how higher ground was born

I got a phone call in 1998 from a guitarist who had an original band that was looking for a progressive drummer. They asked around and got my name. I wasn't playing with anyone at the time so we got together and rehearsed about 3-4 times. I liked the keyboardist, Chuck Oliver, a lot - he had the same influences I had, but the guitarist and bassist (can't remember their names) didn't impress me much, so I bowed out. A few months later I got a call from Chuck, he recently left that line up and asked me if I wanted to start an original band. I was more than interested. We were both in our early 30's, had good jobs and wanted to write and record the kind of songs we liked and didn't care about any commercial success. I told him I knew a good singer with the vocal range we needed (Alby Miller) so we had to find a guitarist and bassist.

The search for these two members was more than difficult. We couldn't find a guitarist that could play solid rhythm and then have decent phrasing and solo ability. It took months, but we found the right guy. Believe it or not we found Billy Crowell from an ad in a local paper. Billy is perfect for this band. He has the great taste in rhythm parts and then can really shred or pull off a huge solo. See Power of the Soul from our Riddles and Rhymes release. After we found Bill we auditioned about 12 bassists and they were basically terrible. One came in with a real nice rig and beautiful Specter bass. When he set it up he actually stood back to look at it, to make sure it looked cool - I didn't want him to even plug in. Did I mention he showed up with his girlfriend? Needless to say he couldn't play. After that painful experience Bill told us about a friend he worked with that was a pretty good progressive bassist. I still want to kill him for waiting so long to tell us about John Moorhouse. John came in with a 6 string bass and powerful hands.

The band was formed.

We wrote and performed with this line up for 5 years. We recorded one CD entitled Riddles and Rhymes. The CD is dated by the first track on the album entitled Y2K, about a possible world’s end or computer crash in 2000. Yeah - I wrote it in 1999. Since we are all Kansas fans and we used Song for America as a try out song for guitarist and bassist we decided to put it on the CD as a tribute to Kansas. I reached out to Kansas’ drummer Phil Ehart to ask permission and he gave us his blessing.

We wrote two thirds of our upcoming CD in 2004 with a revised line up. Although Chuck was still writing songs, he didn't have the time to rehearse with the band. His work required him traveling 2-3 weeks of the month. We had already added a new member - Dan Smedile - to play both Guitar and Keyboards. When Chuck was unable to work with the band Dan moved to keys. Alby was never really into the prog rock genre. Although he has great range and did a great job, he lost interest. So I recruited a long time friend whom I played with years ago - Jeff Trussell. Jeff not only also has an incredible range - he is a progressive rock singer and brings a whole new dimension to our sound. We laid down the rough tracks for our new CD in 2004 when I got a new job with Peavey and moved to Mississippi. Since we had rehearsed at my home, the band broke up. I returned two and a half years later, but didn't have the time to start up again. I was building my house and had started my own business. We kept in touch and I told the guys we would get back together in a little while. So four years later in 2008 I spoke to Kansas about opening for them and we are back together. 

We have started rehearsing and it's like we never parted. The good news is we are going to finish recording the second CD and release it in July. That will be Forces of Nature. We then hopefully start writing for a new one. This is something we love to do and it's great we get to do it for fun.

Greg Helm