Friday, September 17th, 2021 will mark the 20th Anniversary of the band. We don’t have a gig scheduled for it. That’s okay. Mikey and I, (Matt), are the only original members, Bill joined us in May of 2022 and Mike Barone in June of 2004.
When we started Mikey was in his 30’s, I in my early 40’s. Since then, the original bass player has passed away, 2 bass players that played with us on many gigs have also passed away. Two drummers that played with us have passed away/ Three booking agents that have booked work for us passed away. Many of our friends, fans and family have passed away. ALL of the marriages and/or relationships surrounding the band and our closest circle have broken up, divorced or had one of the people in that relationship pass away. Many or most of those relationships and marriages have been replaced by new ones. Many of us have become grandparents. The world has completely changed since this band started is my point.
20 years goes by in the blink of an eye. In the grand scope of things it is immeasurably small and insignificant. Yet, for virtually everyone connected in any way to theRockin45s, the world we know now bears no resemblance to the world we began this ride in.
- None of us had cell phones
- There wasn’t even any MySpace, muchless the plethora of social media garbage there is today
- Few of us had GPS (getting to gigs was more of an adventure)
- I was a corporate executive. Miley was a kitchen supervisor
- The 9/11 attack was 1 week ago
- File sharing apps Napster and Limelight were how we got music
- Not one of us ever used the word “pandemic” in a sentence
- We argued less and when we did it was with far more civility
- Most of us trusted what the government said most of the time.
- AOL merged with Time Warner and that was frightening to many people.
We hadn’t yet met most of the people who will read this. Chances are that if you’re reading this, you have met and become friends, even very close friends with new people you met at one of our shows. That is a blessing to all of us.
If the last 18 months and this past Memorial day weekend have taught us anything, it’s that we can’t take anything for granted. That said, I’m really looking forward with hopeful anticipation of reaching that 20th anniversary and looking to make this Summer count as a tribute to that milestone. We have no idea how long this ride will go on and we hope you’ll treat this Summer with that same attitude. We don’t have a lot of public dates on the calendar but we hope to connect with you whenever we can. Come party with us because, Hey, ya never know.