Every good story has a backstory and ours starts when a 7th-grade kid with a drum set convinced another kid to buy a used $25 guitar with the promise that they “could be a band”.

We soon upgraded to $35 guitars, borrowed dad’s tape deck, recorded the 32-second original “scream punk” gem called “I Like FOOD” and were off and running. [Oops, Dad never got his microphones back.]

We formed high school bands with friends and spent most of our disposable income on 4-track recorders, drum machines, guitar strings and gear. We played basements and back yards and, quite frankly, we weren’t very good. But that didn’t stop us… There is something to be said for naive persistence.

Our highly-selective process for choosing cover songs was to declare “Hey, that guy can’t sing either”. Of course, they could all sing but early Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, The Ramones, The Talking Heads and Lou Reed seemed empowering to kids with – shall we say – limited range, no formal training, and a fist full of bar chords.

Our first “gig” was a disaster, but we had coordinating clothes from Chess King in the mall. Undeterred, we started writing and recording demos. Following college, we were in a regional band, recorded an EP and played a lot of gigs in fine venues with great wiring that sometimes required a sweat sock on the mic to stop from getting shocked [we’re talking to you, The Barn Door – the legendary CBGB’s of DE].

Eventually, careers and families slowed down the gigs and recording for a long time, but not the desire to keep making music. So here we are. We formed The Newberry Slacks because we still love making music that interests us – and we still have things to say.