I followed man named Chance. It sounds like the beginning of a metaphorical fable of some kind. Where the protagonist is caught up in the winds of uncontrollable circumstance that lead him/her on a journey of untold intrigue and adventure.
For me, it’s very literal. I was a sophomore at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. As I walked down Kirkwood Ave. from the downtown square back to campus, a man shouted from his vehicle, “Do you know anyone that plays guitar?” His first name was Chance.
“I do,” I said as I came closer to his vehicle to chat. He was looking for a guitarist to play in a band he was putting together. They practiced in Luke Narey’s rehearsal space. I decided to jam with them.
That’s how I came to know Luke. We had instant chemistry in that we both were hungry, determined, and generally were influenced by classic rock. I liked that he had some force when he struck the skins. He wasn’t afraid. In those days he had only been playing for a few years but already had some decent chops from studying legendary players like John Bonham, Bill Ward, and Cozy Powell. We both developed that taste for classic hard rock from our dads.
We made it our business to form a band and to find players to play in that band. After playing with a few bass players, Barrett Abraham came to jam. Luke and Barrett knew each other from other jam sessions. Of the three of us, he was the only one with serious formal musical training. I remember being intimidated by that at first, but the jams went well. We had a 3 piece.
Blue Rising at Monroe County Fall Festival Sept. 2010
We were playing mostly originals I had written at that point. Dance was one of them. Away From Here, a song Austin Mudd and I co-wrote in high school, was another. We could play 7 or 8 songs. We signed up to play at the Monroe County Fall Festival. We needed a name. After only a few minutes tossing ideas back and forth, Luke said, “How about Blue Rising?”
Prior to playing at the Fall Festival as Blue Rising, Andi came to jam with us. It was still late summer. Andi Burns was a few years younger than us. Fresh out of high school.
His improvisational skills were awesome. It was a true pleasure to play music together. I asked him, “How serious are you about joining Blue Rising?” Sitting on his amp with Stratocaster in hand, he gave me eye contact and shyly, but enthusiastically nodded.
He quickly fit into our songs. Mostly we setup sections for him to improvise and basically instructed him to just sort of fit in. We didn’t have much time. It wasn’t a problem for him. We played our first show as Blue Rising in Ellettsville, IN. Me as vocalist and guitar player, Luke on drums, Barrett on bass and keys, and Andi on lead guitar.
Andi and me with Blue Rising at Max’s Place
Following that first show, we signed up for a battle of the bands in Spencer, IN. Over 50 bands competed. I remember telling the other guys in the band with full conviction, “We are going to win this.” The winners got $1,500 and 10 hours of studio time at Rich Morpurgo’s Midwest Audio Recording.
We wrote all new music for the battle. Songs like Forces, Temple, Overcoming, and Coming Alive were the fruits of that effort. I loved those songs. It was an incredibly exciting time. We blazed through the preliminaries, semi-finals, and final round and won the competition.
We kept writing and got more gigs. The night before our very first show at The Bluebird, the most important rock venue in Bloomington, Andi suddenly left the band. He had grown visibly frustrated. He was full of angst and pain. He recently had stopped showing up to practice occasionally. He was depressed and anxious, and had grown very combative.
That was it. We cancelled the show at The Bluebird and played another gig we had scheduled as a 3 piece. After that, we basically dissolved for several months. I began to assume that Blue Rising was over. We finally did begin to play music together again, with Austin Mudd on lead guitar. He and I grew up together and a few of Blue Rising’s songs to that point were co-written by him. Things started to look up. We started writing again. One day Luke called me. It was evening on a week day. He said, “I have some terrible news.” Andi had ended his own life. Luke, Barrett, and I were pall bearers at his funeral.
It was a very horrible and very surreal experience for us, and for the entire community of friends and fans of Andi and the band. It was strange to try to move on in the wake of the tragedy. The first show we played together with my long time close friend and co-writer, Austin Mudd, was at Max’s Place. We played all new material, the songs that became our first record, except for one song that we wrote with Andi, Coming Alive, which we dedicated to his memory. We have never played it again.