• Be With You (1988) 3:17 4.6 meg - wow, this was a long time ago. But not a bad little noisy pop tune! As they say, this format may reveal limitations in the source tape, which we recorded ourselves in our second year of high school. It became our "pop hit".

Lifespan: 1986-1989

Personnel:

• Douglas Witmer - vocals, guitar, drums, piano
• Heidi Krug - keyboards, drums (1987-1989)
• Blake Lehmann - bass, guitar, vocals (1987-1989)
• DS - guitar, drums, vocals, bass
• Steve Douple - guitar (1986)

High Point: (tie) That There Art festival, Lancaster, PA, 1989. We were the youngest band to play, and put on an excellent show. Our last gig - "Landscape in the Park" - was also a great one.

Low Point: at our first gig as a foursome with Heidi and Blake, which took place in a pig barn, half of our friends left to go watch TV. We had to cajole them back with an INXS cover.

Recordings:

• Friday 23 (5-song cs)
• Bask (10-song cs)
• Calico (10-song cs)

Steve Douple was somebody we'd met through our mutual love of Joy Division, and it seemed natural to ask him to join the burgeoning group. Steve proved to be an amazing musician, who immediately started writing songs as well. Our first gig (my first, too) was at a special campus half day event. We enlisted another musician, Eric Dombach, and played U2 and REM covers in addition to the Surfari's immortal Wipeout (I played the drums, and after barely pulling off the first verse and chorus, cut it short by simply stopping). Sadly, Steve's overprotective mother issued a ban on him riding in a car driven by anyone other than herself, which made rehearsals and recording extremely inconvenient. He had to leave the band after a short time, but provided some great playing on our first recording.

It seemed natural to create a permanent lineup, so I got in touch with Blake Lehman, who I knew from my first band, VBF. I met Heidi in the cafeteria one day, and asked her to drum for us immediately after finding out that she not only could play drums, but owned a Yamaha DX7, which seemed to be a badge of authenticity. She was a more advanced keyboardist than drummer, but both Douglas and I did pretty well at the sticks too so we switched instruments a lot.

We produced our first two recordings on cassette four-track, and sold many copies to friends. For our third album, we decided to invest some money and recorded part of it at an eight-track cassette studio...in the end, our four-tracks sounded better.

The summer after our senior year of high school, we rented out a pavilion in a park and put on our own show (in true DIY fashion, not that we'd have known what that meant. Self-help books?), as our last stand before going off to college. We provided a park bench and newspaper for Douglas to sit at and read onstage during instrumental passages. Many friends came, and we played a ton of our material, almost everything we knew.

Though Douglas and I would go to the same college, we decided not to continue the band, though we did make music together in our second year as the Figments.

I've always been extremely proud of what this band did. We wrote some very good songs and covered a lot of stylistic ground, from airy instrumentals to feedback-ridden rockers. What I remember most is the connection that Douglas and I discovered; it was an effortless, exciting collaboration to be a part of.