Wannabes

Austin’s favorite band to see when nobody else good is playing crawled out of the DFW mid-cities in 1985 where nobody good was ever playing with the help of founding members and childhood friends, Jennings Crawford and Hunter Darby. The outfit coalesced with drummer Jeff Nichols and eccentric actor and legend Michael Comiskey around Texas Christian University in Fort Worth to the delight of few and the anger of most of the conservative student body and local alcoholics living around campus. Early Wannabes performances usually consisted of heckling other bands that were nice enough to have the band open for them, nonsensical diatribes with distorted guitars, and occasional doowap versions of standards of the day. Though the band found the prospect of annoying and confusing Cowtown locals endlessly amusing, Crawford and Darby decided to move Jennings to the vocal helm and relocate the band to the vibrant and fertile music scene of Austin, Texas which was hometown to more serious touring acts favored by the pair, such as The Reivers, Wild Seeds, Doctors’ Mob and Glass Eye around the beginning of 1987. At a keg party shortly after their arrival, front man of The Wild Seeds, Michael Hall was quick to point out to the boys that the Austin Music Scene that the Wannabes had cherished so much was in effect “pretty much dead.” Had they done their research, Crawford and Darby would have found that they had just purchased a one way ticket to playing a handful of shows with rotating drummers, opening for a bevy of really bad white funk bands or really bad white blues bands. Later that year, an opening slot for Soul Asylum at The University of Texas fell into their laps so the sound was beefed up with the addition of Kevin Carney on guitar and Thad Swiderski on drums, both who were too bored to leave the band. The live performances started to improve little by little and shepherded by John Croslin, the band started recording albums and signed to local label Dejadisc records which afforded them the opportunity to tour nationally to open shows for really bad white funk bands, and occasionally really good white rock bands, such as Uncle Tupelo, The Magnolias, The Fluid, Buffalo Tom and Cheap Trick. After getting the nod from Rolling Stone Magazine's David Fricke, winning local praise in the Austin Music Awards as well as a NAIRD award for best album nationally for the Croslin produced “Popsucker” and even playing a private party for R.E.M., the Wannabes found themselves starting to at least break even if not actually bringing home some money from time to time on tours while constantly improving their live shows and developing a loyal following in the Midwest. Now, really bad white funk bands were opening Wannabes shows all over this great country of ours leading one to think that things would finally be looking up for the scrappy outfit, except for the fact that the band was horribly burned out, longtime drummer Thad Swiderski took his leave after a difficult recording of “A Decade of Moral Fumbles”, and using filthy gas station bathrooms during blizzards didn’t seem quite as lucrative as it once had been. Steve McCarthy who could sing better as well as play all the instruments of the remaining members, and on occasion is known to moonlight as a vocalist in a filthy Neil Diamond cover band joined the fold and sat in Swiderski’s vacated drum seat for rare shows in Austin and Kansas and remains in the Wannabes to this day. Now the band patiently wait for an odd check here and there from various song placements on “Veronica Mars” and perform a handful of shows a year when they feel like it. Not a bad run for a twenty two year old rock band made up of white guys smart enough not to attempt watery, slick blues or soulless, crummy funk. Oh yeah, they were also the best live band on earth if you happened to be in Iowa City on a Wednesday night.