Past Our Prime

Past Our Prime are five men from North Georgia who waited until their kids were out of diapers to start the band they actually wanted.

SALTYmf almost met them a year earlier. Zach from Open Heart Media, who produces the podcast, ran into them at a show at Black Strap in Gainesville the night Ultraviolet played. Banyas and his son were driving to that same show and got into a wreck on the way, which is how he met the bare knuckle fighter he now sponsors and how he missed the band entirely. Somebody kept a phone number, and a year later the five of them were in the studio with an hour and a half of sound check behind them.

Brad plays keys and sings and writes most of it. Juan is on six string, Alex on bass, Paul on twelve string, Nate on drums. The twelve string is deliberate, because it covers sonic range nobody else is using, and the keys and synthesizers open the rest. Their first plan was a death metal sludge act with a working guillotine on stage, which Juan had already sketched before the rest of them talked him down. What survived is closer to their roots: indie alternative with everything else folded in, a Herbie Hancock cover with a horn, a Cure song rebuilt as reggae. Brad writes social commentary. Mercy Declined, off Through the Screen, is about fighting the healthcare billing system. The new single, Echo, is about the people they have lost to substance abuse, which is all of them.

The wives are the first to tell them to get out of the house and go practice, and the first tough crowd: Alex says if his wife does not like a song he is playing on the couch, he is not playing it on the couch much longer. They did a Toys for Tots show at Christmas with Nate as Santa and Juan as the Grinch and everybody's kids running around. Juan's three year old, Luca, started singing a new one from the back seat of the car. The next show is March 13 at Star Bar in Atlanta, which is also Brad's fortieth birthday.