The Spikedrivers 20 year Reunion

I was up in Columbus Ohio earlier this month to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of playing in a band called ‘The Spikedrivers.’ If you were in central Ohio in the early 2000’s, there’s a good chance you caught us playing at a club on High Street such as Little Brother’s, Dick’s Den, or Oldfield’s on High. That is where we started back in 2003 - at least Jesse Henry, Steven Fox, and me, though I knew them before then. I met Jesse in college at Capital University and Fox when he sat in with another High Street band I was in, The Solar System Navigators (yes, that’s right!) Over the years we’ve grown and changed and evolved into what we are in the year 2023.

Photo by Manjari Sharma, Ravari Room, Columbus OH, 2004

I had just gotten off the road touring with Luther Wright and the Wrongs when Paul Goll, the original guitarist in the Spikedrivers, invited me to come down and jam with the band at Oldfield’s. “Sounds like fun” I said and when I walked in and saw Jesse and Fox, I was like ‘Oh I know them!’ and boom! A magical, sonic, extraordinary bond was formed. Jesse Henry was in a very prolific writing phase, and it rubbed off on me as I was just finding my footing in songwriting as well. We started collaborating and singing together and our connection was synchronous and life-affirming. It caught on in the Columbus music scene like wildfire and our first show at Dick’s Den was to a sold out crowd and warranted a write up by the crankiest writer for ‘The Other Paper,’ John Petric (I might have the press clip somewhere??) and off we went.

We put out a few records over the years and developed a solid fan base. We played many 2 or 3 set gigs that lasted hours and were basically like marathons. I’ve never been so challenged to up my game as a musician and be able to hang in there with unusually quick tempos and gaps of long solos. We were a country jam band. These were popping up over the regions - and we were compared early on to bands like Old Crow Medicine Show, Railroad Earth, The Avett Brothers and other roots based projects. I believed we were going to keep on rising and I invested in the project because I thought we had a chance to make a living doing it. Our fans certainly gave us a ton of confidence. After a gig, I would feel happily exhausted. We had achieved musical nirvana, and despite being soaked in beer, I was quite happy the next day when I opened up my fiddle case and it was still smoking like last night’s campfire!

But life… happens! And even when you think you know what’s gonna happen, it always turns out differently than you imagined. And even families, which bands become, change and morph into what they are to become. It’s always interesting and often surprising!

When I was heading up to Ohio a couple weeks ago, I decided to listen to the band’s discography from beginning to end. Well, the studio stuff anyway. 3 Records:

1. The Spikedrivers (self titled, 2004)

2. Gather Round (2009)

3. Sunset Motel (2014)

I have some memories of making these records but no memory of listening to them after we finished them, as in I am pretty sure I NEVER DID.

We played the songs so frequently that the recordings, though important, seemed like an afterthought compared to the energy of the live shows. It was hard to capture the band on tape, I thought at the time. I was too close to truly see the full perspective of it all, and also so self-critical that nothing sounded right to my ears anyway.

Since Jesse had called a bunch of the old songs for this run in September 2023, I knew I needed to listen to the old stuff to make sure I remembered the complex and unpredictable intros/outros, vocals harms, and unique breaks in the band often designed by what members were influencing us at that time - Paul Brown, Steve Sweney, John Boerstler - and Jesse himself, the musical director of sorts that had quirky ideas drenched in music theory along with gospel, blues, and rock and roll sketches.

It’s a 6 hour drive from Nashville to Columbus so I basically had 2 hours per record to digest and review. And you know what, I was blown away and moved to tears listening to what we’ve put out there. It brought back strong memories of ups and downs over the last 2 decades - what I’ve been through, what we’ve been through as a band and the community we have, and I was full of so much love for all of it. I heard lines and lyrics of Jesse’s that I felt like I’d never ‘heard’ before and was more impressed than ever at songs he’d written so long ago. I was surprised about what songs were on which record, and probably would have failed a multiple choice test in advance.

I rolled in early evening and met my friends Andrea and Missy at O’Reilly’s pub to talk about their upcoming wedding and play some oldies on the jukebox and then the 4 night run took off the next evening at Natalie’s Grandview in the big room. I was terrified. NO REHEARSAL. We quickly reviewed a few entrances and exits of songs in the soundcheck, said a Hail Mary and hoped for the best!

We played as a 5 piece - Jesse, Fox, Nate Anders on drums (member since 2004) and Adam Schlenker on electric guitar (member since around 2012). The 5 piece is my favorite because it’s never as loud and gives me a little more room to play on fiddle.

It was magical and we hit most of the marks on the tunes. Singing came easily and the quiet of the room let us hear ourselves in a way we possibly never had. I felt the years of experience in our voices blend together; so many harmonies between us all and it reminded me how singing with the ones you love to sing with can be one of the most spiritual experiences possible as a musician.

The next 3 shows were the same in different ways, and if you were at any of them you might know what I mean. The cosmos of the band is still intact, and it’s the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Jesse’s line from ‘Walked off the Auction Block’ music’s got the power to save’ still rings true. We might not play often, but when we do, that initial spark still ignites. It makes it fun to be alive.

Our next and last known gig is coming up October 7, 2023 in Columbus again, at the Into the Woods Fest - it’s a free festival! And on the 8th of October, I’ll be at Natalie’s Grandview with my own band, which I’m really excited to be playing with - Brett Burleson (guitar) Maxwell Button (drums) Nate Smith (bass) and of course Jen Miller will be singing with me. Perhaps I’ll travel down memory lane and pull out a few older MP classics from the old days!

thanks for listening! love, m

PS - if you have a memory of seeing this band, tell me where and when!

PPS - Here’s one from Comfest, captured back in the day at Comfest by Tapecat