Listen Up: After the Storm
Members of After the Storm went through bad weather before the skies finally cleared.
Singer Nick Kunkel, 21, and drummer Glenn Griffin, 21, got off to a rocky start. “We actually hated each other in high school,” Griffin said. “We played on the same rugby team. He was pompous. Nick was all about Nick. It was just the way he carried himself.”
Photo by Michael Donahue
After the Storm: (From left) Glenn Griffin, Nick Kunkel, Chris Jones and Wesley Caldwell.
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Kunkel spent a lot of time trying to impress girls. He’d pop the collar of his Polo shirt and try to act cool. “What 18 year old isn’t like that?” he said.
He also was in some bands: Wet Puppet, Janitor Sex Machine and The WN Experience.
Later, Kunkel and his then girlfriend, a conservative Christian, saw Griffin perform in a praise and worship band. “We just got to talking after a Wednesday night youth service and said, ‘Hey, let’s get together and jam,’” Kunkel said.
Kunkel, Griffin and Wesley Caldwell, 19, formed a faith-based band Syrvitude. “It was so bad,” Kunkel said.
“The ‘y’ (in the title) was the ‘rock on’ sign,” Griffin said. “It wasn’t even a letter. We were a Christian band, but we had devil horns in the name.”
They needed a bass player, so Caldwell suggested his friend, Chris Jones, 18. The band members were reluctant to take Jones, who they thought was too young, until Griffin said, “Dude, he plays speed metal.”
While Kunkel and his girlfriend were headed down the “house-on-the-hill, white-picket-fence” path, the other band members were partying, Kunkel said. “I was being the mom of the band. We started calling each other out and taking sides. We stopped hanging out.”
“Something wasn’t working,” Griffin said. “We didn’t know what it was. So, all we knew to do was quit.”
The band broke up for about a year. “I went back to school and lived back in the dorms,” Kunkel said. “My roommate was a coordinator for some political campaign, Students for Barack Obama. He knew I was into music. I told him I’d help him out.”
Kunkel got most of the band members together for the show. Eventually, the entire group was back. “Partying brought us all together,” Griffin said.
They changed the name to “After the Storm.” “We were all going through different episodes in our life,” Kunkel said. “I had broken up with this girl I thought I was gonna marry.”
No longer a faith-based band, their sound now is “cockier and a lot more aggressive,” Kunkel said. “The sound just really reflects we’re all comfortable in our skin, in our personalities. I think that’s been the biggest theme in our friendship and in our band — I guess in any young band’s life: finding yourself and finding who you are. I went from the pop-collar dude to who I am now. I’m me now. I’m Nick. I like to make music and go to work and I like to kiss girls.”
One of their new songs, “The War Within,” is about the band’s breakup. One of the lines is, “I traded this life for the lights and the sounds, walked this unbeaten path and my soul is worn down.”
Kunkel, who wrote the lyrics, said, “That reflects trading a normal life — the white picket fence and being able to watch play-off football tonight — to be here and put all this work into making a dream happen.”
Listen Up spotlights area performers. Michael Donahue can be reached at 529-2797.
After the Storm
The band performs Feb. 11 at the New Daisy Theatre, 330 Beale. Doors open at 5 p.m. Cover: $8. Call: 525-8981.
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