I was probably 12 at the time. After suffering through a year in the fifth grade band, being forced to play the xylophone when I wanted to play drums, I was very much so looking forward to playing the snare drum with the seventh and eighth graders at the school “concerts”. Vividly I remember the St. Thomas Aquinas Middle School Christmas Concert of 1995. I had practiced my snare drum and learned all of the songs, right off of the page. I just about had them memorized. I was certain I would be able to rock that snare drum beat to “Joy to the World” note-for-note.

I was somewhat nervous about the performance for another reason though. I had not exactly had the best relationship with one of the seventh grade band drummers thus far. I actually met him a couple of years earlier, when I was in the third grade. It was his first day at our school, if I remember correctly, that I, for some unknown reason, got into a fight with him on the playground.

I had no idea that I was about to meet someone who would soon become my best friend. Kasey Rex Callison, a kid in the grade ahead of me, also played the snare drum in the STA band. Of course, none of our history mattered to Kasey, he was cool like that, and forgave me. Kasey had his own way with music. Sure he could read the notes on the page as good as anyone else, but why would he? Needless to say, the concert that I had prepared for so well, absolutely rocked; That is, it rocked if you listened to the snare drums only that day. Kasey and I quickly picked up on our collective ability to improvise the entire set. The director was not all too happy with us, but we could not have been more pleased with the way we played.

About a year passed of Kasey and I “improvising” at school band concerts. I was in the seventh grade now, Kasey in the eighth. All of a sudden however, band was not as fun as it was before. Kasey had mysteriously left the school band. I knew something else had to happen though, I felt our days of playing music together were just beginning, not ending. On October 27, 1996 (yes I remember the exact date), I took another giant leap in the rock direction, with my Dad agreeing to buy me an electric guitar and amplifier.

Soon I was introduced to some of Kasey’s other friends through another choice playground encounter at recess. I met Nate Ebig and Drew Fournier, and well, the rest is history. Nate too had an electric guitar and a small practice amp like mine. By this time, Kasey had received his Jet Black Pearl Export drum set. It was only natural that the three of us started jamming in the Callison family’s living room. Kasey, Nate and I rocked out to cover songs like Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” while Drew played Nintendo. Soon we began producing our own version of pop culture in the songs that we would “write.”

Through some miraculous divine intervention, I was skipped a grade in school and placed into the same class as Kasey, Nate and Drew. Apparently God actually does listen those Christmas concerts, just like our sixth grade teacher Sr. Mary-Anita used to say. He must have liked the way we rocked out to “Silent Night” too. It was during some down time when Kasey broke his arm playing hockey freshman year of high school that Nate and I actually wrote our first songs as a band. At this time, our name was either Power of Ten or Cretin, specifically which one, I am not able to remember.

So freshman year sadly passed without much jamming in Kasey’s living room. We did however start one of my favorite traditions of hanging out on the night of Christmas day, with Kasey coming over to my house to play some James Bond 007 in Golden Eye on the Nintendo 64. During the band’s downtime incurring after Kasey had to have his arm re-broken because it healed wrong, we decided to rename our band to a name that would stick for a while, Reality Lost.

It was the summer of 1998 that we really got things going for our music to become a mainstream American cultural icon. We moved our practice space into Kasey’s garage, so his mom could have some peace and quiet in the house. Kasey, Nate and myself saw it only fitting that since he was at every band practice playing video games anyways, and none of us could sing, that Drew would be our singer. Also, Nate had received a bass for Christmas that year, so he made the switch of instruments from guitar to bass. Our line-up was now complete. Or so we thought. After finishing up the songs that Nate and I had wrote throughout the year, we discovered an internal problem in the band. Sure Drew could carry a tune better than the rest of us, but the kid could just not keep a beat.

After much deliberation, and I stress the much, Drew switched over to acoustic guitar and our friend Meg’s friend Nicki would become Reality Lost’s front-woman. The band continued on despite Drew and Nicki each attending different high schools. We wrote about eight songs, practicing every weekend in our new practice locale, the furnace room of my basement. After a summer of practicing, we played our first show at South Middle School with our friends Steve Nyquist, Joe Bonham and Josh Miller and their bands.

It was not until the summer after sophomore year that Reality Lost played our next string of shows. We played Nate’s sister’s graduation party in Nate’s backyard and then, sadly, our last show at Olde Jamestowne Hall. It was a goal of our band to get to play a “real hall show,” and what a way to go out. The band had had some internal strife and called it quits as Reality Lost, but this was not the end. It was only the beginning.

Kasey, Nate and I tried out a few different people on vocals to write some new songs with. First was our friend Tom Reynolds, who we had won the People’s Choice award with at the Nouvel Catholic Central High School talent show. For whatever reason, Tom did not work out. Next we tried out Keith Baumgartener, who again, for some reason, happened to not work out either. At some point we also tried adding another guitar player to the band, auditioning shred-meister Jared Talik. Most of the reason none worked out was because Kasey and Nate were playing in another band called Abound Failure with our friends Sarah Gehowski, Olivia Teneuecki, Ron Navaro and Josh Call.

However, the band once again was back in full force once we found the right guy. Aaron Breidenback was a friend of Kasey’s and had expressed interest that he wanted to sing in a band. Aaron had already talked to John Carnahan and sadly, with Nate on bass, the four of them started the band without me. Once Aaron had a clear idea of what he wanted to sound like, Kasey knew I was the right guy for the guitar. Kasey, Nate and I wrote about five songs with Aaron under the name Taintid. We learned a lot, had tons of good times, but never got a chance to play out.

It was completely unexpected what would happen next. We knew it was time for the high school talent show and were wondering what we were going to be doing. Aaron was attending Swan Valley at the time and was not allowed to participate. It would be Drew that would bring the band back together for the last time. Throughout his time away from the band, Drew could still sing better than any of us, and he had also managed to not only learn to play guitar, but could finally keep a beat! After rocking out with the Deftones song “Be Quiet and Drive” with Drew belting the vocals like pro, Nate’s amp and mine blasting and Kasey pounding away at the drums at try-outs, the talent show advisors decided that we were too loud and cancelled the show.

At the talent show however, we witnessed something else totally unexpected. Our good friend Josh Paolini, who had just learned to play guitar less than a year prior, was fronting a band he put together. Once again, since Josh was always hanging out and playing video games with us anyways, he joined the band as our new rhythm guitarist. It’s important to note that the five of us had essentially played music together as long as we had been playing music.

After playing together off and on throughout the rest of the summer following junior year and throughout senior year, the other band that Kasey and Nate were in eventually broke up, as did Stand Firm, the band that Nate and I had joined with our friend Mark Riddenhour. However, the fearsome-fivesome forged ahead. By this time we had cleared out the storage room in my basement and turned that into a real band room. We eventually took the name Ethereal Front and played our first show at Wiseguy’s Smokehouse with our friend Steve Nyquist’s new band during the first month of our first year at college. Conveniently, all of us stayed in Saginaw after high school, again letting the band continue on.

It was not until after this first show that a very formative moment in the band would happen. We changed our name to Evasic. Where the name came from is a closely guarded secret that I am certain countless people have heard before. However, now I feel is probably the best time to share that secret. One day I was sitting in my South Asian Philosophy class (yawn) designing a logo for our band, which at the time was nameless again. I literally combined letters out of the alphabet to form a combination of vowels and consonants. After rousing Kasey up one Saturday morning for practice, I told him the name I had came up with and he immediately responded positively with “That’s it man. That’s our name. We’re keeping that and we’re never changing it again.”

So we wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote new songs. Constantly. We wrote “Behind”, “Definitive Proliterate”, “These Three Words”, “Call You Sunday”, “Bleed Too Much”, “Burning Bridges”, “Worlds Away”, “Chase Away Sleep”, “Tearing Down the Night”, “Moved”, we wrote a ton of songs. At one point Josh, feeling a little overwhelmed, decided he needed time off from the band to actually learn to play guitar, since we had snatched him out of the guitar cradle so quickly.

We were all having a lot of fun, when out of nowhere, Kasey joined the ska band Stamp’d. My first reaction was “what?!” Kasey hated ska. I distinctly remember him telling me how much it “sucked” at one point. Nevertheless, he took Stamp’d to a new level that I do not think Seth, Phil, Jim, Justin, Mark, Tim, Sam and Matt (forgive me if I forgot anyone), quite expected from a new drummer. Kasey rocked out their shows with all the heart and soul he did with us. Stamp’d did not interfere with Evasic as much as we might have thought. Actually, we practically spring-boarded off of their success, playing about a years worth of shows with them, forcing Kasey to rock out two sets by two different bands at the same show many a time.

The stories of Evasic are endless. I could go on and on and on and on, like Dave Grohl sings in the Foo Fighter’s song “Aurora”, with stories of the past few years. Everyone has an Evasic story. Like the time Kasey broke a snare drum head and somehow ended up punching himself in the groin, to the time Drew playfully provoked the entire crowd at Jamestowne Hall to throw snow balls at us while we played. During Mike Beck and Kevin Begin’s tenure with the band while Josh was away, Mike once dropped his pants and exposed his turntable to unspeakable things. Tim Iiles, with his permanent standing invitation to the band, jammed with us onstage a few times, adding an electronic feel to the band occasionally.

Josh and I once woke Kasey up one morning for practice by dragging him into the shower. He then preceded to physically explain his distaste for cold water. There were times when we would try to convince venues that our friends Marty and Eric were an essential part of our security detail and/or roadie crew to get them in to shows for free. I remember loading tens of thousands of dollars worth of music equipment in to the back end of Nate’s dad’s suburban and showing up at shows to have people watch us set up our stuff up and stare at us. Kasey particularly enjoyed that, because sometime around 2002, he got a back-pay check from Social Security and bought a brand-new Pearl Masters Series drum set.

We had countless after-show parties where we enjoyed the company of our wooden duck mascot and on-stage showpiece, Al Ryda. Again, these stories could go on forever. I can’t count the good memories we had with this band. Kasey’s share of rock-star experiences far outnumber anyone I know combined.

I remember August 12, 2004, a Thursday night when Kasey had to pull a double-header with Stamp’d and Evasic once again. He was playing with Stamp’d over at Rheothke Park and had to head out to Olde Jamestowne Hall for our show after that. This was the hugest Jamestowne show we have ever played at; Two stages, one inside, one outside. We always talked about wanting to play a show outside with a huge crowd around us as being a goal for the band. We had no idea this would be it. We rocked this show out as hard as we have ever rocked out a show. We played the best we had in a long time, even with our last practice more than a month ago. We played a brand-new song that Drew had no words even written down for. Kasey knew we could do it. Inside, we all knew we could, it took Kasey to bring it out of us. On that night, Drew Fournier, Nate Ebig, Josh Paolini, Bill Welense and Kasey Callison could be found rocking out to our heart’s content.

After finishing the show with Kasey, rocking out about a hundred times harder than we had ever imagined possible back at our Christmas concert at St. Thomas in grade school, I gave Kasey a hug. “I love you man,” was the last thing I ever said to him. He died in a car accident shortly later. He truly lived life to the fullest, taking advantage of every moment possible. I shared some of the best memories I will ever have with Kasey. In our own way, we did change the world. We made our contribution to American music, even as small as it may seem in comparison to others, it meant the world to us. We got to be the rock star we always wanted to for that last time we played together. That I will always remember and be grateful for, I will always remember Kasey with a smile.

By Bill Welense

        August 16, 2004