Before opening for My Morning Jacket, the Southside, Soundscape Studios, and long before the name Down on Jane ever existed, there was a coffee shop in Regent Square called Katerbean. Jeff and I both worked there during the summers when we were in college.
It was the kind of place where people nursed black coffee for hours, wrote bad poetry, sat quietly to have a cigarette, get into a book, or just be alone with their thoughts. And for reasons that made no sense then, and even less now, we decided it would be our first gig.
We were called The Epimeres at the time, because nothing says “we’re a rock band” like a biology term no one can pronounce.
Summertime
During summer in college, we lived at Jeff’s, our unofficial headquarters and the birthplace of many poorly executed and questionable choices, cigarettes, and cheap beer. Jeff’s parents, in a move of either great trust or mild insanity, handed over the entire house to him and his brother every summer while they went to the Chautauqua Institution in New York. So, naturally, the rest of us moved in, and it became a frat house with better furniture. Three college-aged guys, Jeff, his brother, and a basement full of amps, guitars, a PA, and zero supervision, it was chaos, music, a summer-long party, and a HUGE mess.
Who Played What
Back then, I was doing my best to play bass and, for a couple of songs, guitar. Dan was playing what was supposed to be the lead guitar, and Scott was playing rhythm. Dan’s guitar, a Peavey Raptor, always seemed to have some strange chorus effect in it, no matter what. The guitar was black with a white pickguard, and it looked like a Strat.
Scott wielded some mysterious Les Paul knockoff that no one could quite trace. It just kind of… appeared one day, like most things did during those magical summers at Jeff’s house.
This guitar looked like it had survived a bar fight and a sandstorm, faded yellow with a finish so cracked it resembled a dried-up riverbed. It was an absolute relic. The action was so high you could’ve parked a pickup truck between the strings and the frets. The strings? Absolutely tragic. They had the dull gray sheen of something forgotten in a basement for a decade and felt more like barbed wire than anything meant for music. I’m pretty sure the high E string had either snapped or never existed in the first place, probably because the tuning peg had long since given up on life. So Scott just played without it for a while, like some lo-fi, indie-sleaze guitar whisperer who didn’t have time for six strings.
That thing was absolutely beat to hell. It was a total wreck. But somehow, Scott made it work against all odds; he made it sing.
That summer, I also scored a Gibson Maestro Plus 50 amp from Tom’s dad. Tom was my college roommate, and we’d jam here and there with whoever was around at school, nothing serious, just making noise and having some fun. I hadn’t convinced him to join this hot-mess band of ours yet, but it was on my to-do list.
Let there be Jeff
And then there was Jeff. With that deep, booming baritone and a head of red hair, beer in hand, he stood front and center like he was about to step in for Jim Morrison, even though we had no harmonies, barely a bass line, and not a single beat to back him up.
But it didn’t matter. We were writing and learning to play our instruments. We were getting ready for something BIGGER!
The Gig
We booked the show through our boss at Katerbean. She wasn’t exactly sold on the idea. Katerbean wasn’t the kind of place that hosted bands, definitely not ones with electric guitars. And definitely not our “band” with electric guitars. But for whatever reason, kindness, compassion, or just feeling bad for us, she said yes.
The PA That Should’ve Stayed Dead
Like most college-age musicians, we were broke. No gear. No budget. Just the usual mix of ambition and poor judgment.
We scraped together a “PA system” out of whatever we could find, mostly secondhand pieces from Music Go Round in Monroeville. The main speaker buzzed constantly. The other one barely worked. The mixer was held together with hope and masking tape, marking what each channel was for and what cords went where.
We’d been using it in Jeff’s basement, where the sound didn’t have to be good, just loud enough to get over the guitars, so we could hear the vocals. That night, we hauled it into Katerbean like it was a full-blown concert rig. Set it up. Plugged it in, and crossed our fingers.
The Set (If You Can Call It That)
Scott strums and kicks us off with “Dancing in the Sun,” the first song we ever wrote. A heartfelt coming-of-age anthem about, well… dancing in the sun and feeling the grass between our toes and shitty Pittsburgh weather. Deep stuff. Pulitzer-level.
After the song, Jeff steps up to the mic, introduces us as The Epimeres, and thanks everyone for coming, but not before making sure to point out the tip jar. Priorities man. Priorities.
From there, we launch into some of our “greatest hits”:
- The Cliff
- Melodies on the Mountain
- Innocence Reveals
- Passing Time
- Fall Under and Drown
- Woody Daza (which of course features one of Jeff’s signature harmonica solos because of course it does)
- The Harmonica Song
At some point, Scott starts noodling on a blues riff. Dan joins in. Jeff starts talking to the crowd. And then… it completely falls apart, not that it hadn’t already been teetering on the edge.
Dan starts tuning mid-song. Scott keeps playing something. Jeff suggests, “How about the harmonica song?” and launches back into it, except I’m pretty sure he and Scott were playing completely different songs.
Dan comes in with a solo that’s so wildly out of tune it sounds like he’s trying to summon wild geese. Jeff starts singing, “Fly away with me” over and over until the song finally dies a slow, painful death. The vibe was like we were trapped in an improv class led by a hungover jam band.
The Real Stars
I genuinely felt bad for the audience. They were the real stars that night, enduring the musical equivalent of a group text that never ends.
After some more tuning, stray guitar noises, and whatever that last half-song was supposed to be, Jeff closes the night with:
“Thanks and goodnight! Don’t forget there’s a fishbowl for tips!”
And that was it.
Our first gig. Our public unraveling.
And somehow, we still wanted to do it again.
Why It Mattered
That night at Katerbean, awful as it was, was the moment we stopped talking about being in a band and actually became one.
We were The Epimeres then, clueless and unpolished, playing a coffee shop for a few confused friends and unfortunate bystanders. But we showed up. We played. And somewhere deep inside that mess was the seed of what Down on Jane would become.
We just wanted to get to the Southside and play club gigs. That was the dream.
We didn’t know how far away that dream was, or how long it would take to get there.
But it started at Katerbean. With a broken PA, and a very loud reminder that we had a long, long way to go. But hey, we had a tip jar…
Eventually, Scott slid into the lead guitar role, Dan settled in on bass full-time, and I shifted over to rhythm. Sometime after the first gig, Tom finally joined the ranks and held it down for us at our second gig at Murphy’s Tap Room. But that’s a whole other story, one best saved for another time.