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Severance
plays guitar, keyboard, and sings the words
Bio
Michael David Severance was born March 31, 1982 in Detroit, MI. Attends Wayne State U.
Not much is known about his early years due his memory being erased by microwaves and television rays .
He enjoys a good pipe smoke and the insides of dead machines.
He first entered the world of music when he bought a very questionable Eclipse drum set from Gibraltar Trade Center in Taylor in January of 2001. He then joined up with local scene celebrity and Tuulikki member Jenny St. Onge as the rhythm backbone to her solo project, The Rock 'n Roll Pirates. They some how got a couple of songs together. They were both instrumentals because Jenny was afraid to sing. The first was the howling noise of "The Captain" and the other was "DEAD Pirates" which utilized the chords: D, E, A, D as a progression. Despite their eagerness for the rock jam, Jenny soon began to feel assy and did not feel up to driving from Grosse Point to Dearborn on any kind of regular basis and the very short lived project was suspended indefinitely.
Left with his own devices he wasn't sure whether his dream of being in a local band was ever going to pan out. At this point we are living the dark, music less summer of 2001. One day, in late August, the well known Ted Miller of Pedestrians fame was over trying to jam and probably getting quite frustrated with Mr. Severance's poor rhythm skills. At the end of the night he decides to leave his red JagStang Nirvana guitar over and says "I'll leave this here and you can play around with it if you want. I don't feel like taking it home" Severance remembers he has an old Mel Bay Grade 1 guitar book somewhere. He finds it and is soon in love with the guitar. He never leaves his basement. Severance gets through the book and learns most of all the open chords and the C scale. When tooling around he comes up with his first riff and plays it for Mr. Miller who loves it and a new song and band is born with Ted on drums and Sev on guitar. Two months later, Alex Jurich from the mid nineties garage band, Coo Cats if Any, joins up with them.
The Pizazz is born!
They all eat at Mongolian Barbecue and Ted throws up. They now have their signature jam "Smalltalk" and a month later Ted writes "Count on Revenge" and Severance writes "Porcelain Girls". Alex never finishes his song, "Sometimes" and nobody ever even hears it. There is one day when a girl named Sara joins up with them and jams on violin and guitar and says the word "Fucker" a lot and then she moves back to Frisco.
It's now 2002. Severance has met a lady named Mary Cotter who he teaches the drums and hangs out inside a cardboard box called "The Time Machine" with. He writes the song "Sidekick" The Pizazz members, Alex and Ted don't seem too inspired or motivated to create rock hits. They continue to practice the 3 songs they know every other week or so until they get tired and eat at various bad restaurants where they talk about how they will bring back grunge and folk-glam style combined as a robotic Indian, a boy band member, and the silent girl.
Severance being rather frustrated with these developments teaches Mary to play the songs. They practice with her when Ted moves to Ohio. They decide that Mary should play drums. She gets excited.
During this time Severance writes up a whole slew of new songs but none go into development due lack of motivation. Mostly just Mary and he work on material. They build up quite a few hits including: Drum Party, Sandwich Queen and Milkshakes in Outer space. They learn to play some Cub covers and On With The Show as well. Times goes by, Severance starts to take piano lessons, and now it's August 2002. They play on Mary's lawn during Dearborn Homecoming with a new addition, Mike Hayes from Vanishing Point, on keyboard. They play all weekend and really like what they are doing. Mike Hayes switches to the bass and helps them organized their songs and record them using his musical genius. They are now a real band.
In September 2002 they play at Paycheck's Lounge and Le Jive Music Cafe. The next month, October, they play at the Little Cafe and Stormy Records. Jurich is eventually ousted because he isn't feeling it anymore (joined the Stereo Mystery but was ousted months later and is now working on solo project) and the band becomes a 3 piece as it remains to this day. They start to go into new territory experimenting with song styles and instrumentation.
GEAR
-60s Black Silvertone Electric Guitar
-Fender Roc-Pro 1000
-Yamaha PSR-GX76 keyboard
-DOD Echo FX, Analog Delay Pedal
