I've been sitting on this story for days. I have no way of sharing my excitement with the relevant parties at the moment, so I figured why not share with the three people who read this site.

First, some history.

I've known Reuben for years. He and I participated in what has to be one of the worst bands ever, tempered only by the fact that we were only really a band for two days (and I was only in it for one of those). It was basically just an excuse for a bunch of guys to go into a studio and record some tunes, regardless that most of the songs really, really sucked.

When I tried to put together a band (called Stoneykirk) for the summer of 1995, and my "regular" bass player was stuck in summer school at college, Reuben's name came up again. That summer, and that band, was one of the greatest two-month periods of my life. We sounded great, we played well, and we recorded a pretty damn good demo. We split when Reuben and the drummer both went on vacations, and then we all went back to our respective colleges. The drummer had foot surgery the next year, so we never regrouped.

I'd known Reuben since that first band, but we really became friends during the summer of Stoneykirk. And, over the ensuing years, we always talked about putting another band together. But with him in Hartford, and me in Atlanta, it seemed more like something to talk about than something that would ever actually happen.

Then I got the phone call. It was the last Monday of February 1999.

Reuben was on the other end, telling me that his band, The Little Dipper, had just fired their lead singer, with a week-long tour of the east coast scheduled to start in a little over two weeks. He wondered if I might happen to be available.

Doing web design is pretty portable (all I need is a computer and my files), and I'd just lost my biggest client (the company was buried in miles of debt), so I figured I had nothing to lose. I threw a bunch of stuff in my car and made the sixteen-hour drive to Hartford that Friday. (Don't ask.)

What followed was another amazing two months. We immediately dove into practices, putting together a workable six song setlist in less than a week. (We played our first show on day eight.)

Now, the band had a relatively good-sized following in Hartford. The buzz was weird. People would stop by the practice space during our practices to check out "the new guy". (Including the former lead singer, which made for at least one really, really awkward practice.)

Our first show was on campus at the University of Hartford, and the local fans turned out in force. Most people seemed to approve, even though I was definitely a different style of singer than the previous one. I was stunned when the singer of Camber (who headlined the show) stopped me in the men's room to compliment us and ask if we had any demos recorded. (Seriously, it was our first show, and my first live band performance in more than three years.)

Over the course of the next two months, we played fourteen more shows. Some good, some not so good. The tour down the east coast in mid-March was a great time, even if we barely slept. It culminated with a fantastic show in Atlanta, where my brother finally got to see me play in a band, something I thought might never happen.

Everything just clicked. We started writing material together, and the three new songs that emerged during those short weeks were just amazing. The plans were wide and grand - the guys would graduate that May, and we'd all relocate to Boston.

As April ended, things started falling apart. It started with a little songwriting dissention - I felt one new song we were working on sounded far too much like a song already in our repertoire, and I wanted to try something else. There was the additional frustration that I knew I couldn't bring any of my many previously-written songs to the band - they just didn't have the same feel. (We tried one, and it just didn't work.)

But the dissention was workable. I chalked part of it up to having slept on Reuben's couch for two months. Our plan was still to break for graduation, where I'd go home for a few weeks, then regroup in July to move to Boston.

Then came the bombshell - one of the guys didn't have enough credits to graduate, and he was leaving the country for part of the summer. So the earliest he could move to Boston was January. And he waited until the week of the last show to tell us.

Long story short, that meant that I was going to have to move to Hartford for six months, then move to Boston in January. And moving to Hartford meant getting some kind of temporary job to pay for the things I hadn't needed to pay for while staying at Reuben's. Moving twice and having to look for jobs twice just sounded like a nightmare. Plus, one of the guys was moving to Boston anyway, meaning two hour drives every time we had practice. (There was more, but I'll spare you the details.) Add it all together, and it just didn't sound plausible. So when I went home after our last show, I stayed home.

It was one of the single most difficult decisions of my life. And I spent months wondering if I made the wrong one.

When you're making really, really great music, it's hard to let it go. The worst part was that our only attempt at recording our material in a studio was a total disaster. We volunteered to let a University student record us for his recording class final. We recorded our two best songs, but he only mixed one of them (I never heard it, but it was apparently a horrible mix) and the masters were subsequently blanked. So all I had were the bad recordings of our fifteen shows plus a few practice tapes. (I eventually recorded solo versions of those two songs, which will end up as bonus tracks on Once Every Never.)

The guys ended up taking their old lead singer back, briefly, then fired him again. Eventually, the guys all moved to Boston, and rechristened themselves The Nationale Blue. I'm still friends with them - I run their website. But their music is drastically different from what we did as a band.

A couple of months ago, Reuben and I talked about how disappointing it was that we didn't write more songs during those two months. I commented that I vaguely remembered one song that we worked on during a couple of early practices that I liked, but that we never got around to working on again after the tour. He knew which song I meant, and was equally surprised. But, to our knowledge, that song was never recorded, so it was lost to the ages.

Around that time, I spoke to the drummer, who commented that he wouldn't mind having a compilation of some of the material we worked on. (I ended up with all of the tapes from the period.) It sounded like a cool idea, so I spent the better part of last week listening to all of the tapes, most of which hadn't been played since the night they were recorded. It was kind of fun - I remembered things I'd forgotten in the years since.

I pretty much knew what to expect from the show tapes. But I wasn't sure what would be on the three practice tapes that were left.

The first one was a compilation of the first songs we worked on while I was there, basically to help me write new lyrics. (The former lead singer asked me not to use his.) The second was of two practices from right before the tour. No surprises, save that one of those practices was the one where we worked on my song, so I got to hear how it sounded before we gave up on it.

Then I threw in tape three. And the first song kicked me in the teeth.

It was "the song". The one that Reuben and I referenced that day two months ago. And not only was it more than an unfinished jam - it was a complete song. Front to back, done. Apparently, I used tape three as an extension of the first practice compilation - the other songs on the tape were the ones that we worked on in later weeks. And, for whatever reason, we (with the exception of me, since I hadn't written a guitar part or lyrics for it yet) played through that song, and put it to tape. The ending was a little messy, but definitely fixable.

I copied it to my computer, and over the next three hours, I think I listened to it thirty or forty times on repeat. It wasn't a crappy throwaway. Not in the slightest. Heck, it was absolutely incredible, arguably the best song we (n)ever worked on. And, even though the recording was made on my crappy portable recorder, it's not half bad. The more I listened, the more I heard melody lines and lyrics.

I have now made it my mission to finish this song. Almost as a "Beatles Anthology"-type bonus song to start the compilation. I'm not going to add a guitar part - it just seems gratuitous, and probably would be blatantly noticeable, since I have no way to match the weird sound quality of the original recording. But I cannot put into words how excited I am about discovering this song.

I haven't been able to tell the other guys yet, since they're currently on tour to support their first full-length release. And, truthfully, I'm not sure how they're going to feel about it. I don't know yet if this was a song that they worked on after I left, or if they really haven't played it again since those days.

The weird part is that Reuben and I had discussed the possibility of me "remixing" some of their current material. Translated, take some of their instrumental songs, add lyrics, and make new songs out of them. But I've failed miserably in my attempts to do so, largely because of how long and complex their current material is.

This song, on the other hand, is perfect. I heard melody lines in the same way that I heard melody lines in the first songs we worked on. Plain and simple, it's a Little Dipper song.

You know how you sometimes want to go back and revisit one day of high school? Or the house you used to live in, exactly as it was when you lived there? Or have one more day of that great vacation from years ago?

This is my chance. This is my one day. Completely out of the blue, I've been handed the chance to make one more song with the Little Dipper. The band's not getting back together, and there won't be any more after this. But I've spent three years believing that it was done, that there wouldn't be any more, ever. Instead, I'm sitting here with my headphones, getting one more chance at the Spring of 1999.

The best part is that it's as good, if not better, than the other songs we wrote together. It's not some slop that I'm using as an excuse to relive the past. If it were anything less than great, believe me, I wouldn't bother wasting my time on it. It's a damn good song, one that definitely deserves to be completed, regardless of where it came from. (And, maybe not coincidentally, the song is called "Now It's Over".)

Oh - the Little Dipper compilation, when finished, won't be for public consumption. The show recordings are largely horrible, and most of the in- jokes wouldn't make any sense to anyone but us. But should "Now It's Over" turn out as well as I think it will, I'm planning to upload it to the My Music section.