“When this showed up in the office six years ago, nobody knew who they were, least of all us, and we were sort of pissed about it: like, how the fuck could a band this amazing have got past us for two years and a couple of albums?” - The Phoenix cleans out their office, finds a Stairs CD, reminisces
BOSTON, MA. @ A COLLEGE PARTY.
Ryan and Evan approached me drunkenly at a mutual friend’s party one night and brazenly stated, “We want you to be play bass in our band.” To which I replied, “But I play guitar.” Without skipping a beat they went on to say, “Yeah we know. We really like your guitar playing but…we want you to play bass.”
Having never touched a bass before in my life, I didn’t think they were serious. I knew that they were serious about making music together, so in my mind there was no way any of this made sense as who would invite a completely unprepared person to join these two, who had at that point released an entire catalog of music on their own.
Taking advantage of their inebriated states I challenged them seriously laying down the ultimatum that “Well okay, if you can remember this call me at 10am tomorrow morning on the dot and I’ll join. If you not, then it’s not going to happen.”
By this time it was around 3 or 4am, and they were both well intoxicated. Agreeing to my proposal, they merrily walked to another part of the apartment. I thought that without a doubt I had bested them, swiftly avoiding the situation without having to offend either of them directly. It’s not that I didn’t want to join them, I just thought it was the liquor in them talking so I simply brushed it off as they could not be serious in asking me, who has no experience, join their promising young band. I genuinely believed that they would at least be too drunk to remember our little deal, or not be able to wake up in time to call me in the next few hours. In my mind, it was a sure-shot win situation that would allow me to politely bow out with what I thought was a justified reason to boot.
The next day, a completely sober and enthusiastic Ryan called me spot on at 10:00am in the morning. As I answered the phone half-awake and utterly surprised, he happily asked “So are you our bassist now?” He had actually remembered, and on top of that called exactly when he was supposed to. I had nothing else to say but “Yes”, still feeling a little unsure as they were asking someone who had never touched a bass in his life to play bass for them.
“Great!” he happily replied. “You have two weeks to learn all our songs and write the bass parts to them, we’re going to have our first show!”
I spent the next two weeks straight learning the bass by playing along to every Clash record I had on a borrowed instrument, and we went on to play our first show ever together as The Stairs without a hitch.
That’s how I ultimately learned to play the bass guitar and became the first ever bassist for The Stairs. Inadvertently, Ryan was also probably the best music teacher I ever had as I never learnt how to play an instrument in such a short time frame ever again since then.
I like to call this the Ryan Walsh Method.
A walking, breathing, stuffed bear watches Stairs keyboardist Sean Spada with a careful gaze.
Sitting amongst the pile of trash next to All Asia holding the handwritten sign they posted on the door during a comedian’s set.
We couldn’t afford hotels and we hadn’t built up many connections with other bands. So, often we found ourselves sleeping in the woods.
Poster in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Having an absolute blast in Baltimore, MD in 2004.
First piece of press on the band.
Leeore & Eric at a radio station performance in Lowell, MA
A list of band names scribbled down circa 2000 range from the ridiculous, the pretentious, to the actual band name at the bottom of the list.
