The History of the Have Nots

DaVo's TattooI think I first came up with the name and decide to start a band called the Have Nots around 89 or 90. I came to me after a night of heave drinking and realizing that the Gas at my house had been turned off. It just seemed to fit the way I was living at the time. At the time I was reading to have or have not. It wasn't until a couple months later when my friend Jett brought up the fact that there was X song named the same. So either it came from the saying, "To Have or Have Not, the book or the X song.

The name quickly became a little bit of an obsession and when I look back at old journals and stuff I wrote from that period it kept coming up. It started to more and more become less of a band name and more of an expression of my mind set. I think it was around this time that I got it tattooed on my arm over a sacred heart.

Have Nots PosterSo, here I was writing like a Henry Miller on crack. lyrics, pose and etc... and before long I had well over 200 set of lyrics with no band to use them with. I did what everyone who ever wanted to be in a band ever did, I put up flyers. I did get a few responds but most didn't pan out. One that did was from Gil Bavel. Gil worked at a local used record store called Archives. At the time I was unemployed, and had sold a lot of records there and was working on buying a few of them back. One lesson learned is never ever sell your records cause you'll never see half of them ever again. Anyway, I began working with Gil on Guitar. Gil was a transplant from Lawrence, KS and had been active in the scene down there since the early 80s. We did nail down about 4 or 5 pretty good songs but couldn't seem to find a bassist or drummer. After Gil quit/got fired(depends on who you talk to) from Archieves, he moved back to Lawrence and that was that. He was in a band called Wayback Machine that played a few times at the old Mary's and a show I did at the Runway. We still keep in contact to this day.

Live on Stage @ SafariShortly after that I met a guy named Brian DuBay who lived on the west side. Brain had just started playing bass and his parents were loaded and had this huge practice space. Also this kid named Pat Douglas. I'm not sure when we first jammed but it would come back to this combination off and on over the next couple of years. After wasting a few nights I decide to step away because it didn't seem to be going anywhere.

Greg on StageAround 92 or 93 I met this punk named Dave Gitman. He was a bright talented guitarist with one main problem he was way into drugs. It really started to take over he's life after a while and I'm unsure just what the hell happened to him. I lived with him for a while and we started playing a little off and on. He brought in his friend Trevor Powell on bass, who actually has been in a few touring bands from Souix Falls, SD like resin and his friend Brian Seamann on Drums. What came out was a very aggressive and odd mix that was at times along the lines of Big Black. I often wonder how it would worked out if Dave could just put the pipe down long enough to focus on the band. Everyone abounded this project like rats from a sinking ship. Dave did play with a local heavy band for a while but it didn't last.

Live on Stage @ SafariI had met Jay Burmett back in 88 when he had moved up here for a summer. We met through my then girlfriend after she hit on him. It's funny but we started hanging out after that pretty heavy. I lost track of him over the years until he transferred to drake in late 93. Originally from Dallas, he took over guitar duties and we began working with Brian again. We did lay down a number of track and even made an 8-track demo of about 3 or 4 songs in 94 but we just couldn't find a steady drummer. so like all the others, this project also failed to be realized. Jay was greatly influenced by Johnny Thunders and kinda gave the sound a more Glam sound. Not really what I was looking for but still equally good. He did write the music to the song Reaction. The only song that did live on to the final line up of the band and on to the demo. Paul sat in on one of the practises or heard the tape and dug Reaction. I think this went on and off for until 95 when he finished college. We also had a few different names including Naked Lady Mud Flaps and Physco Girl(named after a girl that would fallow Jay home every night while he was in Dallas and often turned up in Des Moines unannounced. I think we wrote a song about her too with the same title).

Paul on Stage in Sioux CityBy late 95 me and Paul were talking about starting a band. I met Paul in late 94 and by mid 95 we were hanging out every weekend. Paul is of course in the huge metal band Slipknot. He grew up in Venice, CA and the LA area and had moved out here when his mother moved here. So one of the reasons we hit it off was we both loved the early LA Hardcore punk like Fear, Black Flag and the Circle Jerks. I think one of the first songs we tried was "I Just Want Some Shank" by the Circle Jerks. So with the Guitarist set, we began to look for the rest of the band. I think we may have jammed one or two nights with Greg and Brian before Greg moved back to Colorado in 95.

Greg in Sioux CityI met Greg one week night at 2nd Ave Foundry in the Summer of 95. One of the Owners, Eddy introduced us. We spent the night talking about the OC scene. Greg had been part of the OC scene for a number of years in the early 80s and had played with Mad Parade, Organized Crime, claimed to have played a few gigs with CH3 and claimed to have the finial cut trying out for Agent Orange. He moved out here with his girlfriend and they broke up shortly after he moved here and went back to Steamboat, CO.

Joey in Sioux CityWhen I was in need of a tattooist, Greg moved back out here and started drumming for us. When we first started writing the line-up was Paul on Guitar, Brian on Bass, Greg on Drums and me on vocals. The first song we wrote was Decay, Destroy Madame Wongs and relearned Reaction. Most of the lyric I used during this period and throughout the time the band was together was cut and pasted from older songs and Idea I had written down as far back as 91.

Cityview ArticleAbout this time we started talking about adding a second guitarist. Paul really wanted to add Joey. For some reason Greg was against this. I'm not too sure why but I always figured it had to do with the fact that Paul and Joey were in Slipknot, Slipknot was a metal band, you do the math. I was for it, I had heard the Reject demos and even though the guitar solos were too long and the lyrics were stupid, I liked them. Hell we already had one long hair in the band aka Brian and one more wouldn't hurt. I think I had met him in passing at one point but I'm not sure. He came to practice and in one practice we wrote Character Assassins and I believe Bury the Rage. We also laid the ground work for Chicken Hawk. Paul and Joey just work so well together.

Flyer for the Fastball showWith the line-up complete we began working on Chicken Hawk, Dancing on Graves, Forget Yesterday and working on a cover. At first we went through a number of ideas for a cover but settled on Johnny hit and Run Pauline. Before long things started to really come together and we hooked up our first gig at Safari in the summer of 1996. The weekend before the show we went up to Junior's Motel in Otho, Iowa and recorded the Demo. Of course we drove up the night before got a hotel, over slept and got to the studio late. We recorded the demo, 8 songs in roughly 5 hours all live. Most of it was in one or two takes with very few dubs. We added the backups and went home. One of the odd things about the demo is that Paul had broke the top two tuning pegs off his guitar and did the whole thing, including the solos on Johnny Hit & Run Pauline with only the bottom four strings. All the track were recorded with Paul and Joey on guitar, Brian on Bass, Greg on Drums and me on Vocals, except Johnny hit and run which had Joey on Drums and Greg singing the first two verses and me singing the last.

Brian on StageOur first gig was a 21 and over show with Mercy Rule and Going to Grandma's. The show was rough and quickly I began to notice the week spots. Brian was not the best bassist and at times got out of time and Greg was getting old and having problems keeping up. Then Paul after fighting with equipment problems through the whole show shattered he's guitar. At that time, we were the new comers and outsiders and a lot of our focus was shoving ourselves down everyone's throat. At the after party a fight broke out with Greg and local scenester Tom(Total Passover, Del Stars and the Chezwicks) and by the end of the night, our being was well know.

Brian in Sioux CityWe continued to play out and started to go in what I have to say was a bit of a Social Distortion direction. Joey wrote most of these and out of it came The trail and Alcoholic Rebounds. I thought both were great but they were definitely a new direction. Also around this time Paul wrote Justin which was definitely in a more Harder direction. I liked it because it mixed things up. We were definitely not hitting a rut yet. I think around this time we did a radio show on the local high school station 88.1. It was fun but sounded terrible, a while back I came across a copy of it and cringed at the mix. I also began booking all ages shows and in October we began to play all ages shows. The all ages crowds were a +far cry from the stand there and watch crowd of the 21 & over.

I felt it coming but I just didn't know when it would happen. Slipknot was starting to take a lot of Joey and Paul's time. Also, Joey who didn't drink was growing tired of Brian forgetting songs and Greg needing breaks between songs. Two shows that stick out are the Souix City show which was one of our better shows with this line up mainly cause there was no booze and the show a few nights later in Des Moines the night before Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving show everyone but Joey showed up early and began drinking around 8. We didn't go on till after Midnight. We thought no one would be there but after drinking myself into a good stumpier, I turned to check out the opening band and realized there was well over a hundred people there. By the time we hit the stage, I was drunk, Brian was drunk, Greg was drunk, Paul was drunk and Joey was dead sober. So we hit the stage and spent about 45 minutes playing a set that should have taken 30 minutes. I have the video tape and it amazes me that people stood not sat but stood through it. Joey was pissed by the end of the night. We did a couple other shows under a no drink before we play rule but by February(the first show after Shawn bought the bar) Joey Quit.

DaVo in Sioux CityI was kinda upset at first but figured it was because of Slipknot more then anything. Then when he started up the Rejects again I was pissed but I quickly got over it. Hell, if I would have been sober during some of those shows I would have more than likely quit. So for a while we just took some time off. Greg moved some where and left us without a drummer(I had fired him from the Axiom).

We began to search for replacements and by April we had found two. On guitar we brought on a local punk kid by the name of John and on drums a transplant from Boston named of all things John. To keep them apart, guitarist John, I think because he was 16, became little John(a name that stuck) and drummer John became big John or one footed John(he liked to play with his high hat shoe off. Don't ask.). Big John sounded great in a basement with no PA but had a completely different drumming style from Greg and it struck me as odd that he would take off his high hat shoe. Anyway, we got this last minute gig opening and we debated as to weather big John was ready. We decide no and Joey agreed to drum for us. The day of the show Big John threw a fit and it almost came to blows between him and Paul. So we told him then play but if you blow it you're out. He agreed and played the worst show we ever did. We gave Brian the responsibility of firing him with the "You found him, you get rid of him." Policy. I don't think Brian ever told him anything and he didn't even know he was out of the band until he showed up at the next show.

Joey played drums at the next show we did and it was by far the best show we ever did. It wasn't my favorite show but by far it was our best. Low and behold in the audience was Greg and against my wishes he was back in the band. We played a number of shows that summer but only wrote one new song NLNF. We had hit a rut. There's a lot of reasons I guess but with a lot of Paul's focus on Slipknot, Joey gone and Little John not being able to come up with anything we liked, it all stopped being fun. The other thing was with Slipknot practicing 3-5 times a week, we never seemed to be able to practice. Also, there was internal problems, I wanted to get rid of Greg for personal reasons and Paul was growing tired of Brian's mistakes and drug problems. I decided to call it quits in October of 97. Our last show was with Blank 77 and The Quincy Punx. I made up t-shirts for that show with spray paint the night before. They had a Have Nots logo on one side and on the other side "Hippy Killer". Every once and a while, I'll see one of them around. At the end of our set Paul broke his flying V and Greg pulled me back into the drums. We went out with a bang like we started. It was good to be over. At the time we had talked about starting a new project but with Slipknot become more and more a demand on Paul's time it never happened. he did do a short stunt in the Rejects after we folded but that would be put to death by the rise of SK(though the Rejects just played this weekend).

The Have Nots was a great time. I wouldn't trade it for anything and as I look back after 3 years and everything that happened, I can't help but wonder when me and Paul will get drunk enough to really want to do this thing again. It would be fun but so much different. Plus who the fuck wants to relive the past. Like the first time you have sex with a girl it's never as good again Or is it? Viva La Have Nots.