Emo's second wave is generally regarded as reaching its high water mark sometime in 1998-1999. The vinyl community has kept releases like EndSerenading and even lesser-knowns like Highway Miles in the general scene consciousness. But the bands which came after the turn of the millennium have more often than not been forgotten, falling into the dead zone between the perceived end of the second wave in the late nineties and the resurgence of the genre in the 2010s. These are the bands who didn't have the benefit of Bandcamp, and whose releases on CD Baby and the other self-publishers of the time have been lost.
Fly, Mordecai is as fine an example of second wave midwest emo as you could hope for. Their sole album, Dreams Carved Under Indifferent Stars, is fantastic from start to finish. They were from Texas: here's a video of their last show. Besides the LP, the only other material I've been able to gather is a sort of rough collection of demos and outtakes the band posted to Soundcloud. Don't let the 2003 release date of the LP fool you: This is real midwest emo, just a few years too late to ride the crest of the second wave.
Here's what Jason Petty, lead singer of the band, had to say about its history:
"Meridian was my first college band, started when a few guys responded to a classified in our college newspaper circa 2001 (all of us were Texas A&M students). I believe in the ad I mentioned some bands I liked at the time, Appleseed Cast, Explosions in the Sky, who knows what else, and said I was a guitarist in search of a band. Got in touch with a bass player named Austin who was in another group based out of the city of Austin. A drummer also responded, Mike Powe, who ran the radio station, KANM, and who was very active in a student group called Town Hall, who ran the auditorium on campus and were in charge of bringing bands from out of town and promoting them in College Station. A third guy (Adam) played guitar and also liked to sing. If I recall I had written about five songs (hence any Fly, Mordecai stuff you hear attributed to Meridian), and Adam had written one, so we played those all around College Station bars for a year or so.
Adam graduated and moved to NYC where he worked at a recording studio, and Austin was too tied up with other projects and his other band (kind of a Dillinger Escape Plan group, wish I could remember their name!), so he quit.
My roommate whom I’d played music with since high school, but who wasn’t around at the time Meridian took shape, Bristen, I think had always wanted to be in the group, so he was kind of thrilled when Austin quit and he became the bass player. I took over singing duties and we became a three-piece. We picked the name by all three agreeing to watch a movie and then finding inspiration that way. We landed on The Royal Tenenbaums and we opted for “Fly, Mordecai” at the coming-of-age scene where Luke Wilson’s character lets his childhood pet hawk named Mordecai loose. (I think the movie line is “Go, Mordecai!” but we opted for the more assonant “Fly”.)
Bristen, Mike and I wrote several more songs which we eventually recorded into the Dreams Carved under Indifferent Stars album. (That name came from a Yeats poem, “A Dream of Death”.) So we three are the Jason Petty, Mike Powe, and Bristen Phillips credited in the liner notes. Mike’s friend in art school offered to do the album art for us for free since she needed a project for her portfolio. We all thought it turned out pretty cool. Did a few shows around the state of Texas but never anywhere else, but did get to play some iconic, great Texas rock venues in Dallas, Austin, Houston, etc.
We wrote several songs immediately after the album, while we were traveling and doing a lot of shows, and those are what you have as that EP. We recorded demos of those in a friend’s storage unit who was just getting into recording. We had all already graduated and I think I had a cold the day we recorded, so I never got around to recording the vocals. Was really happy to come across those via your review, I’d forgotten about some of them! I believe one of those post-album songs, “Dying in the Old Search,” is on that video from our last show, more of a reunion show really. We were pretty out of practice for that one, not having played together for a few months, but it was a good time.
I think if we’d recorded the album a semester or so earlier we’d have been able to work harder at promoting it. We were all so wrapped up in college that we never took “being a band” as seriously as some others who waste $5,000 recording an album do. :) The guy who recorded the album was named Casey DiIorio, who’d been the front-man for Dallas pop-punk band Valve, hence his Valve Studios recording the album.
In hindsight—we’re talking almost 20 years after—I think we struck exactly the right balance between having a ton of fun, making our “favorite” music a reality, and still getting out of school on time. I wouldn’t change a thing about it. I’m still in touch with Bristen and Mike, and we’re all married with kids. We still talk; mostly about music and family and, I think, less so about the old days owing to our utter exhaustion of the possibilities there. NO RAGRETS. ;)"
As regrettable as it is we didn't get more material from Fly, Mordecai, one incredible album of true midwest emo is a better legacy than most bands have.
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