After being apart for ten years, playing in your own bands and spending time with your own families, what were those first rehearsals like? Was it hard to jump right back in these songs?
Todd: Well, we had a lot of talking to do first and just spent some time saying hi, but then it’s natural for us to just pick up our instruments and start playing together.
Jamie: It also took some time to work on our equipment again. We are using a lot of our old instruments for the reunion shows.
Todd: The funniest part is the band has been remarkably free of rust, but the equipment has needed more attention than the music it seems like. I plugged in my old tube amp. and it had a real vintage sound if you know what I mean [laughter].
Brady: I just bought a speaker at the repair shop right now, and so we’ve been tinkering with that but it seems to be coming together too. It was kind of funny, actually, to use the old gear and then, of course, some of our stuff has gotten sold, and you’re like, “Crap! I don’t have that anymore.”
Jamie: I changed my pickups in my instruments for different situations, and it didn’t work in the old situation so I had to change them back. That was the biggest challenge actually, getting the old sounds up.
Brady: Jamie’s worked on his sound a lot but I found this old bass amp I used in ‘86 and all through the ‘90’s. Like Todd said, I’m looking for that vintage sound [laughter]. The music has been really good, it’s been really fun. Like they say, its like riding a bike. The first time you play some of these songs you start to remember a few things, and then you run through them again, and you start to remember the arrangements and the dynamics and it starts to come back.
You all had such a history together, I am sure the music is in your muscles.
Brady: You just shut your eyes, and the less thinking you do the better. You just listen and play and magically it does come back.
Looking ahead to the your shows, you have three gigs coming up: a stealth show at Mercury Lounge as Jefferson Township and two gigs at the Wellmont. Do you plan to work out three different setlists or one really tight show?
Brady: That’s actually still in discussion, the actual shape and overall picture of each show we are going to present. One of the nice things, though, is we’ve been going by the philosophy of “Let’s not rule out any song right now, let’s play as much as we can and see what happens.” There were a lot of songs that we didn’t play in the later stage of our career that we played earlier on that we may bring back. And we know we have some diehard fans that want to go to all three of those shows, and so we really want to play as much as we can, and give them as much as we have.
Todd: It’s been fun. A couple of the tunes have surprised me. Like we played “Wake” yesterday, and for some reason it was never really one of my favorites to play back in the good old days, and yesterday I think I enjoyed playing it more than I ever had. Like Brady said, “until you try it with these ten years gone you don’t know how it’s going to sit.”
Jamie: And there’s songs like “I Only Want.” I don’t think there’s a show where we didn’t play that song, and I remember thinking at points, “Why do we play this song all the time.” Getting some distance from that song again, it’s a great song.
Though it has been years since From Good Homes last played, some of the band’s material has surfaced in your individual repertories. Are there any songs in particular you’ve played with consistency?
Brady: I play music for kids, and one song I’ve wanted to do, which I haven’t quite done yet, but I have been trying to learn is “Grandma’s Apple Dumplings.” I always thought that was a good From Good Homes song that could be a kid’s song. But, sometimes if Todd’s in the house and I’m playing a show, I’ll bring him up for a “Second Red Barn” or something like that. I think people appreciate that.
Todd: A handful of them have made it into the Railroad Earth repertoire. In my solo shows I play a lot of my other stuff because that gives me a good chance to play those songs—and I tend to draw people who want to hear those more at my solo shows.
Jamie: I was involved with a project in Wilmington, and we never really got around to it because I ended up moving down to Charleston but I was thinking about doing “Coming on Home.” I’ve covered “True Love” one point too when I was in New Jersey after From Good Homes broke up.
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