I sat down with Phillip and asked him about the beginnings of SSLYBY. Here's his story:
"I met Will, the guitar guy, in high school at a Super Bowl party. He knew about my band called Thinking Version. He said all his friends on Weller street (Springfield, Missouri) listened to our tape and ran around the house making fun of it and playing tag. I thought he hated us, but he didn't. He liked when we tried to sound like Nirvana. So I started hanging out with Will and his friends on Weller street. A few months later, Thinking Version stopped practicing and I started writing new songs i could play with Will's band, Wharf. I played guitar and sang...Will played lead...Tom played bass...and Kevin played drums. The new songs needed a new band name, so we chose something really dumb, because we were only practicing in Will's attic. There were 2 girls who would watch us practice and I wanted to make them laugh...and I wanted the guys in Wharf to laugh...so that's when I came up with Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. Boris Yeltsin recently resigned and I was 17. We recorded a 3 song demo right before Christmas 2000. We played shows in a church/barn and at a weird bar. No one liked us too much, except for Will's sister, Gwyn.
"Here comes a big change. Will left for college, so we were a 3 piece until we found a good singer.I met John Robert freshmen year of college. We were roommates and we started working on songs, but never ever finishing them...a lot of them turned into Broom songs( this was early 2002). Kevin started getting really busy with high school stuff, so he left and I started playing drums. We started playing more local shows, too. We got my best friend from elementary school (Chris) playing guitar for a while and his girlfriend (Lauren) playing keyboards. We recorded an EP (February 2004) in our friend's basement and released it on another friend's record label. But then Chris and Lauren decided to get married, and Will decided to move back to Springfield.
"With Will back in town, we started practicing on Weller again and playing a lot of shows...all within a 2 mile radius of Will's house..downtown Springfield! We also started recording the Broom songs with recording equipment Will got for Christmas. I think our bad grades in high school started paying off, cuz we were all real good at recording with 4-tracks and crappy microphones. We also got our friend Jonathan to help us mix everything on a computer. It took us 8 months to record Broom. The CD release show in Springfield sold out (or came close) and I started thinking it was time to get a real job. Tom went to art school in Kansas City and Jonathan replaced him for live shows that summer. We were all pretty satisfied with the Broom because it was for and about our friends and they all liked it. I kept our webpage updated with MP3s. Also, on the website, I said we were the third best band on weller street. A girl came to our show just because she thought it was funny, so we kept that. Internet people really liked the mp3s and we started getting reviews and more out of town shows. Catfish Haven asked us to open for them and we met Polyvinyl and a booking agent while we were on the road. I never had time to get a real job. Now we're touring whenever we can. We're also working on a lot of new songs...most of them based on old Wharf riffs. That's it!"
-Phillip Dickey, Janurary 2007
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