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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” 

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 2DrinkTheFish is born!

Michael Boire - Leigh Fishleigh