about Us
Our
Story
​
The year was 2015. Mike the peace officer and Leigh the defense
lawyer, both thought they had nothing much in common with
each other, until one day at work they started talking in hushed
tones at the back of a busy criminal courtroom. To their surprise,
they found a shared language of love for rock and roll. It turns out
that both of them had been influenced by many of the same
bands through the ’60s, 70’s, ’80s, and ’90s; The Who, Yes, Styx,
Supertramp, The Police, The Strawbs, Roxy Music, AC/DC, CCR,
Grand Funk Railroad, Rush, Talking Heads, Boston, April Wine,
The Band, The Guess Who, and Genesis, to name but a few.
At the back of the busy courtroom, the conversation became
heated between the two, particularly about what had happened
to Genesis after Peter Gabriel left the band. They were asked to
leave the courtroom by the judge for talking too loudly during
court; which is funny because Mike was working as a court
security at the time. Upon entering the hall, they found some
more familiar ground, as they became “the kids in the hall”
outside of the courtroom and continued talking loudly about the
rock bands they had grown up listening to as teenagers. Bands
such as Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, Emerson Lake and Palmer,
Rolling Stones, The Cars, Earth Wind & Fire, The Moody Blues,
and of course The Beatles.
Leigh shared with Mike that he had been playing bass guitar with
his son on drums and his music teacher on electric guitar every
weekend for several weeks now, and that it would be cool to
have someone sing the songs while they were jamming. Mike
said that he “wished he’d tried singing in a band when he was
younger” and “probably missed his opportunity” way back in the
day. Leigh said “do you want to come along and sing for us this
weekend?” Assuring Mike not to worry, that “he was just learning
to play bass guitar, could not read music, that it was just for fun
and that there would be no audience.” “Besides you’re not
getting any younger, if you don’t try singing in a rock and roll
band now...you never will.”
Well, Mike did go and sing that very weekend and surprised the
group with vocal strength and confidence.
After several “music jam” weekends later, and while at work one
day, the two were put out in the hall again for speaking too loudly
in the courtroom. Out in the hall, Mike timidly informed Leigh that
he had purchased some music recording equipment. “Do you
want to come over and try to make our own music with this
thing?”
At that time they both had become dissatisfied with singing and
playing other artists' songs. They felt that they could never sound
as good as these original bands that they loved so much.
“Maybe we should try and find our own sound?” “What do we
have to lose?”
Over the next three years, the two met regularly. They sometimes
recorded late into the evening. They would show up for work at
the courthouse the next day looking obviously tired yet extremely
pleased with themselves from the night before. The rumors
began to fly throughout the court staff. “What exactly was Mike
and Leigh doing at Mike’s place until the wee hours of the
morning?” “What we were doing was writing, creating, and
recording songs the way we both wanted to hear them.” “By our
own musical standards, we had no one to compare our songs to,
but what we did agree on was that we loved what we were doing
and what we heard”
​
2DrinkTheFish is born!
Michael Boire - Leigh Fishleigh