"So, we're getting the band together?"

Willy Bean, Aaron Bean and I were sitting around a table at the 66 Diner. It was February 1st, 2003--my 31st birthday--and we were all together to make this declaration. It's not like we cut our wrists and mingled our blood, but we made a tentative decision to take this band thing forward. Willy would play guitar, Aaron was the bassist, and I would start playing drums again.

"Hey Old Bean/It's good to see you my friend/Really been way too long, and I/Can't wait to do this again"

The fight over the name didn't take too long. While Willy was in favor of something else, Aaron and I were rather steadfast about Old Beans. After a few weeks, Willy brought in a song called "Old Beans" as an admission that, in fact, we were Old Beans. The name comes from British slang. An old bean is a friend, so, basically, the name means "Friends." Not really in the TV coffee house sense, but because the three of us have known each other since college (over ten years ago). This band is the fruition of our friendship.

It wasn't easy to make the transition to being in a band. Aaron had to learn how to play bass. I had to learn how to play drums again (it'd been over ten years since I'd been in "fighting shape," as I like to call it). Willy, who almost got a degree in Percussion Performance, had to embrace his inner guitarist. We had occasional false starts, but once we all felt reasonably good about playing our chosen instruments, the music began to form.

"When we get together/We talk of good times/What you doing/What's up with your life/I dig your haircut/That sure looks real neat/Now it's your turn/Won't you validate me?"

In the mid-90s, Aaron and I headed a magazine called Lies. Willy wrote for us, chronicling his time at the rock n' roll bars of Albuquerque. Back then, he had blue hair, then green hair, then less hair. Bukowski-like actions, whiskey and a failed first marriage fueled a dark time for Willy Bean. Aaron and I lived in a house that held, at times, seven or more people in various configurations. Cheap rent, too many people and personalities, too much drinking and drugs, but there was an overriding drive to make sense out of this world.

Eventually, it all fell apart. It had to. You can't sustain a long drive with no fuel in the tank.

"Worked the straight jobs/Worked the queer ones too/Learned everything/They never taught you in school/Met the right people/Shook the right hands/Only to find out/They don't give a goddamn"

Collectively, we are a cesspool of pop culture. We have listened to thousands of albums of music. We have seen thousands of movies. Trying to find a linear thread to Old Beans is almost hopeless (although there are clues, of course). We've taken so many roads and paths to where we are, it's kind of like circling the whole map and throwing up your hands.

Because of this, in the last six months or so, we've written nine plus songs. And they can be fit neatly into about five genres of rock n' roll. The only thing we know for sure is they are all Old Bean songs. We didn't get together to join a certain scene or project a certain sound. We got together to make what the three of us could call our music. We couldn't play any one of these songs nine times with different lyrics, we need them all to show what Old Beans is all about.

"Drink a few beers/Look to the skies/Thought we'd be dead/By age 25/We should be famous/By now it's not right/Show us a chapter of the club and we'll fight"

Two years ago this week, a good friend of ours died from a heroin overdose. When Willy got to our house that day (he had to finish work after I called and told him the news--I have no idea how he did that), we hugged and cried. When we could speak again, Willy said, "I thought it'd be one of us." Of all the friends in our circle, the three of us always thought we'd never make it out of our 20s alive. Old Beans is the reason we're gonna make it through our 30s.

"Uppers and downers/Side to side/Took lots of drugs/And I don't know why/Can't believe/All the things that I've seen/Nothing left/But to be an Old Bean"

Halloween Night, 2003. Nine months after our declaration of intent, Old Beans played for an audience of more than two for the first time. A house party full of costumed people drinking keg beer and having a great time. I heard Willy Bean pop his guitar for feedback to start "Band Geek," and then...

...we crashed to the end of "Old Beans." It's hard to describe the moment sometimes. There will be many more moments like this, of course. But that first moment was great, and I've been buzzing from it since it happened. We have a gig next week at a downtown bar. Our first gig for pay. But it's not about making money or getting famous or getting laid (although a little bit of all of those would be nice), it's about the moments of being Old Beans. It's about being in a band of friends who love each other and what we're doing together. Everything on top of that is gravy.

"Hey Old Bean! We got ourselves a rock band!"

Old Beans is Willy Bean, Aaron Bean and Matt Bean. All quotes are from "Old Beans" by Old Beans.