User:VagabondJack/sandbox

Naked Wake is a Berkeley, California based semi-progressive rock band. It's main contributor and sole original member is its lead and rhythm electric and acoustic guitarist who goes by Vagabond Jack. They originally formed in mid-1995 in New Jersey, though the band never got off the ground, and has had a multitude of lineup changes over the years. Current members include Jack on guitars, Stevie Lee on bass, Dora on keyboards, and Neto Ramirez on drums. Though they are primarily an instrumental band, they occasionally add spoken word by various contributors.

The band got its name when several members and other friends were sitting around at a party watching television when a commercial came on advertising a running of a John Candy film. A young lady at the party said "Ooh, baby! I'd love to see John Candy naked," to which Jack replied, "well, if you want to see him naked, you'll have to go to his wake, because he's dead." Another earlier member of the band present at the party started laughing and said "hmmm... Naked Wake? Yeah, Naked Wake. Let's call our band Naked Wake." And so the name stuck. Jack later admitted he meant to say "morgue" and not "wake" but he was too drunk to think straight.

In April of 1996 the band's drummer and keyboard player were planning to move to California. A lot of time and effort went into planning the trip. Jack, who had been great friends with one of the members did not want to lose the friendship and the songwriting partnership he was desperately trying to develop, so on a whim he decided to join the others on the move.

Upon arriving in San Francisco, Jack realized the trip was not as well planned out as he thought. None of the members had a place to stay or a job, and they barely had enough money to get them to California, let alone sustain themselves for awhile.

The members rented a small hotel room in San Francisco's Tenderloin district for $135 a week. Survival instinct having kicked in, Jack found himself a job working at a small furniture store until he could get the band off the ground. To his dismay, after two weeks of living on the West Coast, the other two friends he came out with opted to go back home to New Jersey.

With his songwriting partners gone, the band remained in hiatus for several years. It wasn't until 1998, after moving to Oakland, California, that Jack began to piece the group back together. "I didn't play for a good while after my friends left. I was somewhat heartbroken, and I was quite insecure. But I slowly started jamming with people here and there. I would just see people on a street corner in San Francisco or down the escalators at various BART stops playing, and a lot of them really sucked, but some were really good. So I started bringing my guitar around with me and then I just started jamming with people. It was all original counterpoint type playing on acoustic guitars, and it was really challenging for me, but it got my creative juices flowing. I really got into it. I also learned more playing in these types of situations than I did from years of lessons"

And so began the process of recruiting new members. Jack started posting ads in the SF Weekly and Bay Area Guardian, as well as any vacant telephone pole in North Oakland and parts of Berkeley. He also began hanging out at various clubs like Jupiter and Larry Blake's on Telegraph where other local musicians frequented.