I started my sonic side project, Citizen Nowhere, in 2003 when I moved from high school in Louisville, CO to New York University in…well, New York.

In Colorado, the time I had spent as Da7e for Serious Bob had gotten me interested in what I could do with ACID Pro 3.0 and multi-track recording both with direct-plugged instruments and my cheap USB mic. I devised a grand plan to release an album each semester under the name Citizen Nowhere.

Moving from Colorado to New York really through me for a loop and not only informed my solo pseudonym but the repeating themes of displacement, loss and introspective confusion.

The first semester of college saw my debut in the form of Book One: Alone In Americaland, which was an obvious title. Most of the songs had been refined in my freshman year dorm room and a series of collaborators found their way onto the release, from Ari Friedman, who would form Quintus that same year to Scarlett Corso [?] who played flute for my tiny USB mic.

Second semester saw me get more comfortable with my surroundings and friends, and lead to Book Two: Pretentious, which - with a couple exceptions - sucked. The exceptions included when I actually decided to make full songs, sometimes with the help of Nate Patterson, of Serious Bob fame.

Book III: Sin Seer followed in the fall of 2004. I did not intend to make another Citizen Nowhere album, but a soul-crushing breakup motivated me to make - gulp - a concept album. This album also saw the introduction of a naked, reclining woman on the cover of albums written mostly about…women.

Book Four: IV was a depressing album mostly motivated by my drug use in late 2004, early 2005. It plays more like a DJ set, with samples and copy written material running rampant. I’m mostly absent in a vocal sense, and while I imagine this is the least fun album to listen to, I actually very much enjoy it. I can still hear the ideas I had that motivated the experiment.

That ended the “Book” series of Citizen Nowhere. Four additional semesters of college passed and no albums came out. Things were certainly worked on, but nothing formed a unified piece.

The fifth Citizen Nowhere album, Valhalla, saw a tiny, blue, naked, reclining woman on the cover. Needless to say, my heart was ripped from my chest once more and music re-surged as the way to deal with it. That wasn’t the only reason. I had also gotten some new toys and continued work on other musical fronts. But, the masturbatory nature of Citizen Nowhere saw me cobble together old instrumental tracks from pre-2003 and entirely new tracks into a fifth effort.

Before the release of Valhalla, I took the iTunes playlist I had made of my favorite tracks off the “Books series” and released it on my blog as Mirrors & Masks, a Citizen Nowhere compilation and the last Citizen Nowhere cover to feature the name Citizen Nowhere prominently displayed. CN was created to document the transition into college and that was pretty much over.

Out Of Insight, Out Of Mind was the title of the sixth Citizen Nowhere album. It was named such because I don’t really know where that album came from. There were just leftovers from Valhalla and other projects that didn’t fit into anything else really, and they did sort of mirror my mind set at the time.

That’s six albums and one compilation since the fall of 2003.

“Probably a bad time to release the seventh album,” I thought. Both because it would be 3 albums in a year and because…how to put this delicately?….

…Out Of Insight, Out Of Mind was very approachable. A lot of the songs had pop sensibility at their base. Valhalla was about a woman and the past and resurrection, so that didn’t need to be accessible. The Solitary Vice (CN7), just isn’t accessible. I made it so I could listen to it (mostly).

Anyway, in the HUUUUUUUUGE ZIP file I’ve uploaded, I’ve included The Solitary Vice (BETA), just in case someone out there has time to download 531.8 MB and really wants a sneak peek at what this new introspective album sounds like. It will be changed.

Otherwise, if anyone but me has ever wanted all the Citizen Nowhere from the past 5 years, now is the time to get it.

I don’t think there is a place for Citizen Nowhere in the second half of 2009, or maybe ever again.

At least until the next life transition.

Click the image to beign your lengthy 531.8MB download of all 8 Citizen Nowhere albums. Should you so dare…

[There's so much I've already written about I'm Going Off Into The Dark Woods To Investigate Alone that I think I'll just leave it up to the official History of Serious Bob to clear up a lot of the time line...]

Jason, Nate and the Exposure! Battle of the Bands

After an unexpected and relatively disproportionate positive response from the 10 people who heard the Serious Bob demo, Da7e, Tai, and Elliott continued to record material after their first show at Monarch High School. They amassed a few songs before Tai and Elliott left Louisville to attend college at UNC (where they would record “Robot Song” and “Everything I Needed To Know I Learned From Serious Bob”). These were what Da7e calls The Cupid Sessions because he was hell-bent of lampooning “the end of love.” A few songs from The Cupid Sessions were transferred to Dark Woods (“The Park in Which Bacon Speaks,” “Kings of Yourkshire,” “Serial Killer,” and “Settle the Score”).
Serious Bob lay dormant as Tai and Elliott went to college while Da7e finished up at Monarch High School. However, before the second semester could end, Tai got a phone call.

Da7e says:

“Ty got a call from Concerts First who asked if his band wanted to play at a Battle Of The Bands at the Ogden Theater. I remember the response was immediately a full-steam-ahead sort of reaction. We had to get Nate and Jason together and teach them a whole bunch of songs in time for this huge gig. Then when we got there we noticed it was all punk and metal bands. That freaked us out a little because we were very obviously not fitting in with the other acts (some of them were really good). Then Ty remembered that he had signed up My Friend Matt, the punk band Nate and himself had been members of - not Serious Bob - for the Battle Of The Bands. So as soon as we all realized that had happened, we went out on stage with the goal just to put on the best possible show we could, and we weren’t in it to win anymore.”

Nate Patterson was a long-time friend of all the members of Serious Bob, and had frequently asked to join the band as a bassist. He was frequently rejected and told that Serious Bob was all-acoustic. Nate later purchased an acoustic bass to help his argument. Nate’s bass skills were never questioned, as he had tried out to be a bassist for the band VOID in 1999 (at the time, Tai was their lead guitarist). Nate and Da7e competed for the open position and though it eventually went to Da7e, Nate kept at the bass. Jason Frantz was the brother of long-time friend/collaborator Jess Frantz, as well as being the drummer for the theatrical metal band Turoke. Both musicians received the call, and the full-lineup of Serious Bob practiced the material for weeks in preparation for the Battle of the Bands.

By what any member will tell you was a stroke of luck. Serious Bob won the Battle of the Bands and was given free recording time at Time Capsule Studios in Denver.

Tai says:

“When we first got on stage we thought we were going to get our asses kicked, but somehow we won. And that was one of our greatest moments. A moment I know I will never forget.”

Da7e says:

“[After we heard we won], it was such a rush. I signed peoples flesh and pants and stuff that I threw out into the crowd. We sat around for while talking to everyone, and then I went to go collect the DAT. The sound guy said we should stick around because we were in the running to win. That floored all of us. The fact that we won still floors all of us. I remember giving everyone big hugs. It was the Ogden show that convinced us that we should keep this thing going. In a way, Serious Bob was really born.”

Time Capsule Sessions

The guys quickly transitioned into their first major studio experience (Tai and Da7e had previously recorded in a studio for VOID’s 3 song demo). It was decided that only a handful of tracks would be given the full studio treatment and – if the song had appeared on the demo previously – a title upgrade. “The FBI Song” became “FBI,” “The Serious Adventures of Sancho” was now “The Mysterious Adventures of Sancho,” “Jesus Was a Jew” became “Jesus Was a Jew (BAC Version).” Some tracks kept their demo names such as “The Love is Gone” and “Robot Song.” However, before the band could return to the studio for full mixing and mastering, Time Capsule deleted their analog reel, leaving the band with only the rough mixes for their album (that’s why Jason’s stick-click can be heard on all Time Capsule tracks).

Recording Dark Woods and The Live Period

Frustrated, but not down, Tai, Da7e, Elliott and Nate pillaged the best songs from The Cupid Sessions and completed I’m Going Off Into The Dark Woods To Investigate Alone in Tai’s basement with Tai acting as the producer.
During this period, Serious Bob played occasional live shows at Battles of Bands, small get-togethers, open-air malls and several open-mic nights at Boulder’s former coffee house Penny Lane. The advantage of working as an “acoustic band” was the ability to play anywhere at any time.

While the album was being mixed, Tai and Da7e were called back up to Greeley to work on a restoration project: making and old house look new enough for Tai and BOBfriend Phil Ruwitch to live in. During this period, another BOBfriend named Alexis Jackson, who has seen Serious Bob at the Exposure! Battle of the Bands, proposed that Serious Bob make the road trip to Montrose, Colorado to play a live show at a local venue she would rent out. Tai and Da7e agreed that if she could get the space, the Bob would come.
Dark Woods was sent out to be duplicated, and Serious Bob loaded all their equipment into Tai’s car and Da7e’s purple van, driving to Montrose to play what would be their last show for several years. BOBfriend Chris Mulford (who had played bass in Da7e’s first band ESEN) came along to mix the sound.

Tai, Elliott and Da7e rejoice in their newest effort.

In Montrose, Serious Bob played to an exclusive crowd, playing a full set of material, giving out signed baby heads and later drinking with the audience, Alexis and BOBfriend Amy.

When the album came back, Serious Bob briefly and foolishly departed from their FREE music philosophy and charged a handful of people money for Dark Woods. That was quickly ended as more and more copies were given away for FREE to people that had supported Serious Bob since its inception.

So there you go, that’s the history, for the most part. Enjoy Serious Bob’s first real effort, and still one of our best: I’m Going Off Into The Dark Woods To Investigate Alone. The ZIP file includes all the tracks, the cover, the tray art AND the insert art for those of you unlucky enough to miss out on the physical release. It was years ago, so I don’t blame you.

Click the cover to begin your download!

Click to download ZIP File

VOID was, for all intensive purposes, the first real band where Tai and I collaborated. To be even weirder in the whole mess-o-incestuous, the lead singer of VOID, Danny Elias, was dating Jess Frantz at the time and Nate Patterson was the only other bass player they auditioned (besides yours truly).

I seem to remember that Johnny Askew (keyboards) and Danny decided VOID was the most poetic word in the English language.

We practiced, we fought, we fought about girlfriends coming to practice. Finally, we scrapped together enough money to get into a recording studio to cut three demo songs.

And those are currently here under the title “An Occasion For Sausage,” since I was eating a summer sausage during the single-day recording session (that’s all we could afford).

I wrote a little about VOID in the past for the “Evolution Of A Song: Sancho” post, which will be re-posted in it’s entirety sooner or later. Until then, let’s look at what I had to say about VOID and “Fallout” the lead-off demo song on An Occasion For Sausage:

download link “Fallout” by VOID off An Occasion For Sausage

I don’t remember how Tai and I both got involved in VOID. I’m pretty sure that Tai was poached from ADIAN, our semi-successful rock band. ADIAN was always more concerned about the lifestyle associated with having a garage band, right down to actually rehearsing in a garage and getting really high before practicing. Tai and JD, the drummer would have minor spats about just how good JD was while high. That’s really what I can remember about ADIAN’s practices.

At some point, ADIAN played a show with one of the many VOID incarnations. VOID was started by Danny Elias and Johnny Askew, two singer/songwriters with certain reputations. We’re talking about a very enclosed world here: Monarch High School and the various bands that were fighting for turf amongst the small student body. Everyone knew everyone else, knew some of their songs and knew who was worthless and who played their instruments well enough.

Long story abbreviated, Tai and I matriculated out of ADIAN and into VOID. It’s unclear how important of a move this was for our musical career as, yes, it was a small world, but I beat Nate in a series of bassist tryouts to secure my spot and at the time, we would tell Danny not to bring his girlfriend to practices, and his girlfriend was Jess Frantz, who I was still unaware of.

VOID buckled down and became as serious as a high school band could be. Where as ADIAN was all about wearing makeup, going to parties and singing songs about fire and cows, VOID practiced at least three times as much and pooled together enough money to record a demo (which you can listen to in its entirety here) and buy a sound-mixing board.

When VOID inevitably broke up, Danny Elias took the mixing board that we were supposed to auction on eBay. The money would be split between Ty, Johnny, Brady (the drummer), Danny and I, but Danny ended up selling the board for coke money.

I haven’t seen Danny since.

The VOID “single,” if there was one, was “Fallout” a proto-metal song that never really kicked into a high enough gear. “Fallout” was written by Tai and Danny, officially, or just Tai if you listen to the guy that didn’t screw us out of hundreds of dollars.

Long story once again abbreviated, Tai kept the masters of the demo sessions and – with the blessing of Johnny – Tai and I took “Fallout” over to Serious Bob.

The two other tracks have brief stories:

“Canon” - Is Canon in D with Elias-written lyrics about punching a hemophiliac cop.
“Stay” - is actually a song, if I didn’t pop the pickups on my Fender Jazz bass as much as I do (”I meant to do that.”)

You can download the whole 3-Song VOID demo, An Occasion For Sausage, by clicking the immaculately designed cover (which I made in a hurry earlier this year).

I’m not going to pussy foot around why this song is posted now. It was a series of events that lead me to the oft-forgotten “Joy Of Sex,” Tyler Patrick Hart’s seven-minute-and-five-second opus off his 2002 high school project techno album.

First, I needed to reduce the amount of music I had on my laptop because of expanding production efforts in visuals and music (more craziness out of the Citizen Nowhere/Mystery Project camps), an the other was that I can now e-mail this post to Tai (or at least link to it from his Facebook wall) to remind him that he still hasn’t zipped the whole damn 2002 album and sent it over to me yet.

I have “Joy Of Sex” as a WAV file for some damn reason, and I din’t think I’ve had a copy of the album since it’s inital release.

Why would I get a copy of this at all? Well, whatever the official name of the electronica album was, I had a hand in co-producing some of Ty’s tracks. Honestly, until I hear it again, I can’t tell how much I really did. In my mind I did entire tracks by my lonesome, only to take the ACID 3.0 file and have Tai do a final mix on it (it was his grade, after all).

“Joy Of Sex” is loops-based and - once again, this is from my sketchy memory - I think it was the track that convinced the Monarch High School choir/electronic music teacher Mr. DuFresne that Tai could throw together an electronica album over the semester. He did, with a little help from myself and Keith Dickerhoffee (who I recently saw again in Boston). Keith was/still is a pretty good DJ and - once again, this may be a false memory - suggested inserting the female orgasm sounds that start around 3:12.

While Tai was working on this project, Serious Bob was being born using the minor recording skills he acquired on this project.

Funny thing: if you paid Tai and I’s rent and food costs for a semester, I’m pretty sure we’d make at least 5 albums of varying genre and feel. One semester = 1 electronica album and 1 Serious Bob demo is actually low-production for us. However, both our parents and our peers had no idea that the radical shift to electronica and acoustic joke rock took place that semester, and most of them were probably expecting VOID.

download link “Joy Of Sex” by Ty Hart

So, Tai: send me the rest of this shiznat!