I’m In. summer 2024

aftter years of suggesting to nate that they should record and release songs, nate agrees. Despite the distance and barriers and logistics and litter, they hire a drummer, reserve a studio, select songs from their catalogue, and begin to record their first album. tim and q., after racking their collective brains for weeks, choose the name kid clayton from a book tim’s reading about fats domino. the reference is to the 1930’s trumpet player kid clayton and an old jazz tune, “Good-bye kid clayton.” Nate, after watching an episode of “The sopranos” cites legal concerns and the band name is changed to Meteor truth.

Collaboration across 2,000 miles 2015-2025

Nate would text a riff. tim would email a fragment, a verse, an idea. some got developed. some got left. some are half-written. and some ended up songs. the catalogue of songs kept growing. tim would visit jonestown in zionsville. nate, why don’t you start playing bass? tim buys a bass and looks up some james jamerson riffs. together, nate and quentin and tim, aka the kid, the captain, and the moth man (Nickname still in trial phase), continue to write and develop their sound.

It started in a room, more of a closet

Nate and tim disagree on the room number. tim thinks it’s 101. nate says 102. or maybe it’s the other way around. either way, they were so low in standing as pledge brothers in the spring of 1997 at sigma phi epsilon, indiana university bloomington, that when it came time to pick rooms for the next year they had the last and second to last pick. tim was last. pretty sure about that. the room they selected, the only one left on the board, was 101 (0r 102), it’s basically a closet.

in the fall of 1998, somehow nate and tim fit an old, uncomfortable, water-logged, moldy brown couch and a stereo between their closets. and that’s where kid clayton began. listening to cd’s and hanging out. dave matthews, phish, grateful dead, the who, pearl jam, the beatles, stones...and on and on.

eventually, byanski and ganoli and dr. rosen and massurous would all join us and crowd in until someone would say, why are we all squeezed into this closet? and we would all go off into 104 or 108 and have more space, better couches, less mold, and a better stereo, but something would be lost…

There was a girl

two years later. it’s the spring of 2000. tim and nate are seniors, finishing up degrees in journalism and english, respectively. nate is a bartender at the crazy horse. tim has a journalism class with a girl from greenwood, indiana, nate’s hometown. somehow this comes up when nate is serving her, that she has a class with tim and thinks he has some relatively good writing chops. nate has some songs that need lyrics. so the next time tim and snavid and don wagner and hollywood come by the horse, nate pours the beer and tells tim about the conversation he had with the girl, the one who’s name has been forgotten, but who is likely out there somewhere, unaware of her good deed. nate stands behind the bar at the horse and asks tim, why don’t you write me a song?

the next day tim sits on the floor of his room on 9th street and writes “the salamander’s sorrow.” He shows it to nate a few days later. It’s good, nate says, it will work. it’s kind of a story. then he adds, salamander might be tough, though. That’s a lot of syllables. I might have to change it to spider. and thus a song writing partnership was born. (and twenty plus years, with some gaps, of two grown men haggling and squabbling over syllables.)

early songs: 1999-2002

tim lives in chicago. nate lives in indianapolis. tim is starting a teaching career. nate is finding his way in the restaurant industry. tim cruises down i-65 and they have various collaborative weekends, usually involving a live show, widespread, umphrey’s mcgee, etc. these early writings comprise about twenty songs, including two songs on meteor truth (ulysses and talent show). the logistical challenges and obstacles include: distance, technology, poor penmanship, tim’s allergies, and rampant urban litter.

While the ivy grew over the door: A period of dormancy 2003-2015

early 2000’s. nate started a restaurant in chicago. tim kept teaching and studied at night, earning a master’s degree. they were in the same city, but busy, busy, busy. then tim met a girl and moved to Ca. the great recession hit. teaching jobs in san diego were scarce. so tim flirted with becoming a physician assistant. 2010, tim’s career change crashed and burned (figuratively speaking), along with nate’s restaurant. tim went back to teaching, got married, and had three daughters. nate went back to indy and started tending bar.

the songs, along with the creative spark of rock and roll, the simple joy of listening to cd’s in room 101 (or 102), all of it lay buried like some dormant spore, waiting for the proper conditions to return.

in 2015, tim reached out over email, and the songwriting partnership resumed. It was around this time that nate met q., aka quentin, aka the captain, and the two started jamming and writing songs, songs that needed lyrics, lyrics with a very specific number of syllables that tim kept exceeding, perhaps sometimes on purpose…