History

 

 

The Tea Club has it’s beginnings in Deptford, New Jersey in the late 1990′s, where Patrick McGowan, then a young teenager, began to teach himself guitar. Growing up in a family where music was so incredibly important, it was inevitable; Patrick’s father was himself an accomplished guitarist and songwriter, and had retired from pursuing a professional career in music in the 1980′s to raise his family. When he began to see Patrick’s growing interest in music, he decided to teach him the basics of playing the guitar. He also introduced him to the music that had inspired his own songwriting as a teenager, the progressive rock of the 1970′s. Seeing how quickly Patrick took to both, he encouraged him to make his own music. Before long, Patrick had begun to write his own songs, much in the vain of early King Crimson and YES. Though a natural musician, Patrick had difficulty playing some standard chords, particularly when it came to “bar chords”, due to the abnormal shape of his fingers. So he began to create his own guitar chords. The songs that he began to write as a result became more and more experimental, and his curiosity for bizarre chords grew. Friends and family were always surprised when hearing Patrick play, considering his young age and the complexity of his songs.

Inevitably, Patrick grew tired of playing guitar by himself, so he began to search for other like-minded musicians to play music with. After putting out several “Musicians Wanted” ads to disappointing results, he started to play with his friends around him. One of them was Jason Barsotti, a long-time friend and a budding drummer who lived in the same apartment complex. Young Jason and Patrick had jammed in local grunge bands together, but drifted apart when Jason graduated high school and began attending college and working a full time job. But around the Summer of 2001, he showed up at Patrick’s apartment door with a new desire to play music seriously. Jason, a metal head, had begun to listen to and appreciate the progressive rock bands that Patrick had always listened to as a youth, and wanted to play drums to Patrick’s songs.

This began a period of long writing sessions at the only place they could find where they could play loud; Patrick’s grandmother’s garage. Patrick worked closely with Jason and created a handful of instrumental guitar/drum pieces. But Patrick soon realized that a third member would be needed, to bring melody and color to their songs.

Enter Dan McGowan, Patrick’s brother, then 15 years old and an aspiring artist (who also casually played guitar and bass). At the same time as Dan was beginning to grow frustrated with the solitude of pursuing a career in the art world, he was also falling head-over-heels in love with the music of Sunny Day Real Estate, taking particular notice of the bass guitar work in the band. Picking up the bass again with a new seriousness, Dan expressed interest to Pat in playing in their band. So the three began to turn Patrick’s guitar pieces into fully fledged rock songs, and it wasn’t long before they had worked out a full set list of songs (including an early instrumental version of “The Moon”, which then featured Dan on Keyboards, and would later appear on The Tea Club’s debut album).

At this time, Patrick had begun to write melodies and lyrics, but didn’t feel that he had the vocal ability or confidence to be a “singer” in the band. So Dan volunteered to sing the songs. However, after hearing recordings of his singing on 4 Track demos he and Pat had made, Dan was so embarrassed by the sound that he swore never to listen to the demos again and refused to sing lead vocals in the band. Enter JP Jenson, a friend of Patrick’s from the church he was then attending. Patrick and Dan had both heard JP singing along to songs on the radio, and knew that he had the skill and the confidence. Thus, they recruited him, against his will, to sing in the band. Now that they had a complete line-up, they set up their first show under the name of “The Menacing Penguins”. JP, however, refused to sing in the band if this was to be their official band name. So Patrick invented the name “Despair and the Smiling Machine” and changed the bill before their first gig. Their first performance was on July 13th, 2002 and was deemed a success, despite some tuning issues. (In the audience was actually a young Kyle Minnick, then a tender 13 years old.)

 

Over the summer of 2002, Despair and the Smiling Machine played a handful of shows, while Patrick and Dan began to hone their song writing. Their newest batch of songs featured both brothers playing guitar, with Dan becoming more creatively involved as Patrick started to focus more and more on the vocal aspect of the band, to the point where a new song in their set, called “Windmirror”, featured Patrick singing lead vocals. It began to become apparent that if Patrick was the one writing the lyrics and in a very autobiographical way, it would only be right for him to sing them as well, despite his insecurities. Despair and the Smiling Machine performed their last show on September 14th, 2002 at Full Circle Records, a record store and a favorite haunt of band that featured local music acts. The gig featured Patrick singing “Windmirror” as well as Dan singing lead on a ballad called “Headlights”. Soon after the gig, a financial disagreement, as well as Patrick and Dan’s desire to sing their songs, resulted in JP being ejected from the band. It was time to start over.

It was agreed that Patrick would be the main singer and guitarist. Jason would continue on drums. Dan would switch up playing bass and guitar, and sing harmonies. And on the songs that both Patrick and Dan played guitar on, they turned to Jim Berger, Dan’s comic book collaborator and best friend since grade school. Though he had no previous experience playing a musical instrument, Jim was a huge fan of Despair and the Smiling Machine and was very eager to be a part of the band. With the new line-up, they decided to discard most of their old material and choose a new name. After many band disputes, Jason infamously said “I think we all have a book of thoughts on what the name should be,” which struck a chord with everyone in the band, and thus, they decided on the name “Book Of Thoughts”.

 

The next step was to professionally record a demo of their music. Managing to gather enough money between them, they turned to Kevin Stehm, who recorded bands in the basement of his church where he had put together a studio (called Godsong Studios). A highly stressful experience, the 5 song disc was recorded in two days, most of the performances done in one or two takes under the time restraints. Dan drew up artwork for the CD, and they made up copies to sell at shows and use in their press kit. Book Of Thoughts only played a total of 3 shows when creative tensions began to surface between Jay and the brothers. It was around this time that Patrick and Dan began to take particular notice of the drumming skills of their friend from church, 14 year old Kyle Minnick, who was also Book Of Thoughts’ number one fan. Kyle played drums with his brother Justin, a singer and guitarist. The two pairs of brothers would occasionally jam together. It wasn’t until Kyle and Justin showed the McGowans a song they had written together that Patrick and Dan saw the shocking technical and creative skill that the young drummer was already demonstrating. The jams led to the four forming a side project, called “A Dying World” (a Sunny Day Real Estate reference, as all four shared a mutual love of the band). After performing one show together, the chemistry between Patrick, Dan, and Kyle became obvious. Amongst the personal and musical conflicts, Pat decided to break up Book Of Thoughts and A Dying World and start a brand new band with Kyle as the drummer.

 

By October of 2003, it was, again, time to start over. The guys would write all new songs together, neglecting all of the Book Of Thoughts material (except for two works in progress called “Mr. Shlappy” and “IceClock”). This time around it would be Dan mainly on guitar and occasionally singing lead, while Jim would do the majority of the bass guitar writing and playing. Patrick would remain on vocals and guitar, with Kyle on drums. Immediately the four clicked. Kyle’s drumming provided the perfect energy for Patrick and Dan’s intense and often dramatic songwriting. The excitement of finding like-minded musicians and personalities in each other caused a creative burst that lasted the entire Autumn, and resulted in the band improvising for hours on end, and writing an entire set’s worth of songs. This included a 10 minute epic called “General Winter’s Boney Skull”, the first shamelessly prog rock song that Patrick had ever written, and the Dan original “Little Tripper”, a bizarre pop song that had more in common with early Beatles than YES and featured Patrick on drums. Kyle’s refusal to play drums on a song unless it undoubtedly improved it in his own opinion resulted in Patrick and Dan’s acoustic songs, such as “Hammer-Heads”, being used. Things were coming along better than they could have expected, and anything seemed possible.

 

Patrick’s voice was becoming a focal point. He was discouraged by some negative feedback about his singing on the Book of Thoughts demo, stemming from his strained and intensely raw performance, and his absolute refusal to use any kind of pitch correction or auto-tuning on his voice. To gain more control over his singing, Patrick started taking vocal lessons from Steve Childs, a local music teacher who taught guitar, bass, and drum lessons as well. He only took a few basic lessons, but the results were immediate. Steve was also in the process of installing recording equipment in his music studio, and offered to record Patrick’s band once everything was up and running.

The four were excited to play their material live, but knew that this would involve the inevitable and painful task of naming the band. The origins of the name “The Tea Club” are a bit of a mystery. When asked, any member of the band will give a different answer. Patrick responded, when being interviewed on the internet radio station “Sun-E Radio”, by saying that they took their name from the group of slaves who built the underground railroad system during the Civil War and called themselves “The Tea Club”. Other explanations from band members have claimed that the name comes from a series of science fiction paperbacks sold exclusively in adult novelty stores, a tarot card found in the woods, and a local schizophrenic man who grew up in the McGowan’s neighborhood. “I have no idea what the hell it means,” once stated Dan McGowan, who only says that Patrick came up with it and it was the one name they could all agree on.

 

 

With their new name decided, The Tea Club performed their first show in an abandoned peach factory to a group of freshman high schoolers who were more interested in Weezer than in experimental rock. Their second show was more successful, played at a church with a significantly larger audience, where Dan infamously cut open his finger playing and bled on their equipment, and Patrick sported a white t-shirt on which he had written “THE TEA CLUB SUCKS”. The diverse crowd was impressed; the teenagers compared their sound to Nirvana and Radiohead, while their parents likened them to early Genesis.

Their next show required them to have a professional recording of their music, so they recorded two songs with the sound engineer from Kyle’s church, Bob Oudyk. They quickly recorded a reworked version of “The Moon” and an acoustic instrumental called “Silos” in time to play the show. This found them at Club 218 in Philadelphia, where they played two songs as an audition for Capitol Manangement. The company president, Robert Metzgar, was there for the audition and was impressed by their originality, saying that they had “the new sounds of modern electric rock” and telling them to send him their full press kit when it was finished.

 

New material continued to pour from them, and as they waited for Steve Childs to complete his recording studio, they set about recording another demo. They returned to Kevin Stehm’s studio, again on a very limited budget. They recorded three songs: two brand new ones, “Zebra” and “Zero Wave” as well as “Mr. Shlappy”. Due to the basement studio being flooded halfway through the recording process, Kevin finished the songs at his own home studio. He was instantly impressed by the quality of Patrick’s voice, and was very encouraging of the band, even mastering the demo for free. The tracks sounded great, and after discovering the wonders of MySpace, anyone could hear them. They started to build a local following who admired their young age and musical skill but also their accessible melodies. Along with other home recordings, they put the songs on a cd, nicknamed The Stehm-O, and gave them out at shows and sent them to labels. One track, “Zebra”, was even included on a compilation cd called Tables Will Turn # 8 put out by Velvet Blue Records. Live, however, things were a little more alienating towards pop music fans. Inspired by 70′s King Crimson, the four had begun to introduce extended improvisations into their set, which started off strong and ended incoherently, with their audience confused.

 

Luckily, a nearby cafe called Eleven East Cafe, which was also a book and antique shop, had local bands playing shows in their basement. The Tea Club found out and started to book shows. Since Eleven East was so close to a university, college age kids frequented the shop and took a liking to The Tea Club. Their improvs became more and more violent, turning into Sonic Youth -like noise jams, with guitars breaking, band members bleeding, and audience members invited up to take part in the moment. They referred to themselves as “the greatest punk band in the world AND the worst prog band in the world”. The aggression wasn’t exclusive to their gigs though. When Steve Childs was at last ready to record them, the result was Love Your Enemy, their first completely professionally recorded EP which was recorded from the end of 2004 to May of 2005. The two first tracks, “DYLOS” and “Werewolves”, were obviously a heavier Tea Club, and the lyrics had become much darker and deeply personal. In turn, their shows ran high with emotion, and along with their improvising, were very much an experience, but extremely draining to the band.

They discussed changing things up to make it easier on themselves. After a particularly violent performance, “DYLOS” had to be dropped. They would keep some of the heavier and more emotional songs, but would take their cue from the 80′s “Discipline”-era King Crimson and intersperse them with songs that were more concise, and included less vocals. They put together enough money to purchase a digital 24 track recorder, and made their own recordings of brand new songs in this style. The tracks featured some of the best performances they had ever given and the quality was even better than they hoped for. They took their time and experimented with different recording techniques, layered acoustic guitars and vocal harmonies, and even had Patrick play a second drum set on some songs. However, upon mastering the tracks and uploading them onto their computer, the main power went out, and all of the tracks were lost in a digital ghostland. Only two roughly mixed songs were saved; “Showertime Gorilla” (an instrumental much in the vain of 80′s King Crimson) and a song called “The Power To Freeze Anything”. Frustrated, the band decided to sell the digital 24 tracker instead of re-recording, and started to save up for an analog 8 track. Patrick swore to never record with a digital machine again. Meanwhile, as they were working on tightening their songs, Jim’s improvising was becoming out of control, and his written parts more and more complex. The rest of the band felt that it was making the rhythm section sound incoherent. Thus, at the end of 2005, Jim was asked to leave the band.

Instead of trying to find a replacement for Jim, they became a trio. Patrick expressed interest in writing bass parts, so he became the bassist/singer, while Dan was left as the sole guitarist. Since the double guitar playing of Patrick and Dan was so important to their sound, they chose to abandon the old songs and write new ones that they could play as a three-piece. Dan started to experiment with guitar effects like delay to fill the sound gap left by Patrick’s guitar. The trio entered a new period of intense writing, and immediately came out with a half instrumental song called “Big Al”. They dug up their old 4 track tape recorder and quickly recorded it and put it up on their MySpace. Despite the questionable sound quality, the song attracted the attention of Tim Gilles. Tim, a producer/engineer whose credits include New Jersey emo-heroes Thursday and Taking Back Sunday, sent the band an e-mail, cryptically stating that he was interested in “destroying their chances of commercial success” and gave them a phone number to call. Curious, Patrick called the number and talked to Tim. Tim was also a fan of the progressive rock of the 70′s and heard it’s influence in The Tea Club’s music. He was impressed with the songs on their MySpace and wanted to hear more. The band sent him a copy of a new EP they had just recorded using only their 4 track recorder called Clouded Gloomy Beloved. Upon hearing this, Tim asked the band if they wanted to come to his studio in Jersey City, called Big Blue Meenie, to record some demos so he could hear how the band played. Obviously excited, they said yes.

The band recorded demo versions of 22 songs. Tim then offered to record what would become General Winter’s Secret Museum, The Tea Club’s first full length album, and picked 12 of the 22 demos to record for the album sessions. The recording began in the late summer of 2006. Although The Tea Club had become a trio when playing live, during the album sessions, it became apparent that the older songs that had been written with two guitars had a fuller and more complete sound than those that were written as the trio. Thus, Patrick went back and wrote new guitar parts for all the songs that he only played bass on. Writing these new parts, along with rewriting some of the bass lines originally played by Jim Berger, made for a highly stressful experience for Patrick. The album sessions were completed in early 2007, and as the band waited for the album to be mixed, they began to rehearse the songs from the album. They decided the best thing would be to seek out a replacement bassist so that Patrick could return to playing guitar live. Kyle suggested the band try out his high school friend Tom Facchine, a long time fan of The Tea Club, who played bass in another local New Jersey band. Over the summer of 2007, The Tea Club was able to play nearly all of their past repertoire with Tom on bass, and most notably played shows in the backyard of music enthusiast and engineer Jim “Cool Jim” Collotti, who was a fan of the band since seeing them perform in their Eleven East Cafe days.

 

By the Fall of 2007, Tom Facchine left New Jersey to attend school in upstate New York, leaving The Tea Club as a trio once again. At the same time, unforeseen events at Big Blue Meenie Studios caused the mixing of The Tea Club’s album to be pushed back. Not being able to promote their album or play their old songs, the band began to put together new material, once again written as a trio. By Halloween they came up with four complete new songs that they felt represented the new direction of the band, this time Patrick and Dan splitting the bass and guitar duties evenly. They debuted the new material at the second annual Chuktoberfest in New Jersey, an Autumn celebration featuring live original bands. This was also the debut performance of antimatterfox, the band that original bassist Jim Berger had gone on to co-found. (Antimatterfox’s set at the show included Patrick on drums and Dan playing bass.) They decided to record the four songs as an EP. Kyle suggested the band record at American Diamond Studios in Philadelphia. American Diamond was a studio run by producer and engineer Bill Moriarty (known for his work with Man Man and Dr. Dog). Patrick, Dan, and Kyle went to American Diamond in late November and recorded what became known as the Fall EP with Bill Moriarity in only two days. They continued to perform live as the trio, but problems began to arise again when the band wanted to play songs from their upcoming full length album and found difficulty in trying to re-create them live. Auditions for a new bass player were held, but to luke-warm results.

 

At the end of the Winter of 2008, Patrick had begun talking again to Jason Barsotti, the drummer of Book Of Thoughts. Patrick invited Jason to a Tea Club show, where he watched the band bravely attempt trio versions of “Big Al” and “Werewolves”. Seeing that the band was having trouble finding a suitable bassist, he offered to take on the bass duties himself. Jason had little experience playing the bass, but he expressed enough passion and interest in the band to convince them to let him try out. Patrick took to teaching Jason the basslines to the songs, and before long The Tea Club were a performing four-piece again. By this time, Tim had finished mixing all the songs The Tea Club recorded for their album. The Tea Club and their producer agreed at the start of the recording that they didn’t want to make an album that was more than 50 minutes long, so keeping true to their original idea, 3 of the 12 tracks were to be cut. These included the title track “General Winter”, which was cut due to time-constraints, and a new version of “Zero Wave”. The final song, an instrumental guitar duet for Patrick and Dan called “An Electronic Tribute To Sean”, didn’t make it onto the album after the recorded tracks for the song were inexplicably lost, never to be recovered, to the dismay of the band and to their producer Tim Gilles, who had grown a particular fondness for the song. Patrick, Dan, and Kyle came up with the song order for the album, and Patrick came up with a title, General Winter’s Secret Museum. Tim called upon the talents of Alan Douches to master the album, with Tim assisting. General Winter’s Secret Museum was independently released by The Tea Club in July of 2008. The artwork for the album consists of drawings provided by Patrick and Dan, and the CD layout and design was done by Jonathan Concepcion of the band antimatterfox. The album cover is a painting done by Kendra DeSimone, a South Jersey-based artist and longtime girlfriend of Dan McGowan.

 

The band decided to stop promoting the Fall EP, as all four songs would eventually be rearranged and featured on the second album, and focused all their energy into rehearsing and promoting General Winter’s Secret Museum. Jay, who had began to also take on the role of band manager as well as bassist, set up a Summer tour of the Northeast that included a filmed in-studio performance of “Werewolves” on Philadelphia’s popular Radio 104.5 radio station.

When The Tea Club had wrapped up their northeast tour, Jason made the decision to quit the band to be at the side of his wife, who was expecting a baby girl. Thus The Tea Club again moved on as trio. They decided to take time off from performing live to work on new material. They had started jamming with new bassists when Kyle offered the idea of trying out Becky Osenenko. Becky had played guitar and sang in several New Jersey-based punk/hardcore bands, and had played on the same bill as The Tea Club in two seperate bands. She had begun dating Kyle when Jason Barsotti was still playing bass in the band, and had become an avid fan of the band’s music, particularly the moody Fall EP. Though she had no prior experience to playing bass, she worked closely with Kyle and learned the bass line to the Tea Club song “He Is Like A Spider”. They set up to play the song with Patrick and Dan, whom afterwards were impressed, and Becky was invited to join the band.

 

Excited to have a solid line-up and determined to focus all their efforts into promoting their debut album and writing new music for their second, Patrick, Dan, Kyle, and Becky decided to rent out a large house in South Jersey and move into together. They set up a practice space in the attic of the house and spent the Fall of ’08 and Winter of ’09 writing the songs that would appear on their second album. They relentlessly promoted General Winter’s Secret Museum, which immediately gained positive reviews with the Progressive Rock audience. Micah ‘Kain’ Rollins, a reviewer on the popular Prog rock site ProgArchives.com, discovered the band and gave General Winter’s Secret Museum a glowing review, calling The Tea Club “one of the few bands in existance today who can truly say that they are completely original” and that their album “should not be overlooked by any true progressive rock fan.” Jerry Lucky (author of The Progressive Rock Files) called the album “a major accomplishment”, and conducted an interview with the band for his website, JerryLucky.com. More encouraging reviews on ProgArchives.com led to a ProgArchives exclusive interview which was done by James Russell; a music reviewer who strictly reviews Italian Prog Rock, but who was so impressed by The Tea Club that he gave them a spotlight on his Music Blog. More reviews from the Progressive Rock scene, including ones from Organ magazine, Sea Of Tranquility, and Progression Magazine, praised the band for their originality and song-writing abilities, despite their young age.

It was clear that the band’s progressive rock influence was helping them reach an appreciative and responsive audience, even overseas. By the Spring of ’09, they began working with several record labels and retailers to distribute their debut album in Europe, including Musea Records (France), Just For Kicks (Germany), and MP Records (Italy). Live, The Tea Club put together a solid set, debuting brand new songs like “Simon Magus” and the epic “Astro”, and playing songs from the Fall EP as well as highlights from General Winter’s Secret Museum. In April they were invited to perform a live radio session with Dr. Cosmo on Princeton 103.3 WPRB, where Patrick and Dan did a rare performance of “An Electronic Tribute To Sean”.

In August of 2009, with 10 complete new songs, The Tea Club returned to Big Blue Meenie Studios to record the follow-up to General Winter’s Secret Museum, again with the invaluable Tim Gilles as producer. The songs that were recorded included new versions of the four songs previously recorded for the Fall EP, as well as “Simon Magus” and the 12 minute-plus “Astro”. To expand upon the keyboards hinted at on their debut, they enlisted the help of keyboard wizard Tom Brislin, whose considerable credits include touring with progressive rock legends Yes, Camel, The Syn, and Renaissance. The Tea Club released their second album, “Rabbit”, on October 9th 2010.

The band has gone through several line-up changes following the release of Rabbit. Founding member Kyle Minnick left the band, leaving The Tea Club to seek a new drummer. They found him in Joe Rizzolo, a remarkable drummer from New Jersey who the band met through mutual friends at Big Blue Meenie Studios. Becky Osenenko, who had played the piano since the age of 9, had begun playing keyboards in addition to the bass at live shows. Upon realizing how much the keyboards added to the band’s sound, Becky switched to playing keyboards full-time. Another old friend, Charles Batdorf, took over the bass duties. Original member Jim Berger rejoined the group, this time playing a third guitar instead of the bass.

With their current line-up complete, The Tea Club has played several highbrow shows along the East Coast, including ProgDay, the world’s longest running progressive music festival. They have also performed at the legendary Stone Pony, NJ Proghouse, and Philadelphia’s trendy Kung Fu Necktie, with such acclaimed modern progressive rock bands as District 97, The Watch, and members of Echolyn and IZZ. Glowing reviews and articles about the band have been published in Philadelphia magazines such as Metro, JUMP, and Origivation.

On November 5th, 2011, The Tea Club entered Big Blue Meenie Studios once again to record demos for their upcoming third album, recording almost 80 minutes of new material. Shortly after this, Jim Berger quit the band, leaving the band as a 5 piece.

The Tea Club is currently finishing writing material for their 3rd as-of-yet-untitled album, and are planning to begin recording in early 2012.”

 

Tony Davis