History

“Its not enough just to breath,
just to be here, then die.
I want life for me,
I want to make life happen for me”

Adventures
Sometimes the great adventures come from out of no where, work their magic, and then pass as quickly as they had arrived. I was really looking to start a band when I was browsing the classified section of Bakotopia.com. I remember the ad catching my eye because their listed most of the bands of influence that I also shared. Modest Mouse, Jets to Brazil, Cursive, etc, a quick email was replied to and we met at Kyle’s house for the first time. Kyle and Brian had been in a short lived band called Murder of me before splitting off and wanting to do a different kind of sound. They had recorded a decent catalog of music without lyrics, many of which ended up on our first record. We had a few practices at that house together while I got up to speed with their music. We were actively looking for a singer/songwriter since none of us felt up to the job.

We found a singer
I was in Fresno when Kyle told me that they had a possible singer. He was a friend of a friend and had experience singing in some bands I had never heard of as well as working as a session musician for a local recording studio. Keaton has a soulful vocal style, and he also wrote lyrics well, some of which are still my favorite lines, and we finally had a complete band. We started narrowing down music that worked from the pieces that didn’t mesh into songs well. We also wrote a few new tunes (Roadside, Proper Attitude). Our first demo recordings were actually Keaton singing over our prerecorded vocal-less tracks. Once we had a decent lineup we book our first show at the Lengthwise Pub, playing on a raised stage behind the bar. This show went well and the audience was very receptive, so we settled into our routine of practice and performance. We had several possible names for the band (Bedroom Sessions was originally a band name suggestion and would later become our album name), but none of them would stick. That is when someone suggested the name Pharaoh Jones saying its the ruler of the scene, or a really hip dude. Many times people would ask what it meant, but to be honest, I think we picked the name because it just sounded right.

The Outrage
Around that time, Kyle moved from his house downtown to an apartment in the southwest. We could no longer practice there and no one else’s house was suitable. Luckily Keaton’s dad owned the Outrage Salon on 20th street where he and Keaton worked and we were able to make use of the space at night. Three to four nights a week we would push the salon chair forward, set up our equipment, and run through our set. We were also do a lot of song writing there, and most of our songs from that point on were writing at the Outrage.

The great part about this space was because it sat on 20th street in downtown, we got a lot of night life foot traffic as people moved from one bar to another. We would regularly get walk-ins who would take a seat and listen for a while, give opinions, and later would even buy merchandise during our practice sessions.

Step four: Profit!
We had a strong desire to make this band more than just a hobby. We were all aware that bands becoming profitable was rare, but we were going to give it our best while keeping our expectations in check. We started making simple merchandise like t-shirts, stickers, and buttons, and we sold a decent amount. Kyle’s girlfriend at the time would usually run the merchandise during shows. We knew we needed to get our music out and into people’s hands if we were going to have any exposure at all, so we started working on the record. We quickly realized that our initial recordings were not good enough and the song structures had changed so much since we had recorded them that we had to record them again from scratch. Recording the guitars was easily done at Kyle’s home studio with bothering his neighbors.

The drums though posed a problem. Our practice space was much too acoustically reflective to record them, and were could not play them at our housed without incurring the wrath of our neighbors. The solution came from a friend of Keaton’s who rented an office above the Outrage. This office was carpeted and would make a decent recording space. Kyle hauled his recording equipment downtown for a marathon night of drum recording. The rest of the band and our friends would wait patiently outside skateboarding and listening to music until a session was done. Then we would all come in and listen to it with our guitar tracks and make comments before Brian would go back to playing again. We did record one vocal part in that space where all our friends and the band would sing “Hey Yeah!” for Three Month Stand.

Finally, the bulk of the vocals were recorded in the living room of the house I was renting downtown. Kyle set off to produce and master the tracks we had recorded while I began work on the album cover. We decided on an album name of Bedroom Sessions in reference to our early beginnings recording in Kyle’s bedroom. The cover art was supposed to be an audio reel, but it was actually an old 8mm roll that was my grandparent’s home movies. I wanted my our album to be a full CD with a real screen printed label because if people were going to pay money for it, I didn’t want it to look like I put it together at Kinkos. I found an local company that would screen print blank CD-Rs and I purchased 100 (which was the minimal order).

The inserts were designed on my computer and then I would take them to Kinkos were I had a friend that worked as a manager. He would let me make test prints to get the color and alignment correct, and basically gave me my entire order for free. He was the night manager back when Kinkos was open 24 hours so I had many nights staying up until 4-5am printing and cutting inserts. I cut, folded, and assembled all 100 CDs, put them in boxes ready to be recorded and sold.

On the audio side of the production, Kyle was turning out new revisions every couple of days. We would burn them to CDs and then play them in our cars, at people’s houses, at parties. We listened to our own so much during that time that it was a testament to the quality of the songs that I even want to listen to them today. Once we could not find anything else to fix, we started burning the actual CDs and started selling them for $10 each.

Jackson Ramone
We had settled into a decent schedule of shows in the Bakersfield and surrounding areas. We played parties and festivals almost every weekend while we practices and wrote new material during the week nights. During our shows Keaton would play some of the second guitar parts that we had on the album, but it was clear that to fully bring our studio sound to the live show we needed another guitarist. Once again a friend of a friend recommended Jackson Ramone. He joined our line up even helped us get studio time at Point Loma Nazarene College’s recording studio. We laid down tracks for three new songs that were to go on our next album. Kyle took the recordings home and began mastering them.

The story ends
It was during these last few months that I met a woman who would soon become my wife. I felt that My situation would not be fair to either the band of my fiance and I let the band know that I would be leaving. The concert in the video section is one of the last shows we played together. Pharaoh Jones continued to play shows for a year or more after I left. The members all moved on to other projects like The Councilmen, and I began a career as a Paramedic. It was a fun adventure, and I had many great memories. I hope this site is a good memorial to the band and all the fun we had.

-Nathan