History of Duality

(or how many drummers does it take…)
Smashy Smashy started playing under that apt moniker in the fall of 2001. It was me (Gentry) and Austin Booth on drums. For me the guitar drum duo was a thing I’d been doing since I started playing. In my first band the bass player never showed up and we ended up playing our first shows just guitar and drums. Of course they were only in a barn and our science teacher was one of the 10 people who showed up, but more on that later. My friend Ed Rodriguez (of Iceburn, Collossamite, and Gorge Trio) had turned my on to the splitting the pickups to 2 amps trick, he used a sideways pickup to get the bass strings to a bass amp. I adopted a similar trick for smashy. Now I could play guitar and bass at the same time. It was incredibly fun coming up with songs that could exploit that.

Smashy actually started in late 2000 with Tyler Smith who was in Furious Fire with me, but he had just started in Form of Rocket and things were really taking off for him (forgive the pun.) So I got Austin, who was a solid solid drummer and we’d worked a lot together in Iceburn. We played a few gigs and were developing a repitoire when time called for a change. I wanted to keep going so I enlisted Daniel Derek Day also an old Iceburn boy. I added an extra (behind the nut) pickup to sound as a second guitar and that added to Dan’s fluid drumming made it a whole new experience. We played a few crazy shows and then triple-D had to take off suddenly, but smashy still had shows lined up so I found Dan Thomas. He was a friend of Austin’s and he rocked harder than any and still could get crazy with the best. And that’s where it is now. Dan is also in a couple other bands Alchemy and Tolchock Trio, and sought after by many more. Dan and I have been working and playing hard since he joined in 2002.

Like I said the duo has been a familiar format since I stole my first guitar (that really happened). In the past, it was born out of necessity. I had an Iceburn tour in Europe plop in my lap for September of 2000. The tour was in July and it started in Germany. Chad Popple, who had been playing in Iceburn, (as well as Colossomite and the Gorge Trio) was now living in Hamburg. So the band would be Chad and Ed Rodiguez (the best man for any job) oh and myself, a trio right. Well Ed couldn’t make it until a few days into the tour so it was down to a duo. So Chad and I had to rock without him. Luckily I had the right equipment and we had about a week to get a set together. Berlin was the first show and Chad’s friend (an idol of mine) Leonid Soybelman was in the audience so I was a bit nervous. But everything went great and I knew I had to do this duo thing for real.

Before that I had been doing a side thing with my friend Josh Dixon on drums (and trumpet sometimes). It was called Project:Ion and it was a very cranked up free blowing shit inspired by John Coltrane and Rashied Ali’s “Interstellar Space” recordings. And also liken to Ray Russell’s “stained angel morning” and Masayuki Takayanagi’s 1970’s screaming feedback-scapes. Eventually I wanted to put more structure behind it and that eventually led to smashy smashy.

Then back to the beginning, when it was me on guitar and Chubba (Joseph Chad Smith) on drums. It was high school, we played Black Sabbath and Black Flag tunes and our own 3 chord punk ditties. We thought we had a bassist but we could never get him to come to practice so we just did the two-man thing. We played our first shows in Chubba’s barn, one was a benefit to raise money to buy ice cream for our friend who just had his tonsils out. The cover was 50 cents and our science teacher, Mr. Thompson, showed up and some kids danced around in the hay and swung on the rope swing.

-Gentry Densley (May 27, 2003)

A few updates on the drummers since this was written -
Tyler is in Longarm with me. Its kinda like a speedo filled with math homework.
Austin and I formed K'Lala. Its a project that tends to focus on russian, klezmer, and in general eastern euro folk tunes.
Dan isn't in Alchemy anymore, instead he's joined the Red Bennies. A rock outfit of local legend, which I served a brief sentence with a few years back. It was fun but it mostly just just seemed to piss alot of people off that I was in the band and later it pissed people off that I was kicked out. Some of the drama is documented here.
Further updates - Tyler is in Eagle Twin with me, another Duo (my current focus). This one is the loudest and heaviest yet, taking cues from Doom Metal and ZZ Top. Austin is on a quest for a PHd. Dan also does Vile Blue Shades. Chubba picked up the stick again for an Iceburn Reunion show, another reunion show this time all ages is set for August 11, 2007.