About Me
Mike Allen and Holiday Childress met in the glorious year of 1983 next to a hallway locker in their first year of junior high school.
Michael wore leather pants, a studded leather belt, and football cleats to school in an attempt to look more like his idol Gene Simmons.
Holiday , then addressed by his birth name Steven, grew up in England around and on loud Air Force bases and was engouraged to dress more conservativley. Holiday enjoyed the sounds of Hall and Oates. Mike loved Kiss.
"want to be in a band?" was the first thing Mike said to Holiday.
Mike had a band already going and could not honor Holiday's request to be the singer or the drummer, those positions were already filled.
So reluctantly Holiday took up the guitar.
The first practice was at Mike's parents house. Holiday's first guitar was a tennis racquet. Mike was really good at the plastic buckets he used for his drum set along with a snare, kick and hi hat his parents bought him for christmas..
MTV was new and the astronaut on the moon standing next to the mtv flag with that great guitar riff made being in a band look more exciting than playing baseball.
Young Holiday turned his back on a carreer in baseball and followed Mike Allen to the dark side of rock and roll.
The first rehearsal was priceless.Holiday was a hyper active child and when Mike put the needle in Kiss "Alive" and started playing along to "Deuce", Holiday could not help but to spin the guitar (tennis raquet ) around over his head, jump up on Mike's parents bar and begin to swing at the piles of records and smash the tennis rauqet into the ceiling. Mike quickly took the needle off the record and said "easy junior , cool down buddy, take it easy."
Since then, Michael and Holiday spent most of their time learning to play their favorite music on guitar and drums and quickly began to make music of their own.
Not all of it was good. Their teenage years were spent trying to grow their hair out and look and sound as much like the rock and metal of the 80's that is now on VH1 Classics.
Around this time Holiday switched schools and found that there was another guitarist in town. That new guitarist just moved into town from New Jersey and was just as good or better than him. His name was Rob Finck, now known as Robin Finck (guitarist for NIN,Cirque Du Soliel,GNR). Holiday and Robin became friends and are best friends to this day. They had a solid understanding of each other and would competitively learn the lastest licks of their 80's guitar heros.
The years kept rolling by and influences changed every year from Van Halen to Guns and Roses to Prince to Janes Addiction , The Cure ,The Pixies, Tom Waits and so on.
( and every knock off band that we won't mention ).
After high school in the early 90's the boys moved into an old slaughterhouse in Atlanta and made it their communal living space. There were 5 of them in the band. Only two of them actually had jobs. The others just spent time tearing down or building walls , hanging black lights and drinking beer if they had the money. That is where Patrick Kelly came in.He loved the band. He also had a job. Better yet, Patrick worked at a pizza parlour and would bring us pizza in exchange for bass lessons.
There was alot of experimenting and socializing in the wharehouse. It was located next to a railroad track and was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. This is where they had their first taste of life on their own.
About a year or so after moving into the wherehouse, Holiday Mike and Patrick started rehearsing in the space and tweaking sounds and songs. Holiday, who wasnt playing much guitar at this time, began to pick up the guitar again. A sudden rush of inspiration hit and Holiday , Mike and Patrick were all about soaking it up. It was a very fertile and imaginative time. The warehouse days were coming to an end. Robin's audition with Trent Reznor obviously went well because he got the job and his life changed forever. Mike, Holiday and Patrick brainstormed for a name and the Goodies were born in the summer of 1993. Some serious songwriting went on for the next year and the Goodies hit the road.
Branching out of Atlanta, the Goodies discovered Asheville in 1995. WOW! "What a beautiful place" they thought. The Goodies relocated because they loved the town and the people they met. "The Greatest Hits" was recorded in 1997 .Mike fell in love and moved back to Atlanta. Fellow musicians Chuck Lictenburger and Vic Stafford of Asheville joined the group and The Goodies toured harder and non stop. Holiday was burning out and this led to the temporary disentegration of The Goodies in 1999. Holiday and his wife had a baby boy coming and Patrick moved back to Atlanta.In 2000 The original Goodies played what was supposed to be a one time reunion. The chemistry was great.
In 2001 the Goodies "postcard EP" was released and a few years later in 2004 The Goodies released an ambitious double live cd/dvd set.
They now perform usually around certian holidays like Halloween and New Years and St Patricks day .They really love what they do. The Goodies are family to each other. Patrick and Michael live in Atlanta and Holiday lives in Asheville with his wife Cori and two sons,Sebastian and Gabriel. Patrick is playing in several other groups and Holiday has started performing shows on his own as well as with the Goodies. Holiday's song, "Pirates and Thieves" ,is making it's movie sountrack debut in the Sundance Film Festival, January 2008.The film is "Anywhere USA" directed by Chusy Haney-Jardine.
(www.anywhereusathemovie.com)
