History of the Fallen Roadies

Fallen Roadies were born in a six-by-eight room near an ancient oil-burning furnace in the basement of a former one-room schoolhouse in rural Platteville, Wisconsin. Erik and Art started learning some cover tunes in January 2000 with no particular goal in mind other than playing some music.Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" probably was the first tune they played together; the Beatles' "You Can't Do That" and "Come Together" followed shortly.

Soon, they were having too much fun to confine themselves to the furnace room, as they called it, so they took their two-man show to a couple of open-mike shows at the Gamehendge Pub in Platteville, making their debut in March. Encouraged by the response, they booked themselves in for a few Wednesday evenings at the Gamehendge.

After a flurry of shows in April and May, including UW-Platteville's Circle Fest, an outdoor multi-band extravaganza, the Roadies took the summer off from performing and concentrated on song writing. When the fall semester began, they took up where they left off in Platteville, but this time they were mixing original music in with the covers.

They also developed a relationship with a fabled Platteville band, The Green Situation, and opened for the GS guys at various venues, including Dudley's in Madison. They also continued writing new music and performed several of the new numbers within days of writing them. (Erik also narrowly escaped having his face rearranged by a guy who took offense during the premiere of "Better Off Dead," but that's another story.)

Staring the true new millennium in the face, the Roadies decided the future lay in more originals and more musicians. They began rehearsing with Tony in December 2000; Mike joined up on the drums early in 2001. By this time, the Roadies had reversed position, evolving from a cover band that played a few originals into an original band that plays a few covers.