Again, for the First Time | Bleach
release date: 2002 record label: Tooth and Nail
track listing: 1) Intro
2) Baseline
3) Celebrate
4) Broke in the Head
5) We are Tomorrow
6) Fell Out
7) Weak at the Knees
8) Found You Out
9) Said a Lot
10) Almost Too Late
11) Andy’s Doin’ Time
12) Knocked Out
13) Jenn’s Song
“All that I’ve done, I hope that it counts…”
My youngest brother, Joseph, was born on August 29th, 1989, in Lexington, KY. Every year, as the summer begins to wind down, my family searches for birthday presents, my mother purchases a cake, makes a big meal, and gathers a slew of family and friends together to celebrate. And like clockwork, one story gets retold, year in and year out. The time that I, his oldest brother, ruined his birthday.
Like everyone else, I have my fair share of character flaws, but one tends to rival all others in intensity: my lack of foresight. Making plans has never been my strong suit. In my excitement, I ignore flaws obvious to most anyone else. Literally, every trip I go on finds me arriving at the destination without something crucial: a toothbrush, deodorant, shoes. On a trip to Florida with my cousin, I forgot to pack underwear.
In the fall of my sophomore year at the University of Kentucky, I heard about a concert in Nashville. I was dead set on attending. Having recently gotten a job, I scrapped together enough money to order a ticket. As the weeks passed, and the day of the show grew closer, my anticipation hit a fever pitch. In my single-minded excitement, however, I had failed to recognize two glaring problems.
First, I would be attending the concert alone. Not usually a problem, except in this case, as the ever-dutiful student within me planned on driving back to school after the show. I didn’t want to miss classes Friday morning. Somehow, the seven-hour round trip didn’t faze me. Second, and most important, the day of the concert also happened to be the day that my little brother was brought into this world. Learn from my mistakes: if you plan to miss your fifteen-year-old brother’s birthday party for a concert, you should tell him before the party.
I arrived at my parent’s house the afternoon of the concert, proud of myself for leaving enough time to at least see my brother on his special day; he was lucky to have such a thoughtful older brother. After singing “Happy Birthday,” the family sat down for a huge dinner. Finishing my food quickly, I got up from the table and announced that I had to leave. Every face in the room turned toward me, varying degrees of shock and surprise on each of them. You’d have thought I had just crowned myself the king of Narnia. I hadn’t anticipated this. I started to blush. Naturally, my brother asked why.
“I’m going to a concert,” I answered matter-of-factly. To say I was unprepared for his reaction would be an understatement.
“A concert?”
“Uh, yeah,” I replied sheepishly.
“On my birthday?!”
I was almost beginning to feel guilty about it. Almost.
“It’s their last show. Ever.”
My father raised an eyebrow, “Who’s playing?”
“Bleach.”
My brother shook his head in disbelief.
“Bleach?!”
I thought my family had gathered to celebrate my brother’s birthday, but from their appalled stares, I was beginning to wonder if they had assembled to prevent me from attending the show. I was beginning to feel desperate. “They’re my favorite band… it’s their last show!” I said again, to no one in particular.
“Where is this concert?” my mother asked. With my answer, I could see the worry begin to move across her face. “Is anyone going with you?”
I shook my head.
“Son, you will fall asleep at the wheel and die on the side of the road.”
Mom’s a worrier.
I reminded everyone, for what seemed like the tenth time, that this was Bleach’s final show. “I have to be there!”
My mother proceeded to speak words that shook me to the core.
“Well, then I’m going with you.”
Simultaneously, my brother and I blurted out the same response: “What?!”
“Its my birthday!”
“MOM! I’m eighteen! I think I can drive myself to Nashville!”
Thirty minutes later, I was riding in a minivan. And I was not alone. If you’re going to skip your little brother’s birthday for a concert, and you don’t tell him ahead of time, at least have the decency not to rob him of his mother as well.
Every year, on August 29th, when the story gets retold, those unfamiliar with the tale question me, an air of righteous indignation in their voices.
“You missed your brother’s birthday for a concert?”
Seven years later, it still shocks me that no one will accept my answer.
“It was their last show!”
Two years prior to that fall afternoon – almost to the day – Bleach released their fourth studio album: Again, for the First Time. The group broke onto the Christian music scene in 1996 with their debut album, Space, but it was their second and third albums, Static in 1998 and Bleach in 1999, that cemented Bleach as a mainstay in the Christian music industry. Not bad for a band birthed at a little college in eastern Kentucky. As 1999 came to a close, Bleach’s stock seemed to be rising by the day; critics and fans alike were certain the band was destined for even greater things. And then, seemingly overnight, Bleach disappeared.
Fans eagerly awaited a new album and another tour, but years passed with no word from the band. Behind the scenes, the foundation was crumbling, as members were lost to other pursuits. By 2000, the band comprised of five friends from Kentucky Christian University had been whittled down to only two: Davy Baysinger, lead vocalist and principal songwriter, and guitarist Sam Barnhart. The duo were forced to confront a difficult question: was this the end of Bleach?
It took three years for fans to get an answer to that question, but in August of 2002, Bleach burst back onto the scene with a new album, three new members, and a new lease on life. Brothers Milam and Jared Byers took over lead guitar and percussion duties, while Jerry Morrison and his bass guitar completed the new lineup. It was nothing short of a rebirth. Once facing the end of their musical dreams, the members of Bleach remerged with Thoreau’s passion to seize the day, live deliberately and “suck the marrow out of life.” The new set of songs were loud, rowdy and fun, but at the same time, deeply personal and reflective. Bleach, at once, had grown up and learned to let loose – the result was something truly magical.
Again for the First Time, the world’s reintroduction to a reborn Bleach, begins with a track aptly titled Intro. An instrumental piece, lasting all of eighteen seconds, it provides a perfect complement to the raucous mixture of rock, pop and punk to come. The band jumps into its new sound with Baseline. Clearly excited about being back where they belong, Davy sings “bring back / bring back the baseline / I think it’s about that time / I can’t afford to miss / I was made for this.” The party continues with Celebrate, a love letter which could equally have been written to a significant other, a band, or the God who “makes all things new.” With the boys backing him, Davy’s joy overflows: “I celebrate the day / that I met you / the impossible is possible / the unthinkable is coming true.”
But life isn’t all celebrations. On Again, for the First Time, Bleach gives significant time to exploring the rollercoaster that is human relationships. Most everyone can identify with the situation chronicled in Broke in the Head, “you haven’t said a single thing / the whole way home / the air is thick with awkward silence / so you turn up the radio,” or the description of heartache in Fell Out: “what’s wrong with me / I just been layin’ around / wishin’ it’d be like it was before I fell out / now is there any chance, that I can find romance / like we had back then, oh, I want it again.”
But Bleach is ready to offer something drastically missing from most songs about heartache: hope. In Weak at the Knees, Davy describes a dire situation by singing that “this hole is big / and my light is starting to burn out,” but for Bleach, darkness is never the end. By the conclusion of that same song, the band has found the will to carry on: “I won’t let go cause something inside me is saying hold on / just for one more night / I can’t explain it, but something is tell me its alright / it’s alright / You found me.” Likewise, in Said a Lot, frustration with a friend surfaces, “makin’ friends so you can use them / that’s the way you pick and choose them… you said a lot of things this year / half of them untrue.” But the boys in the band are unwilling to give up, the song ending with the promise “there is hope and I’m not jaded / my passion for this hasn’t faded / there is hope and it’s unchanging.”
But nothing preaches hope quite like Knocked Out, a song that, at certain times in the past, has literally brought me to tears. It begins, “how did I get here / all tied up … complacency has gotten the best of me / and the best of me is forgotten / beneath the sea of what I’ve become,” before going into the chorus, “all that I’ve done, I hope that it counts / I’d rather be knocked down / than to be knocked out.” Who hasn’t, at times in their life, wondered if they were going to be able to get back up? But hope finds us in the end, as it does with this song, with Davy definitely singing into the darkness, “I will sing at the top of my lungs / I will dance even if I’m the only one / and I hope that we’ll never be apart / and I will sing and I hope it heals my heart.” That kind of hope changes things.
Seven years after ruining my brother’s birthday and being chauffeured to Bleach’s last show by my mother, I have come to a realization: were I put into that situation again, I would make the same decision. Sure, I’d do things different the second time around – I warn my family beforehand, and do much more to make my brother feel loved on his birthday, but seeing the closing chapter on a band that has meant so much to me was something that I’ll never forget. Over a year after that concert, Bleach’s record label would release a double album entitled Audio / Visual, which contained a greatest hits-type retrospective of Bleach’s nine year career, as well as a DVD of their final concert. A few years back, I remember reading an article about Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York album, the first record released after the suicide of frontman Kurt Cobain. The writer of the article noted that, having attended the historic performance from which the album was recorded, he bought, but then never listened to the album. For him, the memories of the live performance would be diluted by listening to the recording; the same is true for me in regards to the DVD of the Bleach farewell show. I never watched it, because I lived it.
No band has meant as much to me as Bleach. The music, the honesty of the lyrics, the energy of the live shows, and the attitude of the band members make them unforgettable. I lost count of how many times I saw Bleach live through high school and college – but what I do have are memories. The time Davy climbed up the speaker towers and jumped off, into the loving hands of the mosh pit, inside a church in Wilmore. When I got stuck in traffic on my way to see them at the Ichthus Christian Music Festival and didn’t make the show; when I finally arrived, a close friend presented me with a piece of wood autographed by each band member. That last show in Nashville, and the fact that my mom was probably right – as soon as the show was over, I crawled into the passenger seat of her van and feel asleep, my mother driving the entire distance back home. And every time, after each show, when the guys were gracious enough to stop and really talk to us. There was a time when I saw the band so much that they began to recognize me. What a shot of self-esteem for a high school student, to have his favorite band actually know him.
Davy, Sam, Milam, Jared and Jerry – rest assured, all that you’ve done has counted. Over and over and over again.
Each time I write a new blog, I poke around the internet, researching it and the band. I was going through this ritual with Again for the First Time, remembering my favorite band, when, completely by accident, I came across something that made me yell like a school girl: bleachisalive.com.
Apparently, the boys have one more rebirth in them; I couldn’t be more excited!
release date: 2002 record label: Tooth and Nail
track listing: 1) Intro
2) Baseline
3) Celebrate
4) Broke in the Head
5) We are Tomorrow
6) Fell Out
7) Weak at the Knees
8) Found You Out
9) Said a Lot
10) Almost Too Late
11) Andy’s Doin’ Time
12) Knocked Out
13) Jenn’s Song
“All that I’ve done, I hope that it counts…”
My youngest brother, Joseph, was born on August 29th, 1989, in Lexington, KY. Every year, as the summer begins to wind down, my family searches for birthday presents, my mother purchases a cake, makes a big meal, and gathers a slew of family and friends together to celebrate. And like clockwork, one story gets retold, year in and year out. The time that I, his oldest brother, ruined his birthday.
Like everyone else, I have my fair share of character flaws, but one tends to rival all others in intensity: my lack of foresight. Making plans has never been my strong suit. In my excitement, I ignore flaws obvious to most anyone else. Literally, every trip I go on finds me arriving at the destination without something crucial: a toothbrush, deodorant, shoes. On a trip to Florida with my cousin, I forgot to pack underwear.
In the fall of my sophomore year at the University of Kentucky, I heard about a concert in Nashville. I was dead set on attending. Having recently gotten a job, I scrapped together enough money to order a ticket. As the weeks passed, and the day of the show grew closer, my anticipation hit a fever pitch. In my single-minded excitement, however, I had failed to recognize two glaring problems.
First, I would be attending the concert alone. Not usually a problem, except in this case, as the ever-dutiful student within me planned on driving back to school after the show. I didn’t want to miss classes Friday morning. Somehow, the seven-hour round trip didn’t faze me. Second, and most important, the day of the concert also happened to be the day that my little brother was brought into this world. Learn from my mistakes: if you plan to miss your fifteen-year-old brother’s birthday party for a concert, you should tell him before the party.
I arrived at my parent’s house the afternoon of the concert, proud of myself for leaving enough time to at least see my brother on his special day; he was lucky to have such a thoughtful older brother. After singing “Happy Birthday,” the family sat down for a huge dinner. Finishing my food quickly, I got up from the table and announced that I had to leave. Every face in the room turned toward me, varying degrees of shock and surprise on each of them. You’d have thought I had just crowned myself the king of Narnia. I hadn’t anticipated this. I started to blush. Naturally, my brother asked why.
“I’m going to a concert,” I answered matter-of-factly. To say I was unprepared for his reaction would be an understatement.
“A concert?”
“Uh, yeah,” I replied sheepishly.
“On my birthday?!”
I was almost beginning to feel guilty about it. Almost.
“It’s their last show. Ever.”
My father raised an eyebrow, “Who’s playing?”
“Bleach.”
My brother shook his head in disbelief.
“Bleach?!”
I thought my family had gathered to celebrate my brother’s birthday, but from their appalled stares, I was beginning to wonder if they had assembled to prevent me from attending the show. I was beginning to feel desperate. “They’re my favorite band… it’s their last show!” I said again, to no one in particular.
“Where is this concert?” my mother asked. With my answer, I could see the worry begin to move across her face. “Is anyone going with you?”
I shook my head.
“Son, you will fall asleep at the wheel and die on the side of the road.”
Mom’s a worrier.
I reminded everyone, for what seemed like the tenth time, that this was Bleach’s final show. “I have to be there!”
My mother proceeded to speak words that shook me to the core.
“Well, then I’m going with you.”
Simultaneously, my brother and I blurted out the same response: “What?!”
“Its my birthday!”
“MOM! I’m eighteen! I think I can drive myself to Nashville!”
Thirty minutes later, I was riding in a minivan. And I was not alone. If you’re going to skip your little brother’s birthday for a concert, and you don’t tell him ahead of time, at least have the decency not to rob him of his mother as well.
Every year, on August 29th, when the story gets retold, those unfamiliar with the tale question me, an air of righteous indignation in their voices.
“You missed your brother’s birthday for a concert?”
Seven years later, it still shocks me that no one will accept my answer.
“It was their last show!”
Two years prior to that fall afternoon – almost to the day – Bleach released their fourth studio album: Again, for the First Time. The group broke onto the Christian music scene in 1996 with their debut album, Space, but it was their second and third albums, Static in 1998 and Bleach in 1999, that cemented Bleach as a mainstay in the Christian music industry. Not bad for a band birthed at a little college in eastern Kentucky. As 1999 came to a close, Bleach’s stock seemed to be rising by the day; critics and fans alike were certain the band was destined for even greater things. And then, seemingly overnight, Bleach disappeared.
Fans eagerly awaited a new album and another tour, but years passed with no word from the band. Behind the scenes, the foundation was crumbling, as members were lost to other pursuits. By 2000, the band comprised of five friends from Kentucky Christian University had been whittled down to only two: Davy Baysinger, lead vocalist and principal songwriter, and guitarist Sam Barnhart. The duo were forced to confront a difficult question: was this the end of Bleach?
It took three years for fans to get an answer to that question, but in August of 2002, Bleach burst back onto the scene with a new album, three new members, and a new lease on life. Brothers Milam and Jared Byers took over lead guitar and percussion duties, while Jerry Morrison and his bass guitar completed the new lineup. It was nothing short of a rebirth. Once facing the end of their musical dreams, the members of Bleach remerged with Thoreau’s passion to seize the day, live deliberately and “suck the marrow out of life.” The new set of songs were loud, rowdy and fun, but at the same time, deeply personal and reflective. Bleach, at once, had grown up and learned to let loose – the result was something truly magical.
Again for the First Time, the world’s reintroduction to a reborn Bleach, begins with a track aptly titled Intro. An instrumental piece, lasting all of eighteen seconds, it provides a perfect complement to the raucous mixture of rock, pop and punk to come. The band jumps into its new sound with Baseline. Clearly excited about being back where they belong, Davy sings “bring back / bring back the baseline / I think it’s about that time / I can’t afford to miss / I was made for this.” The party continues with Celebrate, a love letter which could equally have been written to a significant other, a band, or the God who “makes all things new.” With the boys backing him, Davy’s joy overflows: “I celebrate the day / that I met you / the impossible is possible / the unthinkable is coming true.”
But life isn’t all celebrations. On Again, for the First Time, Bleach gives significant time to exploring the rollercoaster that is human relationships. Most everyone can identify with the situation chronicled in Broke in the Head, “you haven’t said a single thing / the whole way home / the air is thick with awkward silence / so you turn up the radio,” or the description of heartache in Fell Out: “what’s wrong with me / I just been layin’ around / wishin’ it’d be like it was before I fell out / now is there any chance, that I can find romance / like we had back then, oh, I want it again.”
But Bleach is ready to offer something drastically missing from most songs about heartache: hope. In Weak at the Knees, Davy describes a dire situation by singing that “this hole is big / and my light is starting to burn out,” but for Bleach, darkness is never the end. By the conclusion of that same song, the band has found the will to carry on: “I won’t let go cause something inside me is saying hold on / just for one more night / I can’t explain it, but something is tell me its alright / it’s alright / You found me.” Likewise, in Said a Lot, frustration with a friend surfaces, “makin’ friends so you can use them / that’s the way you pick and choose them… you said a lot of things this year / half of them untrue.” But the boys in the band are unwilling to give up, the song ending with the promise “there is hope and I’m not jaded / my passion for this hasn’t faded / there is hope and it’s unchanging.”
But nothing preaches hope quite like Knocked Out, a song that, at certain times in the past, has literally brought me to tears. It begins, “how did I get here / all tied up … complacency has gotten the best of me / and the best of me is forgotten / beneath the sea of what I’ve become,” before going into the chorus, “all that I’ve done, I hope that it counts / I’d rather be knocked down / than to be knocked out.” Who hasn’t, at times in their life, wondered if they were going to be able to get back up? But hope finds us in the end, as it does with this song, with Davy definitely singing into the darkness, “I will sing at the top of my lungs / I will dance even if I’m the only one / and I hope that we’ll never be apart / and I will sing and I hope it heals my heart.” That kind of hope changes things.
Seven years after ruining my brother’s birthday and being chauffeured to Bleach’s last show by my mother, I have come to a realization: were I put into that situation again, I would make the same decision. Sure, I’d do things different the second time around – I warn my family beforehand, and do much more to make my brother feel loved on his birthday, but seeing the closing chapter on a band that has meant so much to me was something that I’ll never forget. Over a year after that concert, Bleach’s record label would release a double album entitled Audio / Visual, which contained a greatest hits-type retrospective of Bleach’s nine year career, as well as a DVD of their final concert. A few years back, I remember reading an article about Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York album, the first record released after the suicide of frontman Kurt Cobain. The writer of the article noted that, having attended the historic performance from which the album was recorded, he bought, but then never listened to the album. For him, the memories of the live performance would be diluted by listening to the recording; the same is true for me in regards to the DVD of the Bleach farewell show. I never watched it, because I lived it.
No band has meant as much to me as Bleach. The music, the honesty of the lyrics, the energy of the live shows, and the attitude of the band members make them unforgettable. I lost count of how many times I saw Bleach live through high school and college – but what I do have are memories. The time Davy climbed up the speaker towers and jumped off, into the loving hands of the mosh pit, inside a church in Wilmore. When I got stuck in traffic on my way to see them at the Ichthus Christian Music Festival and didn’t make the show; when I finally arrived, a close friend presented me with a piece of wood autographed by each band member. That last show in Nashville, and the fact that my mom was probably right – as soon as the show was over, I crawled into the passenger seat of her van and feel asleep, my mother driving the entire distance back home. And every time, after each show, when the guys were gracious enough to stop and really talk to us. There was a time when I saw the band so much that they began to recognize me. What a shot of self-esteem for a high school student, to have his favorite band actually know him.
Davy, Sam, Milam, Jared and Jerry – rest assured, all that you’ve done has counted. Over and over and over again.
Each time I write a new blog, I poke around the internet, researching it and the band. I was going through this ritual with Again for the First Time, remembering my favorite band, when, completely by accident, I came across something that made me yell like a school girl: bleachisalive.com.
Apparently, the boys have one more rebirth in them; I couldn’t be more excited!
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