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Songfacts
 

And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
  1994-
Jason Reece    vocals, guitar, drums   
Conrad Keely    vocals, guitar, drums   
Neil Busch    bass, guitar   
Kevin Allen    guitar   
Get the Ringtones  Listen/Buy @ Amazon   Get the Sheet Music
Artistfacts:
Influenced by such artists as Sonic Youth, Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, and Bruce Springsteen.
Based in Austin, Texas. It's where they were formed and where they continue to have their fun.
They want to move from the underground to the mainstream. Says Keely: "Man, if we don't do it, and no one does it, kids will continue to listen to vacuous nonsense."
The band members all met as members of the same church in Plano, Texas when they were really young. They started by singing together, then gradually progressed to using instruments.
Other instruments they have used include the harp, ukulele, accordion, violin, viola, sax, sitar, harpsichord, and trumpet.
They were originally called Richter Scale Madness.
Reece moved to Austin in 1993. The rest of the band was persuaded by their church pastor to spend their college money and follow him to Austin. They did.
Keely is also an essay-writer on the side, having such titles as "In Defense of the Living: REM and the Teutonic Cult of Death Imagery," and "'From Counter-Culture to Hegemony': Can the Underground Withstand Mainstream Collision with Modern Violence?"
Origin of the band's name remains largely a mystery, but it oddly resembles a Mayan religious ceremony summoning the corn gods saying, "We will act as your sword, oh Great Itzamna and you will know us by the trail of dead." It is also similar to an inscription in the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, "You will find the Eye of Horus standing thus against you and you will know it by a Trail of the Dead." Weird.
They have a tradition of performing with cheap instruments so that they can break them at the end of every performance. (thanks, heather - minneapolis, MN)
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Comments:
You gotta get it stratight. Neil is no longer in the band. There is a new bassist - Danny Wood - and a new drummer - Doni Schroeder. They have all been on tour since 2004. Now you know. They all rock.
- gena, Los Angeles, CA
all the stuff about the boys meeting in the church youth group is a lie. when trail of dead are interviewed, they always tell a new lie about the formation of their band. conrad and jason met in hawaii where they grew up. they then moved to washington state, and finally to austin, TX where they formed the band. the band was never called "richter scale madness", this was a name of a song on their first album.
- heather, minneapolis, MN

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