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Yes, I know what you're thinking...how do you get to be as rad as us?...lots of practice. But we weren't always this awesome.
Here's how it started.
Back in the day, sometime around Aug. 2001, I (Dustin) lived with my friend Branden. We decided we should start a band.
So one day he came home from school with none other than Mr. Zack Valvano. When I saw Zack, I immediately thought, what
a man......I mean, anyways. Zack let Branden borrow a bass and he played through a 10 watt practice amp. It was also the
first time he picked up bass. Zack played on my drums, and he wired up the speakers on my guitar cab for me. To this day
he still remains the band's electronic tech. We had our first practice on Branden's deck and his mom came out and offered
us meat balls. I played mostly drums before this band and had never sang in a band. So I had to learn.....I still have to
learn. The 2nd practice was in his garage, cause we were to loud on the deck. From there we wrote "Run Away" and
it is still played to this day. We then had our first show at a halloween party on Branden's deck, we played mostly covers
and it was so cold (30 degrees max) I couldn't feel my hands to play. Also, my guitar kept going out of tune because of the
coldness. I think we went by the name of Cing Cong.
Time went on, Branden seemed to loose interest in the band. Zack and I wanted someone more committed. The only person
I could think of that played bass and liked punk rock was AJ Young. I was in a band with AJ before this but he was in it only
a week before I quit. So around April 2002 we wanted to see what AJ could offer the band. And what he offered was pure sexiness,
and that's just what we were looking for. The first practice we had with AJ, he had his sister drop him off, and he got out
of the car with only a bass.... no amp. We didn't have anything for him to use so he just sat there and listened to us play.
But the next weekend he bought a bass amp. Then we wrote some songs, bought some recording equipment and recorded our first
demo, with AJ still fresh in the band. We decided to buy our own recording gear because we didn't want to pay a lot of money
to have someone record us just one time. Instead, we wanted to pay a lot of money, buy our own stuff and record us anytime.
I worked at guitar center at the time so I got a lot of recording tips from people that worked there. I think I spent about
3 grand on all the recording gear. Now I know why studios charge so much. Not just because the gear is so expensive but
because recording engineers know a lot about what they are doing.
We started playing some party shows and then came our first public show, that's right our first non-party show at the
Aurora fire-cracker festival.....oh yea. It was a battle of the bands and we got last place. We were the only punk band
there though. By the way, at this time we changed our name to A Buck Short. But a few months later we found out the name
was already taken. So we were nameless for about a month. But at work one day (a sexy man by the name of) Gee and I were
cracking SNL jokes back and forth. And one I brought up was an old one with Dan Akroid, were he says the phrase "it
says on the back of the package, invisible man, not for blind kids." I was like, that's it! We started playing at the
Void (Cincinnati's punk club) we had more of our crowd there. We've had a lot of fun at the void since the first one, where
we loaded all of our gear in the back of Josh's Suburban, then loaded all of our friends in there to. One of the most memorable
shows there for me was the one were my guitar was making stupid noise the entire show. So on the last song I broke it. People
were going crazy, some kid with an afro ran up on stage kicked the guitar then just ran off, it was great. Then we found
the Y teen center, which was cool because all of our friends that couldn't make it to Cincinnati could make it to the Y.
Now the Y is under new management and you have to walk on nails to get a show. That kind of sucks, nobody ever goes to the
Y unless their is a show there. TOMMY ROCKED!!!
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About this time, it is spring of 2003. I've wanted to get a 2nd guitarist for sometime now. But we had trouble finding one.
Then we found the glorious Trevor Baxter. The first time I went over to his house I saw him nude. That's how I knew he was
the one. The new NFBK 2nd guitarist. Ladies, if you are wondering.....does Trevor look as good without his clothing as he
does with them on??? Well the answer is yes. It didn't take long for Trevor to get the songs down. That tells me he is
either a fast learner, or our songs are extremely simple and suck. It seemed like he had been in it since day one. Trevor
was the momentum of the band. At practice when we all wanted to sit around and be lazy and lethargic, he was the one that
said, lets get up and practice. Everyone in the band has their part, I wouldn't want to do it without Zack, AJ, or Trevor.
If somebody had to take their place it just wouldn't be Not For Blind Kids.(OK, so I lied, but it wasn't like we just wrote
Trevor off. It was a shock to all of us, and it took us a while to adjust to not having him around.) So many bands are to
concerned about "making it" we are more concerned about having fun, and being in a band with our best friends.
We've met a lot of cool people along the way and have shared the stage with bands like Well Fed, The Random Heroes, Deceiving
Ralph, Tom Foolery and the Mistakes, Curbsquirrels, No Heroes Here, The Holiday, and many others but I can't think of their
names. Not to mention all the stupid metal and emo bands. The void was so much fun. I hope it reopens soon. After the
void shut down we went in to record Agents From Galaxy X. Which was recorded in about a month. It was a lot of fun recording
that album. We played the fire-cracker festival again a year later and won 2nd place. We played a bunch of shows over the
summer and when winter came we started writing new songs.
Recording for the next album came around February 2004 and took way longer than we expected. We were almost finished
with recording and Trevor decided to quit the band around the beginning of summer. It was the biggest shock the band had
ever taken. He just needed to go his own way. With recording not finished and our recording area gone (Trevor's house) we
had to take what we had finished from recording and mix it down. So we released an EP instead of a full length CD. Our practice
space was gone as well, we were out of a practice space for a long time until AJ talked his mom into letting us practice in
his basement. She couldn't take much of that and eventually gave us the boot. So, we were again out of practice space.
Then, AJ talked to his friends at the local skate shop, and they let us practice there. If you were wondering why we sucked
so bad last summer, that's why, lack of practice.
Our live shows didn't sound as full as we wanted, and we didn't have any energy on stage anymore. So we decided we wanted
to get another second guitarist to fill in the gaps. AJ knew someone who played guitar and was into punk rock. I still don't
know this dudes last name, I'll still call him Chad Kersey. We hung out with Chad before a show one day, he seemed cool so
we let in. I'm tired and hungry now. I'll tell you more when I know more.
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