Tony Gallagher. Tone. Toner. I forget some of the other choice nicknames he had, but there were some doozies. Fragile Francis was one for a while I think. That was after he seemed to have gotten in his 6th automobile accident within a two year period.
He was the drummer in a band I was in way back. Actually, several, but Skilly was the one that we were in together the longest. Like 10 years? Maybe more. For those 10 years, it was me and my wife (the lovely and awesome Jenny, on bass and vox) and Tone, playing all types of gigs around the Delaware Valley, from the cool to the bizarre to the icky. Bars, VFWs, bowling alleys, pizza joints, parties and god knows where else. Oh that's right….diners too.
I don't know when I first met Tony, but it was in the early to mid 90s if I had to guess. We were even roommates for a bit back before I really knew him like that. He was just some hyper kid who played drums and worked at Radio Shack and was always recording some crazy shit. He could get some good sounds out of the jankiest equipment. He also built his own instruments, like the ToneSweeper, a theremin like box with buttons and dials that I always would use for weird sweeping sounds, or you could also make it sound like a set of angry bagpipes, which came in handy more than you'd think.
We started playing with him after I heard a cassette he had given a mutual friend, who then gave it to me. It was a bunch of different types of sounds. Things that sounded like Sebadoh and Pavement. Things that sounded like field recordings. Things that sounded like they were recorded in a nice studio. Funky things, pretty things. We were impressed and looking for a drummer, so I reached out.
We started jamming pretty regularly. Usually in his dad's radonized basement in Bensalem. It smelled of engine grease (which explained why the soap of choice there was Gojo) and cigarettes, but at least we smoked back then so our olfactory sense was suitably diminished. We went through several secondary guitar players for a bit there, but then finally we decided to go it as a 3-piece. Which is actually kind of freeing in a lot of ways, sonically.
That's also where we learned to write songs for real. Up until then, writing songs was usually a haphazard, slapdash affair where you'd just try to make something real happen for 3 minutes. Granted, I had a few songs I had written on my own, or had co-written with band members, but I honestly don't think I really got any good at it until my 30s. Before that it was usually “sing some nonsense over this track” or “here's this riff, let's play it over and over until the muse steers us towards something listenable”. I will say this: there is nothing as fun (for me anyway) as having a mic in front of you, headphones on, while a new-to-you track plays and you get to mess around with your vocals. Or when it was time for keyboard overdubs, whether it was needed or not. That was always the best too. We'd always make sure there was room in the mix for some MicroKorg shenanigans that each one of us would lay in the mix.
Tony had knack for writing stuff that was different from the kind of thing Jenny and I would write. We'd always be envious of how good his demos would sound, whereas our demos always sounded like they were recorded on a Fisher Price: My First Demo toy. The songs were usually good too. Tony would write on the lighter side more often than not. Some of his stuff was downright hilarious. Some of it was poignant though too. I still play his song “At The Laundromat”, a simple sweet little jangler about two people meeting. You'll never guess what happens next (Spoiler: They fall in love).
(Okay, I'll finger blab about Tone some more later on in some other blahg I'm sure, but let me try and quickly tell the story of how Crack It Open came to be. )
Skilly kind of went on hiatus after we had moved to NJ, and Tony had already moved to somewhere out by New Hope, PA (home of our fave place to play back then, John and Peter's!) so being older and 90 minutes away didn't do Skilly any favors, so we sort of dissolved amicably. We'd still get together and jam every couple of months, and show each other our newer demos and songs we were working on. We were getting real good by the end of Skilly, as far as recording and writing went, but we were even surpassing that by this point.
Tony came over one Sunday afternoon in the winter, I don't know what year. 2015 maybe? Beats me. It's been a minute, that's for sure. Anyways, we're at the point of the hang where the weed has smoked, some drinks were had and we're doing the “let me show you some pics of the kids” thing where we share our demos and what we've been working on.
I'm sure Jenny and I had some stuff we thought were heaters, and Tone had a few potential bangers in his arsenal too, but the last thing he played us was this moody-ass synthy thing he had mostly done using his MicroKorg (he got so much mileage out of that thing, I remember him seeing a clip of Warren Ellis using one in The Bad Seeds years laters and being like “that motherfucker is ripping me off!” which was impossible but still cracked me up to no end). We listened to it a few times. Then we started doing that thing where we just set up a mic (he had one of those portable Zoom studio thingys) and started taking turns trying to come up with something to sing over it.
I think I came up with the melody, but it was too high, so naturally Jenny was assigned the role of vocalist for this one. While her and Tony went line by line or stanza by stanza, I was sitting on our stairway jotting down whatever words and phrases came to mind. The music sounded like the drive you'd make from Philly to AC, hitting Roosevelt Blvd and then 676 and heading over a bridge and before too long, you're in the barrens. I wanted to capture that, and the little weird pockets in and around NE Philadelphia and South Jersey. I heard it as though it were a purple and orange sky getting split in half by some massive jalopy on the way to Margate or wherever. Stopping by at a cousin's house to refill your Zippo and maybe score some shitty acid. Maybe you're just saying hey, and realizing you've stayed too long despite having just arrived. Something like that.
We put it down on Tony's Zoom device and at some point, it got late and he split. We didn't have any blank discs so he could burn it for us to hear, but we agreed to get together again in a week or two and finish it and mix it.
I remembered the chords. At this time, it was in the key of B minor, but the chorus was in C, where it went from a Bmi to D thing then into the F to G part, but shouldn't work but it does. Nowadays when I sing it, I do it in Emi. But when it would kick into that F to G chorus? Butter, baby.
So, as the week went on, I figured “fuck it, I'll just re-record it in Garageband or ProTools" or whatever I was using then so we didn't have to wait a week or two to hear it. So I did. It wasn't as cool as Tony's, because I didn't have his damn MicroKorg, but it was passable. Jenny laced it with some nice vocals and we messed with some synthy sounds trying to capture what Tony's original demo did, but it fell a bit short.
Tony comes over. We smoke a joint and have some drinks and BS for a bit, and then it's time. I put it on. “Check this shit out, son” I probably say, waiting to hear his amazement at our almost recreating of his instrumental track with better vocals (now that we had more time to work them out) and all. He listens. We all do. It stops playing.
“Yo, that's really fucking cool! When did you guys do that? That's pretty sweet!” he says.
“You wrote the music, you goof.” We had to tell him.
“I did? When was that?”
“Like 2-3 weeks ago.”
“Wow. That's actually pretty good.”
He had completely forgotten that he wrote all of the music. We told him we were taking it.
“Taking what?” he said. “Looks like it's yours now. I have way too many other songs to finish so …have fun!”
So we took it. The song that he composed all of the music to. Sure, I handled the words and Jenny and I hammered the melody out, but that chord progression is what seals it for me.
I won't hit you with the bummer of Tone's passing, which we found out, after the fact, in a not-so-ideal way about two years ago. That sucked. We had lost touch for a bit. Life, you know. Kept up for a bit but then sometime around the shutdown it was impossible to get a hold of him. Then I found out why.
RIP Tony. Love ya buddy. You were one of a kind. The sound of one hand clapping (Literally, Tony could clap using just one hand). Uniquely gifted and hilarious, there ain't gonna be another one of you.
Juke
CRACK IT OPEN
The ride is so majestic
The Challenger splits the distance
Leave a trail of roaring empty
Sissy Jane in Nameless County
Crack it open
On the highway
Split the ahead like it's steam
You want to scream
Because we feel the same things
Still keeping it somewhere between
There'll be rat tails
Cut off half-tops
Skee Ball Palace run
Pulled on
Onto the Parkway
Rohm and Hass, the fire hung right there
Crack it open
On the highway
Split the ahead like it's steam
You want to scream
Because we feel the same things
Still keeping it somewhere between