys in the band - we knew if something was “Bickley”, and if it was, we pursued it with unbridled passion.

As with most bands that last uninterrupted for 6 years, there are more stories to tell than I will ever remember. In the coming months I’m going to recall some of those stories - both fun, sad, and scary. If nothing else, there’s some sort of therapy in it for me. And if I’m lucky, perhaps an old Bickley fan will stumble upon this site and share in the fun.

So let me tell you how the whole thing started:

Randy Morris, a close friend of mine since grade school and my former college roommate, had met and become close friends with a guy named Matt Lambeth. Matt was a self-proclaimed “art fag”. He had attended art school at the San Francisco Art Institute, and experienced the punk and art scene of San Francisco during the mid and late 1980s. Another one of Matt’s close friends was Steve Hitt. Steve had been a graphic artist in Houston for a number of years and had even done a stint as a stand-up comedian. I had met these clowns through Randy, and we had done a few things together - primarily related to drinking too much beer and listening to music. So, as fate would have it, one night we ended up at The Blue Iguana (RIP), playing pool, drinking beer, and generally being debaucherous. And then it happened…

Someone mentioned Laverne and Shirley. Someone did a Squiggy impression. And then, Steve began to sing the title song to the hit TV show. And I don’t mean he just sang it - he really sang it. With a slight edge to his voice, and a genuine inspiration that was clearly fueled by the 3 Guinness Stouts he had already drank - he completely blew us all away. I remember standing there with a pool cue in my hand, thinking - damn - this guy should be in a band. So I just said it - “let’s form a band!”. What happened after that will always be a bit of a haze to me, but I do know that Steve, Matt, Randy and I started hanging out at my house once a week, playing in the upstairs loft.

It really happened so easily. Looking back on it, I remember that we had to go and buy Matt a drumset - he hadn’t owned one since high school. He didn’t have enough money to buy one outright - so Steve and I pitched in a little and helped him out. We told him that we’d either become big rock stars and he could pay us later - or we’d just sell the kit when things got boring and get our money back. We bought an old but good Pearl set from Rockin Robin’s in Houston. They were really helpful until somebody handed them the cash, and then they basically opened the side door and told us to load it up on our own. If I remember correctly, we snagged two extra cymbals and stands
It started out innocently enough. We were playing Nirvana, REM, old Green Day, and Queers covers, and fooling around with a few simple songs of our own. At that point, I don’t think anyone really thought we would ever really play a show. We’d just waste a few hours each week making noise. Our biggest fan at that point (besides the four of us!) was my next door neighbor, who would wash his car in the driveway every time we played, and whoop and holler after each song (or when we just fell apart and stopped). I never did find out who filed the noise complaint with the neighborhood patrol - but I’m positive it wasn’t our #1 fan. It must have the people on the other side of my house!

At this same time, another mutual friend of ours - Sean Kelley - was having some success with a band of his own, Sad Pygmy. Sean (better known to the world as C-Dog) and his girlfriend (now wife) Carol Sandin, along with Phil Krieg and Bob Lederer made up the psycho punk band that was Sad Pygmy. We’d all go see them play around town - Deep Phat, Emo’s, The Blue Iguana - and often we’d end up at their practices in Francisco Studios - a scary old warehouse next to a Chinese fortune cookie bakery in the Houston warehouse district. It was after one of these Sad Pygmy practices that C-Dog asked Matt, Randy, Steve and I to play a couple of our original songs for him.

It was the first audience we had as “Bickley” (we didn’t have a name at that point - more on how “Bickley” became our name later), and we played 3 songs - Dino, Superman, and Call Girl. Something happened at that moment. I’m not sure what it was for everyone else, but for me - it was the look on the faces of my Pygmy friends and the realization that we had something very unique, fun, and exciting to share. We were just 4 guys, slamming out some simple chords and singing some raunchy but harmonically pleasant vocals, and everyone liked it.

Fast forward a few weeks. Sad Pygmy has let us move some stuff into their room at Francisco’s, and we’re talking about trying to book a show. This is when Randy decided that the fun was over for him. I remember him saying that he honestly didn’t have any aspirations to play in a “real” band that was intent on playing out. It was sort of a defining moment for us - did we really have those aspirations? We talked it over and decided that we did. With no hard feelings, Randy gave us his blessings, and we asked C-Dog if he’d play bass with us. He said yes, and before I knew it, we were trying to write 10 good songs and build a set list so we could play our first show.

So how did the band get named Bickley? This was the first of many myths that we eventually created about the band. People would ask us - “what does Bickley mean?” at almost all of our early shows. By that time, each one of us had one (or more!) myths about the meaning of the word. Steve would say that it was the name of his uncle who had been executed by the state of Texas for a series of homicides. I would tell people that I traced my earliest ancestors back to the quaint little village of Bickley, and that they were all witches, so we named the band after them to continue the strength of the coven. Depending on who asked whom, you might get one of 10 different answers - all of which were completely false.

So here now, for perhaps the first time in print, is the real story of how we chose the name Bickley and how it stuck:

We were searching for a name. One that would evoke a certain feeling of intensity, of being an outcast, of being an outsider looking in. After all, that’s what we were. Older than most of the musicians around us - especially in the punk rock scene in Houston - we knew we were going to be viewed as slightly off-kilter. So at the end of a long night of playing and drinking a LOT of beer, we finally stumbled (literally) upon the image of Robert DeNiro’s character in Taxi Driver.

Remember how he shaved his head into a mohawk, and took his dark vision of justice out into the streets of New York? Yeah! That’s what we want. What was his name again? Travis Bickley, wasn’t it? Yeah, Travis Bickley!! Let’s call ourselves “Mr. Bickley”. No wait… just… BICKLEY!!

Once again, fate was working her magic:

• DeNiro’s character was NOT named Travis Bickley - his name was Travis Bickle, but we had already had at least 6 beers each, so we didn’t remember that
• Sad Pygmy was leaving to go on a short east coast tour just days after this conversation, and C-Dog made stickers that said “Bickley”, and distributed them at every show

The day after Sad Pygmy left (armed with Bickley stickers and an exciting story about this new punk rock band that C-Dog was playing bass in) I saw Matt and Steve. They told me that they’d just remembered the character’s real name. It was too late. By the time C-Dog got back home, we had come to terms with the fact that we had an erroneous but totally unique band name, and we never looked back.

Much much more to come on the life and times of Bickley. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, you can find information about the music that we released by following this link to Amazon.com. Or, just search for “bickley punk” at Google, and browse around for a while.

And tell your mom to quit calling me.