Marc Howell (guitar)

I was born a poor black child, a shy and embittered teen filled with negativism, who basically thought the world was crap. When I graduated from high school, I went to ECU in Greenville, NC where I figured out that the world was a shiny happy place after all, and that it was my attitude that was crap. Who would have thought ?!?

I dabbled around with piano, mandolin, and ukulele around the 5 th /6 th grade. I did the trumpet in jr. high, but was bored with it and ended up in the suck band. At my school, you could either be in the 'concert' band or the 'suck' band. At the end of the 8 th grade they told me that if I switched to French horn they'd put me in the concert band. They said they'd get me a horn to practice with over the summer along with some books to study. The summer came and went and they never gave me squat. So, I showed up the first day of class in the concert band playing an instrument I'd never even touched before. That was a freakin' fiasco. Luckily, I met John Tugwell - a fellow horn player who was as big of a cut-up as I was. I never really learned how to play the horn worth a crap, but John and I did learn how to make the perfect fart noise with it. We used to add fart punctuation to the teacher's instruction as he spoke to us between songs. In the concert band there were 4 french horn players. John and I used to compete to see who could get last chair, and would intentionally screw up our 'play off's to win the coveted 'last chair'.

After much begging and pleading, in the 10 th grade my dad broke down and bought me and my brother an Electra guitar that had MPC modules (onboard effects), and a sweet little Fender Champ amp. At the time, the Electra was cutting edge, and it ruled your butt hole! I learned how to play it and joined a little band named "Desire". We were your typical high school band. Everyone in the band had been playing less than a year, and we took the definition of "suck" to a new level, but had a lot of fun. We never did anything other than make lots of noise, waste lots of practice time, and play a local talent show or two. I did, however, learn how *not* to do hold a band practice.

After high school, came college. I had a lot of fun at ECU. There I was introduced to large amounts of beer, the local music scene, and my wife-to-be (Toni). I also met Danny O'Rourke who was the most magnetic personality I've ever seen. We became roommates, and he pulled me dragging and kicking from my shy shell. He was a guitar freak (like myself), and we quickly fell into the music scene. Danny, another buddy of mine (Johnny Williams), and myself were like the 3 thrash-metal musketeers. We used to all sit around the bar, all with long hair, all wearing ripped up jeans with black metallica t-shirts, talking about how we were non-conformists. I guess we should have looked up 'Conformist' in the dictionary. While in college I joined another little band. This time around we didn't completely suck; although, the main thing we did was drink lots of beer and make lots of noise. We even had the cops show up on several occasions. We never played out or even came up with a name, but, again, it was a boatload of fun.

One odd day in college, I woke up, put on the latest thrash record, amazingly enough… it sucked! I tried several other thrash records, and they sucked too! Something happened overnight, and I suddenly didn’t like thrash anymore. I was completely devastated! In desperation, I turned to the local college radio station. There I discovered “alternative”. Back then, ‘alternative’ was actually was a genre that you could identify. I got heavily into the likes of They Might Be Giants, The Dead Milkmen, REM, etc etc… My metal friends just didn’t understand, but they still loved me in spite of my hardcore shortcomings.

By the end of my college career I had gotten sick of the whole guitar thing, and put the gear in the closet. I graduated and got a job in Rocky Mount (of all places). After about 3 months, I moved to Raleigh where I've been ever since. I got a job at SAS, got married to Toni, and had twin daughters (Margaret and Gwenyth). Suddenly I'm an adult living a relatively adult life.

Another odd day came around in August about 4 years later, By this time the 'alternative' genre had become so diluted with everything that wanted to call itself 'alternative', that it really held no meaning anymore. Again, I was getting bored with it. I decided to check out this new phenomenon called 'Garage music', so I headed out to Sleazefest at Local 506 in Chapel Hill . There for the first time, I saw Southern Culture on the Skids and completely lost it. It inspired me to get the guitar out of the closet and try to learn how to play it like Rick Miller did. That was a huge stretch because all I really knew was metal, and a little alternative.. and I had forgotten most of my lead chops by that time. I had to completely re-learn how to play lead. It was a lot of work, but I did pull it off.

Shortly after that my wife stood up and declared that we were going to start going to church. I had little say in the matter, but after a few months I got used to the idea and even started to enjoy it. We ended up at Triangle Community Church . One of TCC 's goals is to be culturally relevant, so one thing they have is contemporary music (stuff you actually would like). A few months into it, Toni suggested that I try playing with the church band. This was a brilliant idea! I saw a golden opportunity to buy new gear with the wife's approval! That's a 'once in a lifetime' opportunity, so I went for it!

I started playing with those guys, and I felt like a ham sandwich at a Jewish picnic. At first I was really up tight, but later realized that they were just a bunch of goofballs (like myself), and I chilled out. The music stuff these guys were playing was brutally tough compared to anything I'd done before. It wasn't metal, wasn't alternative, and wasn't the southern fried geek rock I'd just learned. The guy who lead the team was John Gerken. He was the most awesome musician that I had ever met in real life. Musically, he stretched me in ways I never thought I could go. in ways that I never even knew existed. Every week I had to work on the tunes about 3 nights a week in addition to weekly practice and Sunday morning practice. It was brutal, but I got a *lot* out of it! I was growing by leaps and bounds. After about 2 years of that, the band had a 're-org' and I switched to bass. I'd always secretly loved funk, so it was a fun move. The stuff we did after the re-org was extremely simple compared to what we were doing before the re-org, so I was able to take on a relatively new instrument without too much difficulty.

I met Marty Hobbs at work. He had transferred to our group from another department. I learned that he played in a band, and it didn’t take long before we became good friends. I went to see his band (Clementine) a few times, and liked the stuff they did. One day our department had a cook-out, and Marty got Clementine to play. Just for kicks, I sat in on the gig for a few tunes. It went really well, so they asked me to join. It was a blast, and was the first band I’d been in that actually gigged regularly.

A few years after that a new dude with a funny accent started wandering our halls at SAS – Steve Nash. Steve had moved here from the UK. I guess that he finally came to terms with the fact that he could no longer deny his inner-redneck, and moved here to become a boney fidey good-ole-boy. He soon fell in with our ‘lunch crew’ and we discovered that he played guitar. We all had similar tastes in music, and decided to have a jam session or two since Clementine at the time was in hibernation mode. That went really well…. So well in fact that we decided to make a band out of it. The rest is history… or at least can be read on the band’s bio page….

Marc’s current Gear:

• Les Paul Deluxe ('2001 reissue, wine finish - sweet!)
• Fender California Fat Strat
• Sears Silvertone guitar.. one of the ones with the amp built right into the case (ugliest guitar ever made! Very cool to look at, but won't stay in tune and has the fretboard is 100% flat, no arch whatsoever.... also desperately needs a setup job). Not sure if I'm keeping that one.
• Mosrite Celebrity hollowbody (doesn’t gig with, needs a fret job)
• Ovation Celebrity acoustic guitar
• Electra 940-x with MPC modules (first guitar - doesn’t gig with)
• Musicman Stingray bass (sweet!!)
• Trace Elliot Velocette (awesome vintage tone (EL84's))
• THD Flexi-50 head
• Dr. Z Air Break attenuator
• 2x12 Avatar Cabinet w/ Celection Vintage 30's - 8 ohm (black tolex w/ wheat grill)
• 2x12 Avatar Cabinet w/ 1 Celestion Vintage 30 and 1 Celstion G12H30 - 16 ohm (blonde tolex with oxblood grill)
• Gallien Krueger 400RB 18’ combo
• Effects: Tonebone Hot British Distortion, VooDoo Labs Sparkle Drive, Aphex Punch Factory (compressor), Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Reverb, Nobles ODR-1 overdrive, Hao Rust Booster, Boss Chorus, Boss Delay, Ernieball Volume pedal, VooDoo Labs Pedal Power 2, home-made pedal board(complete with indoor/outdoor carpet, black spray paint, and tacky stickers!). All tied together with George L's black .155 cables.

What Marc wants:

(Actually, I'm pretty 'hooked up' right now. My wife would pretty much freak out if I bought anything else, so I'm laying low for a while. Anything else I buy is going to have to be financed by gig money and/or E-bay sales.)

• Vox AC30 custom classic head
• Peterson Strobo-Stomp tuner
• Wouldn't mind a Fender Jag-stang just because they're so freakin' ugly
• Some kind of 7-string guitar (I can’t deal with drop-D tuning).