We all met at Arlington Heights High School in the early 80’s and became mutual friends. We hung out together as a group before we ever become a band, but musical aspirations were something that we all had in common from the start. By the summer of 1984, three of us worked for the same swimming pool company, Westside Pools, so our orbit became tight. Our first informal musical gathering was at Kenneth Webb’s parent’s house on the evening of Thanksgiving 1984. We jammed in his bedroom on instruments that he had acquired; a beginner drum set, a Casio keyboard, and an acoustic guitar. We were pretty terrible, even comical, yet had enough ambition as well as raw talent to form a real musical unit. That was our beginning. Kenneth had taken piano lessons as a youngster and was in Texas Boy’s Choir, while I was in school band playing drums and percussion. Steve Bond played acoustic guitar in High School alongside Chordbooks, while Robert Kramer was trained in classical violin. We could all read sheet-music and play things, so adapting as a band was pretty easy. Greg Stevens was kind of our ‘Owsley’ in the early days. He ran sound, recorded us, funded a few instrumental purchases, and managed us in a brotherly way. Anthony Rogers was our light and art director from the first year onwards. He hand-drew the fliers, made our logos, and ran the visuals. Louis Kramer, Robert’s brother, was a progressive and psychedelic rock touchstone for me early on. Robert grew up on “Import Section” Prog Rock due to Louis, but he was listening to tons of New Wave of British Metal stuff with Steve in High School. However, once Kenneth and I showed interest in obscure art-rock as a group, Robert started turning us onto records that his brother had turned him onto. Steve found THIS AMAZING BOOK, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock (First edition), and it then became an unspoken game of who could find the most obscure records. It became a serious job of finding gems like Fairport Convention, Quicksilver, Spirit, and Arthur Brown in the used sections of Record Exchange, VVV, or Half Price Books. Some of us would even travel to record shop on weekends! This older music heavily influenced us as a burgeoning band.

What set us apart from other local bands was that we could improvise well, right from the start. So we played original improv jams until we could write actual pieces. We composed about 10-12 originals throughout our days as a band. Our early music was very simple, three-chord “dirge rock” with psychedelic edges. ‘32’ was the first song that we wrote, ‘Rivers’ another early one. ‘Darkness’ was played in complete darkness for up to 30 minutes at a time and it would freak people out that we could play with no lights on. It eventually turned into a song called ‘Scrambling Notes Flying Through the Air.’ Robert inverted a blues scale to make a song that we played for quite a while. We covered a lot of early Pink Floyd throughout our short time as a band: ‘Interstellar Overdrive,’ ‘Astronomy Domine,’ ‘Lucifer Sam’, even giving ‘Paint Box’ an early try. We also covered a Gong tune which people though was an original, ‘Tried So Hard’. ‘Live And Let Live’ by Love was a live staple in the later years. We were ALL Soft Machine and Canterbury fanatics. Gong was our influential aspiration as a unit but we couldn’t play as well as them at first! ‘Moon In June’ reminds a lot of people of our old band house evidently, because that album was always on the turntable, though we never learned to play it. I started singing lead from behind the drums (like my hero, Robert Wyatt) until Steve started singing more. Kenneth was a Rick Wright disciple who literally played and sang just like him, so he could harmonize. He used pedals, delays, and reverb on his synthesizer to make it sound really unique. Steve utilized an Echoplex with a slide to get a really cosmic sounding guitar style. Robert fell in love with Alembic Bass guitars after purchasing one from a jazzman and used it exclusively during our tenure (later moving to California to actually work for the company). ESP had a second guitarist for about a year, our pal and early fan Sam Burkett. He inadvertently steered us in a serious Grateful Dead/Quicksilver direction for a spell, but then was in an auto accident and quit the band to rehab. We retained our Happy Trail’s revision of ‘Mona’ from that era.

Seventh Avenue is where we really took off, playing massive house parties at least once a month for over a year. Our rehearsals were completely public and the fanbase grew exponentially from these wild secret homespun gigs and all-night Happenings held in our communal band residences. Mike Watt heard our early demo tape when fIREHOSE stayed at our place in 1988. He told us all about Sonic Youth and thought that we sounded a lot like them. I didn’t hear the comparison until YEARS later when another friend brought it up with examples. Watt knew the score and told us that we weren’t really psychedelic in the classic sense: he thought that we were more aligned with modern “noise rock“. I didn’t get the comparison at all though. Watt, George Hurley, and Fromohio Crawford were on their ‘Little Big Tour’ when they invaded Seventh Avenue after their gig at Clearview. We spun music all night long on the turntable: Hurley was big into Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV at the time while Watt loved all of Steve’s Grand Funk albums. Originally, the Screaming Trees were also going to stay with us too but decided to go down the road at the last minute to Austin ahead of the next tour date. I smoked them out before they left town though and sent them away with one of our tapes, high and happy. Utilizing a home-grown mailing list of over 500 people, we kept under the local radar while building a large grass-roots following in our little underground. We rehearsed almost every night, definitely played every weekend, and it was usually all just one big everlasting party with our music and friends. We also started playing at other people’s houses at this point, first playing outside under the stars next to the Eagle Mountain Lake at a friend’s for about 150 people. Once, we were three songs in at party on Hulen Street when the cops raided the place for noise complaints and underage drinking. And yet we still were paid, as the cops made sure by taking money for us out of the keg fund jar! The Seventh Avenue days were carefree and very creative times. Our housemate Kurt Daniels would open for us with his music, sit in on jams, and record practically everything we were doing at the time, as Greg has since escaped our circle. Sam came back to open our shows with folk tunes, Geoffrey Toothe would read his wild-eyed poetry or tell a improvised story, Anthony would paint and run lights while we played. Although we only spent a year there, the long-gone 2800 square foot 1909 Wilson Bungalow was our mecca as friends, bandmates, and creative individuals.

We never tried to play the local bars until the woman who owned The Hop came to one of our parties at Seventh Avenue and wanted us to book us. While we didn’t say no, we didn’t get in touch with her either. You have to remember, The Hop was the ONLY game in town for Fort Worth bands in the early 1980s. And we didn’t want to play there because it was full of cover bands, which to us was artistic suicide. Then, somehow Randy McGuire talked us into playing at a bar on White Settlement Road called Garage Cafe. And so we played two full sets with a long encore to a completely packed crowd. My boss at the time sat in with us for two songs; he had played with Jerry Miller in San Francisco in the late ‘70s and loved what we were doing. He kept telling me that we were “the true spirit of Psychedelia” (‘ya hear that, Watt?) and should improvise on every song. Little did he know that we already were! After that triumph, we finally relented when we were asked to open for The Fort Worth Cats at the Hop. We played “Jump Into the Fire” for the first time on that wonderful night. I played Johnny’s drums which sounded magnificent. The entire show was captured on tape, the woody acoustics at the Hop making for an incredible recording. It was arguably our VERY BEST gig ever. By the time we actually started regularly playing local nightclubs in the final years of existence, our reputation for heavy psychedelic rock combined with Anthony’s liquid lightshow always brought out heady enthusiastic crowds. Early in 1989, make-shift alternative-rock clubs started opening up in town. MC Club, the first, which was a pick-up all ages warehouse venue run by some Deep Ellum types who thought they could pull a quick Dallas in Fort Worth. It closed after three months but was legendary for it’s shows, the surrounding chaos, and its cavernous sound (and lack of ventilation). We were one of the first bands to play the Axis Club, opening on the very first public night and gigged many times there. We once opened for Joe Biaza’s Universal Congress, which was a hoot playing alongside another total improvisational act from LA. ESP soon became very friendly with Hydrogen City, Michael Parker’s power-psych-pop band that grew from the ashes of League of None. We were regularly in each others’ business! They had their band van stolen at one of our parties, in fact. David Daniel later found it at The Hideaway with all of the equipment still intact and stole it back. There was also another friendly band around the block from us in the Magnolia District called Anonymous Dog that played Beefheart and Camper Van Beethoven. We all became kindred spirits. Everyone was digging each other, influencing and pushing things forward, and watching each other play the music of our lives. Those were amazing days.

In mid-1988 we found a rehearsal studio at 1450 West Allen. It was already tricked out with a massive sound-proof studio with an isolated mixing room, and a huge storage warehouse area. Our friends, The Sultans, invited us in to share the rent as well as fanbases, which worked out quite well for both groups. Which, of course, meant larger Happenings…raves…massive events. It was our home until we called it quits. With the Sultans, we held some absolutely legendary gigs. I even filled on drums with them when their drummer was out of town, getting to play Skippy’s Mistake and White Elephant, having an absolute blast in the process. Tom and James Finn filmed three full ESP shows at The Axis as we were their first paid band-clients for Videophile Magazine in mid ‘89. I remembered James from our mutual connections in the old FW punk scene…Ejectors, Hugh Beaumont Experience, Zero’s New Wave Lounge, etc. We formally met them in 1988 and immediately clicked with their film style. It was also around then that I was growing weary of psychedelia after hearing Mudhoney, seeing Jane’s Addiction, and Fugazi. I was still enjoying our shows but was personally moving into a heavier musical direction. Thus, I officially quit ESP in July 1989 after an argument with Steve regarding direction of the band and his grandiose vision of making us like Genesis. I told him I had no aspirations to be a “stage show like Broadway” and moved on for the moment. I was in Toadies literally two days later, as their original drummer Guy was moving to LA and the position was immediately mine. It was a whirlwind time with them, but within a year, I was out of Toadies right as their fame started to gather. ESP reunited as a band shortly after to play The Beat Farm in 1990 (closing out the night after Toadies, ironically) which served as our last official live gig. Robert moved to Santa Rosa California right after that to work for Alembic. Steve brought in Paul Lopez on bass and tried to continue the band for about 9 months, but it just didn’t work without the original elements. We split soon for good. I moved to Oregon in October 1991. Steve continued to record his ESP songs though for a while. He made some fantastic demos at Planet Dallas in 1997 of the leftover ESP material he composed, and I was behind the drum kit proudly. Then, he completely quit playing music to focus on his Swimming Pool company. Kenneth finished his Masters and started teaching. Robert went on to play with Tabula Rasa and then Gumshoe. I went on to Parasite Lost and then this solo thing I’ve been doing since 2002. About 12 years ago, ESP reunited quietly in Steve’s studio and played just to do it again. It was quite a decent evening of music and was videotaped. Then, Kenneth, Robert, and I jammed together in 2021 just for the hell of it and it still sounded like ESP.

Will we play together again? Who knows what tomorrow may bring????