The Velveteens

In the summer of 1994, The Shit had began to fall apart again. Greg Shook, former drummer with Loveslug & Freak Beans, invited Chris Rolling & I down to jam at his place, 143 King George Street, across from the Naval Academy’s main gate. We hauled our rigs down there & played a few originals. It was fun & sounded tight. We started rehearsing regularly, dubbing ourselves Triumphant Moped Gang. Eventually, we played our first show. We opened for The Shit and a reunited Loveslug at Towson University, in Baltimore, Md.

Once The Shit finally did give up & quit, Greg re-christened our band The Velveteens. Chris had introduced us to Jeff West, from the band East is East, who had a home studio in Burtonsville, Md. He did an amazing job recording & producing our first and only cassette release. We handmade a few hundred, rubber-stamped labels and gave them out around town. This would be the first six songs on the playlist below, which is in chronological order: East Infection, What the Hell?, Piranhas, Sunny Day, Love Cheese, and InStruMental. Of these, perhaps Piranhas & East Infection hold up the best for me.

The Velveteens became a micro-local Annapolis pop-punk band. The songs were short, simple love songs, with a bit of politics snuck in. We were not about melting faces off. Our gear was small & we didn’t use effects, except for a Big Muff pedal on the bass. We didn’t play out a ton. We played downtown Annapolis pubs like Reynolds Tavern, Acme & O’Briens & on our best nights we were a good soundtrack for meeting girls and drinking beer. We were working full-time, going to school, dating girls, possibly growing up? We wanted to be musical in a less hectic way. Audiences received us well, and we had a ton of fun playing.

This was 1995, the most promising period of the band. There was a famous party house on the corner of Maryland Avenue and Prince George called ‘The Pink House.’ We played a huge Christmas party there with The Geckos & eventually moved in. We branched out north to Baltimore, playing shows at Memory Lane and the original Ottobar. John Marburger, guitarist from the original Shit lineup, recorded an alternate version of Piranhas in Philadelphia. We booked a recording session with Charlie Jamison at his Baltimore studio, in the Copycat Building, where The Shit had recorded Give Up & Quit. These songs we were working on, at that time, come closest to what I feel we were trying to do. Alas, it was never released so we have these rough mixes: How Tense?, COPters, Insects, Out of the Can, Church Circle, Christmas Crumble, and Tuesday Night. Mike Lackey of The Shit was living in Baltimore at the time, and came by and laid some back-up vocals on the end of Insects, which is one of the standouts to me, as is Christmas Crumble.

In early 1997, Greg left the band to teach English in Seoul, Korea, and Dave Voyles from The Oranges took over on drums. We rehearsed in the basement of the Pink House, which led to some recording sessions in Baltimore with Adam Cooke. During the sessions, the tape machine broke, we never got overdubs done, so Love Cheese Too, Martina Hingus, Pee Tea, Summers Gone, www&SAOS, Cursed, Collision Specialist, & D.C. are again from an unreleased cassette mix.

Once the group disbanded in 1998, I moved to Nashville. In 2004, Greg and Chris came down to Tennessee to track a few new songs at MTSU’s Studio: Seems At Times, Sleepwalking, and Endless Rain. My recording instructor John Hill said Sleepwalking reminded him of The Grateful Dead, which horrified me at the time. We had mellowed. The last song on the playlist is a four track demo of The Bong Song, which was meant to be a Velveteens song but never got fully recorded.

Chris is now in Florida, Greg is in Massachusetts, I’m still in Nashville, and everyone is married. Maybe one day we can organize a reunion show and record a proper record.

Alvin Tucker
February 14, 2020

The Velveteens – Moderate to Severe (1993 – 2001)