Avoid One Thing - Annual Report (By Jay Hale)

Approximately 400 days ago, I ran into Mighty Mighty Bosstones bassist Joe Gittleman backstage at the band's annual Hometown Throwdown. Although he was concentrating on the task at hand - playing five straight sold-out shows at Boston's Axis nightclub - he managed to drop word that he was starting a new band and wanted some photos taken. More than happy to oblige, Joe gave me the time and the place and I checked out one of the very first Avoid One Thing full-band practices.

When the four piece first started jamming on tunes in their subterranean practice space a few blocks over from Fenway Park, they had no idea the peaks and valleys that lay in front of them. Within the span of a few months Avoid One Thing would run a full gantlet of emotions that few upstart bands have ever had to endure.

For well over a decade Gittleman had put his musical energies solely behind the Bosstones but sometime in 2001 he couldn't resist the urge to venture down an unknown path. Gittleman wanted to front his own band. In between tours he composed some tunes and played most of the instruments on a series of demo tracks. The sound was raw and refreshingly dissimilar to the music Gittleman had been playing with the Bosstones. That's exactly how he wanted it.

Still reeling from the departure of three longtime members in the past three years - horn players Kevin Lenear and Dennis Brockenborough as well as founding axeman Nate Albert - the Bosstones were tense when Gittleman informed them he was starting up a new band. "It got a little dicey there for a while but understandably so," Gittleman recalls. "Me and Dicky [Barrett, Bosstones' vocalist] have been, and still are, good friends. We're partners in crime and we kind of built this thing and I don't think it's an easy thing to learn that your right hand man will be spreading it out a little bit. But, to be honest with you, there was really no way that I wasn't going through with [starting Avoid One Thing.]"

Gittleman's first inclination was to just put out a killer album. But when he started fleshing out the raw material with his longtime friend and Boston punk journeyman Paul Delano, they realized they had something more. "There just came a time where it was like 'Fuck, we've gotta get more people for this. We've got to go all the way or nobody's gonna care about it,'" Gittleman states. "I think Dicky said to me, 'Joe, anyone can record songs at home and no one cares. It's gotta be a band.' That's totally true. At first I was like, 'Oh, just make a good record' and then it was 'Oh fuck, we gotta be a band and we've gotta go out and play these songs."

The pair went out on a recruiting mission and grabbed two of the best musicians at their craft. Amy Griffin, a blazing guitar player from the Boston rockabilly band The Ragin' Teens was added to the mix and New York resident and former drummer for Spring Heeled Jack and The Pilfers, Dave Karcich, followed soon after putting the finishing touches on Avoid One Thing's initial lineup.

Band practice was a bit of an adventure for the first few months but the foursome took everything in stride. Karcich commuted from the Big Apple via the Chinatown to Chinatown express, often joking that he was forced to sit beside live poultry on his bus ride to and from the city. Although the band members had never played together before their initial practice session, they clicked amazingly well and before long they were heading down to Florida to start a string of dates with H2O.

Instead of playing one big local show in front of friends and family who would have said they played great even if the microphones were switched off, Avoid One Thing decided to make their stage debut far outside the friendly confines of New England. "I just wanted to go out and do 10 shows in a row," Gittleman says. "We did seven or eight in a row opposed to doing one up in Boston and siting around. It was funny because you could improve so much from one [show] to the next. Jeez, the first night we fucking sucked but the second night we only half sucked."

Their first mini-tour was as successful as a band that had been together only a few weeks could have hoped. It also marked the return to van living for Gittleman who had become slightly accustomed to traveling in a crowded tour bus with the Bosstones. To many, it would seem like a step backward but, as he admits, it was enjoyable traveling the roadways on a smaller scale.

"I like the freedom of being able to go wherever you want, whenever you want. It's fun," he states. "Amy plays video games, we go to flea markets, thrift shops. People ask me 'How can you possibly go from the tour bus to getting in a van? Don't you feel like that's beneath you?' What does that mean? I'd hate to reach a point where I feel like I'm beyond playing in front of 30 kids in a fucking small town or I'm beyond getting in a van or moving my own equipment. I hope I never reach a point where I feel anything about music seems like a drag or a fucking hassle. At that point it's fucking see ya! Seriously."

Upon returning home, Avoid One Thing performed their first local show in front of a packed house at the Dropkick Murphys' annual St. Patrick's Day weekend extravaganza. Unfortunately, only a few days later their lives would change forever.

While Gittleman was on tour in Australia with the Bosstones, he received a phone call from Boston with some terrible news. Karcich had passed away suddenly from a brain aneurysm. The band was crushed and with their record headed to stores and a full scale tour with Flogging Molly scheduled to start in a week, their world was turned upside down.

After attending the funeral services for their friend - which, sadly, were held the day their self titled debut hit stores - the band was faced with a tough decision. Should they hit the road without Karcich or cancel their first national tour? It took some soul searching from the surviving members but, in the end, they feel they made the correct decision.

"There were a lot of conflicting things I was thinking about but I remember talking to Paul a lot and trying to rehash it," Griffin recalls. "It sounds cliché to say this but what I eventually came up with was that Dave would have probably wanted us to go." Gittleman concurs. Although the decision to meet up with the tour after missing the first week-and-a-half was heart wrenching, it was made worse by the fact that their relationship with Karcich was relatively short lived. He wasn't a part of their lives as long as he was the members of his two former bands - The Pilfers and his longtime friends in Spring Heeled Jack. "Not only did I feel really sad about him being gone, it almost seemed disrespectful to his friends to pick up and just head out there," Gittleman states. "It sometimes felt like it made light of a terrible thing that had just happened. How could you just do that, how could you just go out and play? I had feelings like that. It almost felt selfish in a way."

When Avoid One Thing caught up with Flogging Molly in Boston their set was very subdued. Choking back the tears, Gittleman opened with a dedication to Karcich. That wasn't the only sour note on the tour. Being the new kids on the block, Avoid One Thing wasn't always greeted with a warm reception when they kicked off the show. They were often met with apathy and puzzled looks. But one night in Chicago, things got a little too out of control.

With his mother-in-law sitting in the balcony watching Avoid One Thing for the first time, Gittleman was being pestered by a handful of skinheads who began flipping cigarette butts and spitting at the band.

He had been through a lot in his lengthy music career - hell, Gittleman was stabbed in Italy while touring with the Bosstones in the early 90s - and he wasn't going to let these kids get the better of him. He told the skinheads that he was going to wait for them downstairs in five minutes.

"I fucking waited for them," Gittleman says. "One by one they they kind of filtered through and the ones who dared make eye contact with me, I talked to them. One of them kind of ended up crying. A 17-year-old kid - he was drunk and was getting kicked out and was gonna miss Flogging Molly. I made it so he could stay, took him backstage and introduced him to Nate [Maxwell, Flogging Molly bassist] and then sat him down and found out he played guitar. I started talking to him and he was like 'Why are you being so cool to me?' He was so completely unfamiliar with the idea of kindness. Those kids are just looking for something to belong to. You can't really hold it against them. Once they get a little older you can start holding it against them."

With the infamous Chicago incident in the past, Avoid One Thing looks forward to their next travels across the nation - supporting Lagwagon and The Transplants this spring and onto the Warped Tour for a few weeks this summer. They may have paid their dues in other bands but to the majority of the kids whose paths they'll cross, Avoid One Thing are still fairly fresh faced. The band has struck a chord with pockets of kids from city to city but, as of today, they're not quite ready for world domination.

"I think to say we have a lot of fans would be untrue," Gittleman says. "I think that there are a small number of people who love Avoid. Sometimes I feel like we haven't found our thing. We're not a punk band per se. Most of these kids didn't grow up in the 80s like Paul and I did. A lot of times maybe they don't know where these references come from. They don't know who The Replacements are; they don't know who The Clash are; they don't know who The Pixies are or any other band we've drawn references to. I think it sounds, to some people, a little unfamiliar."

Hopefully this summer they'll be able to explain themselves on the Warped Tour. They opened up last year's main stage when the tour rolled through Boston but the band was a little disappointed at the turnout - they hit the stage before the gates were fully open. Instead of dealing with that situation every other day for three weeks, Avoid One Thing opted for a daytime slot off the beaten path on one of the side stages.

"The thing is that if you get a main stage slot when you're a side stage band, you're gonna go on first and sometimes it's not as good," Gittleman explains. "The thing with the side stage is that every day someone is getting the shitty end of the stick. Either you're on when fucking NOFX or AFI is on and you're losing out or your on when Simple Plan plays and there's people who are like 'Fuck these guys, anyway.' It's luck of the draw - sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't."

Avoid One Thing may not have a permanent drummer but they're not letting that hold them back. In the past to fill the void left by Karcich's passing, the band used Bosstone drummer Joe Sirois and Alex from Give Up The Ghost - the band formerly known as American Nightmare. Recently, they began playing with another Boston area skin pounder, John Lynch, who made his Avoid One Thing debut at a Lymphoma benefit show in April. Will he be in tow for the long haul? "God, I sure hope so," Gittleman says. "It looks that way and I can tell you one thing, he's certainly not lacking in talent and enthusiasm." Although things are finally looking up, Delano, the resident comedian, says that if they can't find someone to sit behind the kit for Warped this summer he's got a Vox Doctor Rhythm drum machine to drag along for the ride.

Until then Avoid One Thing is trying not to dwell on the misfortunes they have encountered over the past year. They're currently writing some new tunes, preparing for their next record on Side One Dummy. So far, Avoid One Thing has added four new songs to their set list and have been collaborating on one featuring Griffin on lead vocals, something she did sparingly in her old band.

"[The band] started in the worst possible way and I still, every day, think about Dave and wish that didn't happen," Gittleman states solemnly. "But I think along the way there's been a lot of good stuff and I've enjoyed it. I feel energized to do the next record and I hope the worst of it is behind me for a while. That was a kind of depressing way to start off."