Draft:Tombstones In Their Eyes

Formation and early years Tombstones In Their Eyes came about following a reconnection between two childhood friends. John Treanor and James Cooper met because both of their mothers were Finnish and met at the San Diego “House Of Finland” in Balboa Park. James and John were both starting to get into punk rock (1979 or so) and James’s sister Jessica gave them their first “punk” haircuts. James and John had some other adventures including a short but eventful tour of San Francisco with the band Battalion of Saints. Following high school, John moved back to Los Angeles and they lost touch. It was 29 years later that John was having coffee with Jessica and Jessica mentioned that James was doing well, living in NYC and loved baseball. That was enough for John to reach out and they became fast friends again, eventually deciding to start writing songs together. After writing a couple of bad songs, they decided to name the project and John cribbed the name Tombstones In Their Eyes from the lyrics of a Hoyt Axton song called “The Pusher”. The song was made famous by Steppenwolf and was featured in the move “Easy Rider”. For the next year or two John and James continued to work together, with John in LA and James in NYC. They used Garageband initially and then switched to Logic Pro, sharing the projects via Dropbox. John wrote most of the music and lyrics and James acted as the producer and musical conscience/guru as well as adding drum and keyboard tracks. Sleep Forever (2015) When there were enough good songs ready as demos, John decided to record a record. Recruiting friends Sam Sherwood (drums) and Josh Drew (bass) they proceeded to record the basic tracks at Kingsize Soundlabs with Eva Reistad engineering. John took the tracks to Kitten Robot Studios where he met Paul Roessler who recorded new vocals and produced the end product. The record was self-released on John’s label Send Me Your Head. Released on digital outlets and CD. Bad Clouds EP (2016) Bad Clouds was recorded at Kitten Robot Studios again, with Paul Roessler engineering and producing. Josh Drew returned on bass and John brought in Stephen Striegel on drums and percussion. John had found Stephen on Craigslist. Bad Clouds brought about the band’s biggest song, I Can’t See the Light, which was boosted by it’s appearance in the Netflix YA series “Chambers” with Uma Thurman.