What a Bag of Snakes (or how The Rebel Wheel was re-born)

It has been a long time since our last blog in this series of Rebel Wheel Broadcasts. Usually when someone starts out with "it's has been a long time" they add, "and a lot has happened". Of course it has. The one thing anyone can count on is stuff happening. The longer the time, the more "a lot" enters into the sentence.

In my case, divorce, a series of deaths in the family, several heart-breaks and a lengthy detour down a folk-rock rabbit hole that started so well and ended so terribly is the bulk of what happened to me. Through it all though The Rebel Wheel kept on ticking, albeit in a kind of off-the-radar way as far as the prog-rock community was concerned.

I was also able to finish my 4th Symphony, my 5th string quartet, a whole series of electro-acoustic compositions, a batch of TV work and some hard rocking proggy stuff. Right now I am finishing my master's and am writing a large scale percussion piece using several techniques derived from my study of Bartok's technique of poly modal-chromaticism.

Since Whore's Breakfast (the band's first all-digital release) I have relied heavily on the splendid "bandcamp" site to distribute my music.It has worked a charm. I released four more albums for the Rebel Wheel in succession, all of which were either albums that had been released under other titles (Filth Therapy, Bag Of Snakes) or compilation albums of released tracks (5 Epics) or unreleased ones (3rd Wheel). These all basically helped me keep my hand in the game (foot in the door, head in the clouds).

Last year I wanted to do some hard rock after a disastrous tour to the East Coast with a certifiable sociopathic, megalomaniacal, loud-mouth, red-neck boor. A year of doing gigs with this person pretty much soured any taste I had for doing any work with posers. I should have known better. No matter. The good part was I immediately jumped into a hard-rock odd-metered aesthetic and after writing and recording for a few weeks came up with a new project called Bag Of Snakes. I released it on bandcamp and Cd Baby and it did well right out of the gates. It was only when a reviewer said that it sounded like Stone Temple Pilots meets Rush, did I realize I had basically written the perfect successor to Whore's Breakfast (the two compilation albums and Filth Therapy notwithstanding).

While touring the album with Alex Wickham and Andrew Burns it occurred to me that I also had a new Rebel Wheel unit on my hands so I very gleefully re-formed the band with them and swallowed The Bag of Snakes into the Rebel Wheel canon. Six months later we are writing, recording and rehearsing new material for the 2019 release of "Simple machines" which will be the 9th Rebel Wheel album and the 8th iteration of the band. Here is the Bag of Snakes unit before we decided we were really The Rebel Wheel