Terry Ciarlino and I met in the parking lot of Tower Records on University and Mill in 1992. It was pretty late in the year, I think, but I can't remember for sure. It may have been August or September, too. Either way, it was a meeting that changed my life forever. He was a bit older than me and had experienced a much higher level of musical success than I had, but he wanted to start a band, and this waswhy we were meeting.
I liked him from the beginning, even though he was a bit odd. Let's be honest, he was a lot odd. He would come pick me up from work on Saturdays and we would go to my house and write songs. He was an awesome guitar player. He was even better, though, when he was mad. When he was mad about something, his guitar playing took on "amazing" status. The drive from my work to my house was always interesting. Ciarlino had a way of speeding up and then coasting, which drove me crazy. He'd been in a really bad car accident not too long before I met him, so I think he was a bit scared of getting in another accident.
We wrote a handful of songs together, though, in those first 5 or 6 months and decided to look for a drummer and a bass player to join us. At that time, my goal was to be a singer/guitar player. I didn't have a bass yet and even though I wanted to play bass, I thought it would be easier to play guitar and sing. We put an ad in the New Times and started talking to and jamming with a few people. We jammed with Dan Clark one day, which I thought was super cool. Dan had been, of course, in the Feederz, among others. Dan and Mary wanted to steal Terry away, but Ciarlino remained loyal to our cause. We also jammed with Tom Coffeen, who was one of the guitar players for Beats the Hell out of Me. Tom wanted to play drums at the time, but that didn't work out either.
Eventually we found the Boy (EJ Trbovic) and he was the drummer we had been looking for. His style fit what we wanted to do. We also found Geoff Saure to play bass. This was the original lineup of what would become Hillbilly Devilspeak. We practiced at Geoff's house. I don't think Geoff and Ciarlino really liked each other very much, so that didn't last long. Geoff took frequent breaks, so I would often pick up his bass and play the riffs we'd been working on. It was apparent that I should just take up the bass and we would be a 3 piece. From that point forward, which was December of 93, we took off.
By April 0f 1994, we were ready to start playing in front of people. Ciarlino, the Boy, and I practiced about 3 or 4 times a week. This was when I discovered that Ciarlino had never met a mirror he didn't like. If he could possibly see his reflection, he was entranced. Our practice room had an entire wall of floor to ceiling mirrors. This was really cool for our green and blue moodlights and our strobes, but Ciarlino was pretty focused on himself too. During one gig, I caught him looking in the small mirror that Mike Stewart had used to bounce the strobes lights off of for our lightning display. He had to work extra hard to find the right angle to see himself, but he pulled it off and didn't even care that the audience could see what he was doing.
Ciarlino was my friend. We disagreed, after awhile, at what the band should be doing and should be focused on. I know he was bummed when I wanted to add a second guitar player. We made a few recordings, though, and accomplished a lot in the almost six years we worked together. After he quit the band, we really didn't talk very much. It was hard, but we'd both been through bands breaking up before, so we knew not to hang onto something that wasn't good for either of us. He wasn't super fond of me keeping the band going, but I did it and we moved on. I saw him once after 1998 at a party. I wish I could have seen him again.
RIP Terry. You were a crazy motherfucker, but you were also cool as hell.
