Unfinished Business - the story of a band

Mini Mammoth--the oxymorons of rock!--remains one of the most productive songwriting periods of my life. In less than two years, we generated somewhere between thirty and forty completed songs and ideas, many of which are still among my favorite things I've written.

We were a three-piece power-pop and indie-rock band. Simple songs, loud guitars, big hooks. Four chords and a cloud of dust.

In some ways, putting Mini Mammoth together felt like returning to where I'd started. My earliest gigging experiences had been in three-piece bands, and there was something liberating about stripping things back again. At that stage of my life, it was exactly what I needed. The format left nowhere to hide. Every part mattered. Every player carried weight.

For reasons that are largely tied to history, relationships, and the passage of time, I've never made the Mini Mammoth recordings widely available online. Part of me would love to share them. Another part recognizes that creative projects belong to more than one person, and I want to be respectful of the experiences and feelings that others may have connected to that period.

The band's first proper collection of songs became Too Much Time Wasted, featuring tracks like "Icarus Onion," "1-2-3," "Eff the Fashion Police," "Transmission," "Talk to the Wall," "Championship Belt Fight," and "Head Bobber."

That was followed by Drunken Text Message, which included "From the Couch," "Crush 'tween the Cracks," "Anxiety Friday," "The Rails," "Under the Bus," "Drunken Text Message," and "The Buzz." Additional recordings such as "Vampires and Reptiles" and "Trading in the Show" lived on as B-sides and extras.

There were plenty of other songs that never found permanent homes: "Anatomy of the Muse," "Sisyphus Engine," "TBD," "You Are Here," "Gut Check," "The Leprechaun," "On a Dime," "Bump & Scrape," "Big Chief Hockey Puck," and "Lights Down," among others. We even had one song known only as "The GBV Tribute Song," a title that probably explained everything it needed to.

The demos began taking shape shortly after The Slackharmonic ended. Between roughly 2009 and 2011, Jeff, our drummer, and I turned those ideas into a surprisingly deep catalog. Looking back, what strikes me isn't just the volume of material but how naturally it seemed to arrive. Songs were everywhere. We'd finish one and immediately start another.

Mini Mammoth gave me an opportunity to exercise songwriting muscles that had been largely dormant for years. In fact, it wasn't until the burst of recording and writing I experienced beginning in 2025 that I felt a similar creative momentum.

There are periods when songs arrive one at a time, and there are periods when they seem to show up faster than you can document them. Mini Mammoth belonged firmly in the latter category.

We never played a ton of shows--about 15-20 appearances--but our rehearsals became their own kind of institution. We'd run the set a few times, work through newer material, take breaks to watch whatever game happened to be on television, then circle back and play for hours. The practices often felt less like preparation for performances and more like performances themselves.

One of my favorite memories came from a show where every song we knew was written on slips of paper and tossed into a hat. Audience members drew the next song at random. If the same title came up twice, we played it twice. The idea was ridiculous enough to work. It turned every set into a collaboration between the band and whoever happened to be in the room that night.

When I think about Mini Mammoth now, I don't think primarily about myself. I think about the people. The rooms. The conversations before and after shows. The musicians who crossed paths with one another for a few hours and somehow became part of a larger story.

This page is less about documenting a band than honoring a moment in a community. Mini Mammoth gave me some of my favorite songs, favorite rehearsals, and favorite memories, but it also connected me to a larger music scene that helped shape who I am. The songs are part of that story. The people are the reason it matters.

Those are the stories worth preserving.

*Note: I have the Mini Mammoth tattooed on the inside iof my bicep.