The Compound

As I’ve mentioned, when I started this blog its main purpose was to act as a hub for my various musical projects.  My writing falls into a small variety of categories and I think the best way to express those ideas is to separate them and group them as different projects.

Cody's Workspace

I occasionally write acoustic oriented folksy type songs.  You’ll probably see those pop up as solo work.  The EGOIST is my industrial project.  I used to play in a hard rock band.  Now I’m doing it all by myself.  The hard rock background combined with the electronic stuff working alone in Pro Tools has inspired sort of became the EGOIST.  Plus I like the idea of being in a band, even if I’m the only guy in it.  You get to sort of build up a vehicle that’s more than just yourself to present to the world.  Of course I’ve been talking about my ‘Soundtrack’ project which is just the label I’ve given to the catalog that I’m working on building up for eventual submission with the hope of getting them placed or picked up by music libraries.  Many of those, I’m sure, will find their way onto the albums of other projects I’m working on in some form another depending on what they sound like.

And then there’s the Compound.  The Compound is collaboration between me and one of my very best friends Ryan Conner.  Ryan and I have been friends for almost 22 years.  We met when we were seven.  I still remember the exact day, actually, and the first time we hung out.  His mom made us sandwiches and we played Pole Position on the Atari at his house.  There were actually three of us, then, who became completely inseparable – me, Ryan, and our other friend Chase Piedfort.  We had a unique and interesting experience growing up which probably explains why certain things have ended up as they have.

Our parents all had jobs working for Saudi Aramco, the largest oil company on the planet.  Because of this, we grew up in an Aramco compound located in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.  The compound is a fully functioning little city complete with schools, restaurants, a bowling alley, large community swimming pools, a state of the art horse stables, a movie theater, and many of the other things that make a town a town.  While we did have the unique experience of living in Saudi Arabia, it was made even more so due to the fact that it was on the Aramco compound – entering the compound was sort of like entering a country within a country.  It’s been said that the Aramco compound is more like 1950s America than 1950s America.  And it’s true.

Dhahran, Saudi Arabia: Sunset in the Jebels

There’s something about it that makes looking around at the houses and the baseball and soccer fields and the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts walking around that makes you feel like you are looking at an old black and white photograph you found in the attic in a trunk.  It’s weird and wonderful, maddening in certain ways (especially to people who have been working and living there for 30 years) and it’s where I grew up.  It’s my home town more so than any other place I’ve lived and I think Ryan and Chase feel the same about that.

An interesting policy that Aramco maintains is that the schools only go up to the 9^th grade.  After this, students typically go to boarding school.  My father happened to retire the same year that I graduated from 9^th grade, so we moved back to small town Louisiana (culture shock!) while Chase and Ryan went to boarding schools in different parts of the US, returning to Saudi during breaks.

Now, all three of us started playing guitar at roughly the same time, but it wasn’t until they were returning students that Ryan and Chase, along with another friend, Dave, started the Spinal Tap-esque garage metal band SpineChrist.  Dave learned to play the drums, Chase switched from guitar to bass, they learned how to use a 4-track and we were all blessed with songs such as ‘Stillborn’ and ‘In the Water (Like I Deserve to Be)’.

After high school, Chase eventually moved in with my family in Louisiana to go to college with me there.  I’d met fellow guitarist Josh McCready in high school and the two of us had started writing songs together.  We’d even played a couple of gigs here and there with various drummers and bassists.  But it wasn’t until Chase moved to the Deep South with us that we really fell into the groove and became the Subtle Creeps.  We eventually wound up in San Marcos, Texas – just between Austin and San Antonio – where we stayed for a good five or six years, playing in and around San Marcos and Austin.

Bahrain Fort and Al Moyyad Tower

During that time, another Aramco brat Tasha Burge was invited along to one of our shows.  Tasha turned out to be my soul mate and within a couple of years we were engaged and then married.  She had always planned on moving back to the Middle East after university, so, in 2007, that’s what we did – us and our three dogs.  Tasha and I found jobs in Bahrain which is a tiny island Kingdom just over a causeway from Saudi.  Within a couple of years, I was able to get a job in Dammam, Saudi Arabia and here we are, back in the Kingdom (us and our four dogs…and two cats…and one horse…).

Dhahran: Cody in the Jebels

A bit less than a year before Tasha and I decided to move back to the desert, Ryan had decided to give teaching English in Japan a try.  There’s something about growing up as an expat that makes you feel the need to continue being an expat.  You just get the bug, I suppose.  After living and working in Japan for a couple of years and trying to get a couple of bands going, Ryan eventually found his way to Vietnam where he is now.

Vietnam: Ryan Celebrating Tet '08

Both of us were living in situations where we couldn’t really find anyone to play with and we’d been complaining for years that while he and Chase had gotten to play in a band, and Chase and I had gotten to play together in a band, Ryan and I had never had the opportunity to play together in a band.

Thus the Compound.

Vietnam: Bui Vien Street

What better way for a couple of lifelong expats to play together in a band than from two different countries.  We realized about a year ago that nothing was stopping us from being in a band.  Sure, we can’t really book gigs, but nowadays there are other ways of writing and producing music and getting out to the general public without having to play live or even get a stack of CDs printed up.

We started, about a year ago, the process of writing an album.  Generally, Ryan sends me guitar riffs and ideas and I play with the arrangements and then work up a melody and lyrics.  I’ve also been working on the drum programming and have supplied some additional synth parts as well as the occasional second guitar part or solo.

While I won’t go into the album itself – I’m saving that for another blog post – I will tell you that what we have ended up doing is huge project.  As I’ve said, we started about a year ago and it’s taken a lot longer than we had at first anticipated.  We were hoping to give the completed album out as Christmas presents.  Real life has the ability to interrupt, delay, and otherwise make a mockery of any perfect plan.

Ryan's Workspace

But as I mentioned, that’s for another blog post.  The project is a blast.  We’re learning a lot – it’s as much a training exercise as anything else – and we are getting to do what we’ve been talking about for over a decade – be in a band with each other.  It’s definitely a musical collaboration that has no end in sight; in fact, I think Ryan is sitting on an entire album’s worth of music that he won’t let me hear.  He’s consistently vague and mysterious about this, though, providing me with more incentive to hurry up and move the first album along.

I’ll keep you all up-to-date on this project as it moves along.  Before the album is finished, we’ll definitely start getting a few songs up for your downloading pleasure from time to time.  We look forward to sharing them with you and we can’t wait to deliver our debut album – soon, we hope…soon…