Does doom or sludge count?
I got to hangout with, play (practice), sit behind the stage with Eyehategod during their first show post hurricane Katrina at the Howling Wolf club (bar, venue?) (I have the stub pasted in a journal somewhere in storage... I'll produce it if pushed) in New Orelans. Every one except Gary Maurder, Marder Maderz whatever (bassist, merch manager, and guitarist(?) from Hawgjaw) was cool as fuck. A few members from the EHG forum "For the Sick" (I think that was the name) and I jammed out in joey lacaze's house. The members from the forum were way more, and probably still more, talented than i was/am (they formed a group call My Uncle the Wolf which is mid-slapper at best, basically Down without the umpf since they had a half nigger singer). We played a song from Sleep (Dragonaut, super simple song to pick up by ear), and everyone not in EHG got mad because I down tuned Jimmy Bower's guitar (I was 20... the fuck did I know), but Jimmy and Joey watched us and cheered us on in Joey's living room.
I met Brian Patton (guitarist of Eyehayegod and Soilent Green) either the day before or the day after at a coffee house and he recognized me and my friend from the forum (we were both wearing Solient Green and Eyehategod merch) and he was the coolest. He knew I was a starstruck dummy and treated me with nothing expected ribbing and respect (years later he remembered me from that and gave me a soilent green work jacket).
Gary (Marder? The longest running bassist lol) hooked me up for a place to stay one night at his place on one condition: he challenged me to drink an entire bottle of crown royal (at that point I never drank booze my entire life aside from a few beers). I failed, but either way I was kept up until 5am watching a Charles Manaon documentary over and over again while his mail-order-ish russian (or some kind of white-foriegn) wife kept prattling on about how she explained the meaning of "Eyehategod" to her mother who was all about duh jesus ("it's about hating what YOU make your jesus in your life, that's what they hate" jumpcut to lyrics and artwork from Eyehayegod albums.")
We went to Cooter Browns the next day (I'm not sure the name exactly, it's a bit hazy) at one point qhere Gary woked (lolz he was a fry cook), and then later we went to a place either run by or frequented by Pepper Keenan (Corrosion of Conformity, Down, and that loser actually tried out for metallica lol) that had a for real 4 or 5 brass piece shine band playing. I got to meet Pepper for a few minutes and he actually cooked the burger I ate.
I did my first bit of coke with Mike Williams, the "singer" of EHG, the night of the show after smoking lots of weed with the members of the For the Sick forum members (givingnme my first actual panic attack: weed bad, kids) and doing Jager shots with Jimmy and a dude who everyone later shunned (I think he was the brother of Jimmy's previously deceased girlfriend or common-law wife or something, you know how those cajuns do).
What I'll always remember, after all of that, is while I was jamming out at Joey's (RIP) house was we kept bringing up Outlaw Order and Jimmy kept calling it "Eye Hate Jimmy" since he was the only member from Eyehategod who wasn't in Outlaw Order (I think he was touring with Phil Anselmo's "Not Pantera" band called Down when they formed Outlaw Order, but I could be wrong.... lots of drugs between then and now and I'm getting old).
Years later I saw the band in Austin Texas, and legit that toothless hillbilly Jimmy Bower remembered be, did shots with me, and gave me a free t-shirt and poster... after I shared coke with him, reminded him of my time like 7 or 8 years before, and... oh yeah, shared more coke with him.
For a nowhere direction 20 year old it was a good experience. I met my "idols" and they weren't cunts. Just down to earth SIMPLE people. Sad to see it took them like a decade to release a full length album.
Too Long, didn't give a fuck: I met Eyehategod and they were what you expected - fun degenerates.
