In 1995, my band
Skander broke up. I started looking for another band and found a band called Societal Jive that featured friends of mine from the an acting troupe I helped start called The Moore Hill Players. David English was one of the members. I really loved their heavy metal sound. So when David decided to transpose the group to Austin, meaning Jon English could no longer sing for the band, they went searching for a singer. I jumped at the opportunity.
For whatever reason, I didn't last long as their singer. The new bassist Ryan Holley took over vocals. The band changed it's name to
Plow Monday, and I started managing and booking of the band. The first thing we did was record a six-song EP entitled
Societal Jive. It was one of my first lessons in producing. I didn't do a good job at it the album had its high points. Then I spent my time jocking the band to radio, newspapers and trying to book gigs. I did a decent job, but the end result was mediocre at best. I felt the band needed to do this on their own.
So I quit managing the band and started my own band,
Breastfed. And a couple years later with the re-addition of Jon English into the band, Plow Monday really took off.
Here's what their biography states about the band:
In a city like Austin, some of the best music can sometimes go overlooked. For years, this was the case with Plow Monday before they emerged from obscurity as one of Austin's most popular live acts. When the band finally hung up their guitars in the fall of 2003, they played two sold-out farewell shows at Austin's Hard Rock Café. Both shows hosted more than 500 tearful fans, screaming the lyrics to every song at the top of their lungs.
Now the band exists only in cyberspace and in the occasional nostalgia-fueled reunion show. But for years, the fans that stumbled upon this modern-rock phenomenon cherished their music and live shows as if they had discovered the next big thing in music. Many believed they had. And no one could believe it when they called it quits.
At the end of their run, Plow Monday was a five-piece group featuring Jon English on lead vocals and some guitars; Ryan Holley on rhythm guitar, lead guitar, some lead vocals and almost all the background vocals; Clif Haley on lead guitar, Michael "Bobbo" Swanson on bass; and the legendary David English on drums. Jon, Ryan, Clif and David were all high school friends, growing up together in Marble Falls, Texas (Ryan was 10 miles away in Burnet).
David, Clif and Jon played in various high school garage bands together over the years, before David and Clif graduated and moved to Austin to attend college at the University of Texas and Saint Edwards University. Ryan headed on down the road to Southwest Texas State in San Marcos, and the three formed the power-trio Societal Jive in 1995, then quickly renamed the project Plow Monday.
In those days, the group was more of an experimental jam-band with a grunge-rock edge. Their first album was a Seven-Mary-Three type effort titled "Societal Jive". The disc received a three (out of four) star review by the Bible of Austin music, the Austin Chronicle.
In 1997, Dave's little brother, Jon, graduated from high school and joined his friends in Austin. They handed him a bass, and the Plow Monday lineup was set for a number of years.
The group immediately set about the task of creating the kind of catchy-yet-eclectic music that is birthed by the combination of youth, inexperience, bravado, and staggering musical ability. These guys were no grunge-rock college act. They were already fully seasoned musicians even though the bands average age was just over 20 years old. Ironically, their most incredible work was never formally released. "Head Full of Windows", their 8-song EP was recorded in 1997 and sold as burned copies at shows over the next few years. For fans of the group, the disc is now a collectors album. Through the magic of CD Baby, the tracks are now available for purchase and download over the internet.
Despite regular gigs at such legendary Austin clubs as the Backroom, the Mercury, Liberty Lunch, and Emos, at such a young age plans and visions can change. In the spring of 1999, Jon felt he needed a break from music to explore other directions for his life. The group consequently disbanded.
But the music wouldn't die.
During the time off, Jon rented a simple four-track recorder and a microphone, and proceeded to spend three months locked in his college dorm room recording a collection of songs that had never fit the Plow Monday style. When he met with his old band mates to play them the tunes, the group unanimously decided to reform to play the songs from the album. Jon would handle most of the lead vocals this time around.
The new songs were much less eclectic and much more radio-friendly. And whats more, in the year since the band had broken up, the advancement of music on the internet made it possible to reach a broader audience than ever before. The group entitled the collection of songs "Blank", and they released it digitally over Mp3.com. Soon, Farmclub.com and Alternative Addiction.com had their hands on it, and a full-on internet phenomenon was born.
Within a month their track Joke was featured on Farmclub.com's top 10 list for the rock genre. In September, the group posted the CD on mp3.com, the world's largest collection of free music. The title track Blank went straight to the Alternative General top 40 and stayed there for over a month, along side other top groups as Third Eye Blind, the Offspring, Linkin Park, and Paul Simon. For years, they were Austin's most downloaded rock group, and eventually discovered they were the number one most downloaded band in the country of France. The tracks, all recorded in dorm room, eventually added up to almost 100,000 downloads over the period of approximately 2 years.
In the Spring of 2001, Plow Monday debuted on the prestigious site Alternative Addiction. The song Blank was given a chance in the on-line Battle of the Bands. Much to everyone's surprise, Blank took an overwhelming 94 percent of all the votes cast in the contest, sending Plow Monday into the Unknown Top 10 List at number eight. After just one month, the group was at number 1 on the Unknown Top 10, topping such artists as Carey Pierce, Five For Fighting, The Clarks, Blue October, and Jay Quinn Band. Blank stayed as the number one track for four months. Their third release, the track "Lies", would also hit number one and stay for three months. At the end of the year, the fans of the site voted Plow Monday 2001's "Unknown Band of the Year." Their website,
www.plowmonday.com, was handling thousands of hits a month during this time.
The tracks also received airplay from Austin commercial and college radio. On the strength of their success on the web, the band developed an international fan base that stretches from the States to every single continent (besides the one covered entirely by ice). Austin's premiere rock station, KLBJ, honored the band two years in a row as one of their top unsigned bands at their annual "Schmoozefest" during the South By Southwest festival.
Back in August of 2000, the group had begun gigging regularly again and landed a weekly show at Austin's legendary Black Cat Lounge, a club that birthed the careers of such acts as Bob Schneider, Ian Moore, Sister 7, and Push Monkey. Plow Monday left the club after nine months of regular gigging in March of 2001, and started playing regular shows at other top venues in the area eventually landing at the legendary Stubb's BBQ in downtown Austin, where they would play monthly for almost a year. It was during this time that Bobbo hopped on board the Plow Monday Express as the bass player, bringing about the full, powerful sound that became Plow Monday's signature.
The national buzz about the band grew, and they found themselves taking a trip to the West Coast during the summer of 2001 to play a showcase for the music world's top executives at SIR studios in Los Angeles. In 2002, the group made a similar trip to New York City, where they played a showcase to a packed house at the too-legendary-to-quantify CBGB's. Rounding out their national exposure were also multiple tours to Nashville, where they were a featured act during the Nashville New Music Conference in 2002.
As the publicity surrounding the band grew and grew, they dedicated themselves to producing a record that surpassed the dorm-room sonics of "Blank". Teamed with Austin A-list producer/engineer, the group wrote and recorded "Second Glance Appeal" during the winter of 2002 and the spring of 2003. Insite Magazine, one of Austin's most significant music review publications, gave the CD a letter grade of "A", and called the album "familiar and new, retro and fresh… Plow Monday is uniquely Austin with major mass appeal."
When the CD dropped, the band also produced a series of videos that aired on the local Austin Music Network. The video for "Lies" became a local top-ten hit and brought the band even more exposure. The video premiere was a sold-out affair at the Lucky Lounge in Austin, and the CD release party was also a capacity crowd event at the Hard Rock Café.
It seemed that Plow Monday was the can't-miss next big thing. But in the fall of 2003, everything that had been built over the years dissolved in a matter of months.
By 2003, Clif, Dave, and Ryan had been playing together in the group for eight years. But despite the popularity, there was little or no money to accompany the success and the interested record labels always seemed to be "very close" to signing the band, but never getting closer. With his 30s on the horizon and nothing but an empty box of music-industry promises to plan his musical future around, Clif finally decided he had to quit the band cold-turkey before he spent any more of his life waiting for the mythical "record deal" to finally materialize. He tearfully informed his friends in the group that he would play no more, forever.
The remaining four fought for about two months to continue the band without Clif, but the experience was hollow and the sound was all wrong. At the crossroads of their musical and personal lives, the other members of the group decided together to play two final shows with all five of the members of the band before calling it quits.
The Hard Rock Café was the venue, and the line was around the block. The group went loudly into that good night, with no regrets. New Year's Eve, 2003, was the final show for Plow Monday. Once a year for the last two years, the band has reformed for a reunion show. Apart from that, there is no longer any Plow Monday music being performed.
Ryan Holley has since continued his climb to the top of the Austin music scene through his myriad of projects. He fronted the band Pavlov's Dogs for a number of years, played on again and off again with Blue October, co-fronted the super-group A+ Machines with Matt Novesky of Blue October, and is currently the guitar player for Goudie as well as the front man for his new project, The Warning.
Clif Haley has recently decided to make a much less publicized go of it with his new acoustic rock act, Always the Fall. He has also been a force in the internet movie review phenomenon, DumbDistraction.com.
Michael "Bobbo" Swanson is doing somethin' down in Houston. He's going to school or something. Not real sure. We really need to talk to that guy more!
David English is a system's analyst at Apple Computer, the father of two cats and two dogs, and very happy to be planning his eventual escape from society to his Earthship in Liberty Hill.
Jon English has continued to write and record music, and is planning on releasing his first official collection of new songs in the fall of 2006. Jon, Dave, Clif, Ryan, and Bobbo can all be found around Texas, occasionally playing a party or a happy-hour gig at a bar on 6th Street for old times sake. They're all still close friends and supporters of each other in all that happens. And they all still miss their old fans.
You can keep up with the band at
www.plowmonday.net, and you can get their CDs at CD Baby.com or any of the digital music outlets (I-tunes, etc). Or you can do an internet search and find some crazy things that always make the guys smile when they see that they really did touch some people's lives, if only for a short time.
But no matter how it hurts, they will never stop grinning on the floor.
