1989

Skelly joins ATTAXE

The year began with more of this "dead" period for the band - no gigs, writing was not happening. Jeff had learned all the songs and Rob was writing some new lyrics but it was going very slow. (I think the future of the band was unclear - evidenced by the fact that we didn't take any new band photos once Jeff joined.)

We had always been big fans of Skelly's band "Steel Fury". Mike had kept in contact with Skelly after our Texas trip and found out that Skelly's band had since broken up and he had moved back to Florida. At some point it happened that Mike convinced Skelly he should join our band so we told Rob he was out (a bad scene), Skelly flew in to LAX and we picked him up at the airport. As fate would have it Tim "Skelly" Cason joined ATTAXE as vocalist nearly a year after our first meeting. Our sound immediately took on a heavier style and Skelly's lyric writing was what we had always been looking for (at least for me it was). Skelly had some lyrics which he adapted to become "Cost of Life" very quickly - and "Passive" came along soon after. The band really began to gel again.

The first photo shoot with Skelly & Jeff - taken in the empty pool in the back of the house that Jim rented on Heim Street in Orange. These were never used because the background was too cluttered and they didn't photocopy well. (This was long before we used any kind of computer software/digital imaging.)

































A second photo shoot was done on the roof of our rehearsal studio (photographer was Darren Porter) which yielded the photo used in the "Displaced Demo" liner notes as well as this first promo 8x10 which was sent with presskits. Pictured left to right: Todd May, Tim "Skelly" Cason, Jim Houle, Jeff Manino, Mike Bonaventura.