The Agency

I've been thinking about the years I spent trying to play music for a living and how fast those 10 years flew by. After a pretty terrible semester of college in the fall of 1994, I moved back to Miami from Virginia in hopes to join a band. I arrived in Miami July 5th, 1995 and by October I was in the Agency. I am in school with kids that are the age I was in this picture! EEK! Klaus, Mike and I really grew up together, and they mean more to me now as friends than I ever realized they would. This picture is from one of my first shows in November 1995. We were all really into Rush and the Police and punk music, so that's what we tried to write. It took another year and a half to finally record our first CD, but we were sick of all the songs by the time it came out. The release of Rock to the Apocalypse, named after something our producer Jeremy Dubois used to say, really managed to help our following. If you've heard this CD, you may be shocked to know that people still send me emails to tell me how much those songs mean to them. To me, it means I can't hit skip on my IPOD fast enough. I guess I must like it a little or it wouldn't be on my IPOD. The CD release party for this show allowed me to witness one of the most hilariously memorable events in my life. My dad and my step mom came to the show, and like the great dad my dad is, he wanted to stand up front with Cory. As soon as we started, a mosh pit erupted around Dad and Cory. They looked like the Haunted House pinball game when you get two pin balls at once. Brilliant! We recorded another 10 songs with Jeremy in 1998 but never really finished mixing them. The only versions of those songs I have are rough mixes, so they sound even worse! We started writing new songs and went on our first national tour in 1999 with the Grey AM. It was a lousy tour, but we really managed to have fun. Once you travel the country like that, you really can't help but want to keep doing it. We wrote some more material during and after that tour, and we, the record label, and all those who knew us knew the new songs were better than the previous ten songs, so we recorded the new songs. That material became Engines. We toured a couple more times, but after Klaus suffered some horrible family tragedies, we realized we could not continue. The Agency finally fell apart, Mike joined Dashboard Confessional, and I did nothing. Mike convinced me to join his other new band Seville. We released one CD together and then Mike quit to devote his time to Dashboard Confessional. I released another two CDs under the Seville name. It sucked. It was no fun for me. I missed my friends. By 2003 I was floundering with music. We played a few reunion shows that were remarkably well attended. We decided to write some new songs and released Turn in 2007. It was great to be creative again, and it convinced me that after all the time I had devoted to being a musician, all I wanted was to be at home with my wife. Music is great, but I'm almost 32! I'm glad I saw the country with my friends, I'm glad my music meant something to someone, and I'd love to play some more shows with the guys, but I'm much happier studying engineering. When I finally build a bridge or a skyscraper, the critics won't make fun of my clothes.