And at that point, Shepherd had been vocally lobbying to be on our lineup as a drummer. And aside from the fact we're all friends, he had played with Billy and Paul as part of ‘TrickyMC’, and loved that, and had played with me during Saturday Night Specials - just the one song I would do  - and, y’know, he saw that we don't have a permanent guy and he's like ‘Man, I would love to be that guy.'

 

And we're all buddies, y’know? He's a pro-level drummer, obviously a great player. And for us, I'm like 'Great, man!' I love Mark and I love his energy. Y’know, as much as I can always have Billy and *almost* always have Emma, having more of a consistent roster is really nice. So when Mark wanted to come on board it really sweetened the pot. So that was a really great add. I'm like 'Okay, we're going to be in New York. And we got Mark on drums, which means we can kind of pre-game and rehearse more than we could with the studio guy or a local hire.' 

​

For bass, we brought in Nick Morrison again, who was my bass player at the OK Fest in 2024, last year's OK Theater Festival in Oregon. Nick was the bass player that I met through Daryl Brann. And he's unbelievably good, and a great guy. We had had him come to a convention actually, because Mike Borja had to miss one. So we flew Nick in, because Billy really got along with him during the OK Fest time period. So we flew him into some city - I don't remember which one. But he came to one of the Supernatural conventions to sit in on bass for Mike and again, knocked it out of the park. So we're like 'This is a natural fit. Let's bring him in. He knows a lot of the Dick Jr. stuff, which will make it easier for him to add the Billy Moran and Jason Manns stuff', because in those Dick Jr. shows like New York, it's a rock show from beginning to end - it’s Jason Manns with a full band, Billy Moran with a full band, then ‘Dick Jr. & The Volunteers’. 

So getting Nick in was awesome. 

 

And then we had Emma, and we lost Emma due to scheduling conflicts, and then we replaced her with Briana Buckmaster, and Briana had to back out, due to some personal concerns. And so literally I was sitting on my sofa, and Briana called to say she couldn’t do it. I hung up, and just texted Meredith. 

I’ve known Meredith for a long time. I know her family here in Joseph, Oregon. She grew up in Enterprise, Oregon, which is one town over, where the OK Theater is; her dad owns the OK Theater. Her dad, Daryl, who's a great guitar player himself and his brother's a pro-guitar player in New York. And his brother's bass player is Nick Morrison, which is how we all know Nick. Meredith had been around as a kid. And then also when my whole family took a river rafting trip. and I'd forgotten this, she worked for the river-rafting group, so she went with everybody in my bloodline, my in-laws, *everybody*, on a five-day river-rafting trip, as one of the people helping us out. And the fact she still speaks to me after that speaks volumes, because, I mean, that's a humbling experience. I don't think *I'm* high maintenance. But, you know, I had three kids, in-laws, nieces, nephews, we were all there. She got to see us all in the wild, in the reality, and she still liked it, so that was good. But I didn't know her professionally until the OK Fest, where she sang with her own band and her father, and then I had her sing some backup for us, just with Emma. And I'm like ‘Man, she's got a great voice, she’s got a great attitude’, and at the time she was living in Nashville, so I didn't think I was that far from New York. I'm like ‘Well, I’ll just hit her up. See if it works.' And sure enough, she said 'Yeah, I'm available and I'll do it’, which was great. So somewhere out there, there's three versions of that poster, as Beth knows - there was one with Emma, then one with Briana, then one with Meredith. So there's a collector's edition of posters out there. 

 

But yeah, she was willing to fly up. Though we had some challenges there, too. It's just with the air travel nuttery, it got a little tough to get her up here. Wasn't as easy as we thought. It was a big to-do, but she got there. And she came in just firing on all cylinders, ready to hit the ground running, and she played with us  Sunday night at the convention. You know, as kind of a warm up. She brought her boyfriend, Forrest O'Connor, who's a Grammy Award winning mandolin player, so we recruited him to play with us, both at the convention on Sunday night and at the Mercury Lounge on the Monday. And it was just a blast. It was super fun to get to know her in that capacity. 

 

And, ironically, a little side story - when we had played EXIT/IN the first time, Billy and I rented a little rehearsal space called The Purple Room or something in East Nashville, an area I did not know very well, and that’s where we met and rehearsed. And when I came out of rehearsal, I was walking down the street in Nashville and somebody said my name, and I turned and she said ' know you.' And she wasn't looking familiar to me. I’m like 'You do?' And then she's like, 'I'm Meredith Brann. I'm Daryl's daughter' and I'm like 'Oh my God!' But it was out of context. It didn't make sense. I wasn't expecting to see anybody I knew from Joseph, Oregon. So oddly, I had already run into her, y’know, musically. Our concentric circles kept overlapping, I guess is my point. There’s sort of a weird sort of coincidence that was going on.

 

So she was able to come and play, she did an unbelievable job and then later that night, walking around the city of New York, Forrest proposed to her, and now they're engaged to be married. So I feel like I had a hand in it because, yeah, I don't know how that works. I didn't actually, but just the fact that I got them to New York at the time.

 

Going back to Mercury Lounge, though, it was great. We all left that show feeling like we had done something cool. Like,it was a different vibe; we didn't have a third guitar player. Usually we have Zachary Ross or Jules Belmont, and we didn’t have that. It was more of a bare-bones lineup. There was me, and I was not on an acoustic, I was on electric, and there was Billy, and it worked.

It worked really well. We really dug the sort of garage band vibe of the whole thing. There was a definitely a comfort level that permeated the whole experience. It was really unique and awesome.