Judah (The one from Seattle)

Here's going back a few years to my Judah days.

Vocals:  Darren Lyda
Guitar:  Dave Landon
Bass:  Derek Close
Drums:  David Petrie

Did you guys ever record anything?

Was a name starting with D a requirement.  

We recorded a 6 song demo tape called One Step From the Basement.

Having a name starting with D was purely coincidence but funny!  Of course having 2 Daves was weird.

Want to hear the demo tape!!!!

Yes, let us hear the demo!

When did you record this? What venues did you guys perform at?

The demo was recorded in '97 at our storage unit practice space on an 8-track cassette Tascam.  We only did a handful of gigs.  That above video was our 2nd show at Smokey Point Community Church in WA.  Must have been '96 or '97.  We played churches mostly.  A couple of schools at non-school functions.  We did a gig at the Omak Stampede in Omak, WA.

Very cool!

That church acts like they didn't get what they expected! Looks like they're all sitting down, but at least they clapped. Of course, your vocalist's stage presence isn't helping any there (despite an excellent voice). Looks like you and the guitarist enjoyed yourselves at least.

Sounds like great songwriting. If you have that demo, you should clean it up and post it!

That was our 2nd gig ever so we were new on the scene and new to each other.  I had known Dave, the guitarist for several years so we were pretty comfortable with each other.  Not to mention he and I had been pretty active in bands and playing around for quite a while.  He wrote the majority of Judah's material.

The audience loosened up as the night went on.  This vid was like the 3rd song into the set.  We hit them with 3 songs without any stops so they were in shock.  Yeah.  That's it.  Total and complete shock.

Unfortunately we never got to record that song.  I don't recall why we didn't put that one on the demo.

Where's the mosh pit!? LOL!!  

I was actually thinking the same as topshot ... the vocalist sounds great, but he really dropped the ball when it comes to getting the crowd into it.

Xid wrote:

That's it.  Total and complete shock.

I think it was the hair.  "Who let these long-haired heathens in here!? I'm calling an emergency board meeting first thing tomorrow! We canNOT let this happen again!"

 

Chalk it up to inexperience.

It was at his church that we were playing.

Xid wrote:

Chalk it up to inexperience.

It was at his church that we were playing.

Not criticizing ...   You'd never catch me up there in ANY capacity!  I am purely a rock and roll user, not a rock and roll provider!

I didn't take it as being critical and no offense was taken. I think Judah was Darren's first band.  He had performed with choirs and such but never as the front man.

I remembered that I do have VERY demo recordings of some of the early stuff.  Here is the one for the song Rapture in the video.  Alan Boyd is on vocals and Dave's drum machine "Neil" is handling the beat.  I believe we recorded on a little 4-track cassette machine.

Rapture: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7fpkdmprsrferas/01%20Rapture.mp3

Xid .... I want to hear the demo too.