Seumus Maley:
Bass and vocals
It must begin somewhere, and for Seumus Maley, it began on March 31, 1980, when after several days of labor, Seumus finally gave up and consented to emerging into this world. After a stogie and a shot of brandy, Seumus toasted the doctors and nurses for their fine, fine efforts, and then tried to climb back inside his mother to continue his musings about whatever it was he was thinking about that. But quickly they grabbed him and before he knew it, he had forgotten all about that, and pretty much everything in his early life except for the sound of Bonnie Raitt and Elvis Presley and Stevie Ray Vaughn and Paul Simon and his mother playing the piano. Not to say that music has ever been Seumus' sole interest, rather, it caught him at an early age and it never really let go. Question really was when he was going to grab hold of it.
Seumus has lived for most of his life as an itinerant, an Army brat, who feels enriched by his travails across the globe. Virginia to Georgia to Germany all by the age of seven.
At the age of six, Seumus received his first guitar. At the age of seven, Seumus' sister dropped his guitar down a flight of stairs. Needless to say, there wasn't much point trying to put it back together, the stairs pretty much took care of the whole thing.
Sometime around seven, Seumus' mother tried to teach him how to play the piano. By this time of course, Seumus was already fully aware of how to play the piano and needed no such instruction some simpleton such as his mother could provide in order to play the piano. Again, needless to say, there wasn't much point in that exercise either, because all the advice his mother tried to give him might as well have been thrown down the stairs, as, well.
The occasional dithering chord was plucked from that piano until the Maley's returned to the US in 1991, moving to Arizona for nine or ten brief months where Seumus picked up the trumpet, playing it frequently, and thanking everyone for the fact that their house in Arizona did not have a staircase, fortuitously abetting anyone's attempt to throuw anything down it. A year later, back to Virginia it was and, dread, Catholic school. By 1993, he had also picked up the guitar, and began playing both in earnest, and forming his first band with that low-down, flea bitten, mangy piece of work Brett Meyer: Obtrude Syndrome. If there was ever an opportunity to say needless again, here it is, but needless to say, it was indeed obtrude. Suppose that was they intended, and thus, Obtrude Syndrome became Invision which in turn became moving away again, thankfully because neither bands actually produced anything except Seumus screaming obtrudely and the dithering chords of two kids who literally just picked up their instruments.
On to Georgia again, where Brett and Seumus lost contact of each other and pursued their interests separately. Seumus started another band with Bryan Hawkins, a percussionist who borrowed his brother's drum set and learned on the go. This time the name would stick: Lazy Plate. Well, almost. Then it was Lazy Plates and Crazy Spoons. Then that fell apart after everyone else that Seumus and Bryan tried to get into the band were either kicked out or quit, but at least before the drama happened, the band managed to play one gig together. It was triumphant, it was amazing, it was probably the worst cover gig in the history of cover gigs. Green Day, Bush, Pearl Jam, Live, all the best lumberjack rock from before there was lumberjack rock, and after that, nothing. Seumus and Bryan toiled in obscurity for two years before meeting Mike somebody and then another Mike somebody and they thus became Iris, Fallen Iris, and then ultimately, as things began to coalesce, it was time to move again, back to Virginia, and to a new high school his senior year.
Wasn't really all that bad. Never went to class, graduated tenth, but the musical element almost disappeared from Seumus' life. He began composing almost exclusively on the piano, and almost always alone. Had not fate stepped in and saved him from musical oblivion. Orientation day for college and who does he see? Who else but scumbag himself, Brett Meyer! Collaboration begins anew, but it will be a collaboration that will take nearly five years to reach fruition and see Seumus and Brett venture across a Thompsonesque landscape littered with wasted efforts and untimely consequences.
But hey, that's what college is supposed to be right? Our right of passage, pass or fail, graduate or not, degree magna cum laude or not, whatever. After several attempts to finish school Seumus came to realize that being on stage, that being in front of people, performing, making them feel something that they had never felt before, that was his calling, that was his destiny, and thus, when Seumus and Brett were reunited in 2003, they began the long hard slog to where they are today: being forced to write biographies about themselves in the third person so they can put it on their website.
And it was a long road, a ridiculous convoluted and contorted attempt to break into the bar scene in Atlanta and it began with the two them playing crappy blues gigs with an aging drummer-less than six months later they had found a new drummer, Bill Sommer who was subsequently replaced by Nathan Lathouse with was subsequently replaced with Bill Sommer and Spliff Star and T-Bone who are being replaced by Bill Sommer. Yeah, we know, it's complicated.
But that's where we are pretty much. Trying to write music, learn whacked out crazy covers and make them our own, and basically overall learn the art of performance so that Seumus, in concert (oh, the puns!) with Slip Tripman can become the best performance artists that we can possibly be.
Oh and make so money too, that would be nice.