“The Big Trucks are not a band”. I’m always careful to make this point clear. “We’re a collective of traveling minstrels.” As usual, this clarification receives only a slightly baffled expression as acknowledgement. “And we don’t play songs, we create unique sonic experiences. Who do you think we are?”
I take these clarifications extremely seriously, because they are extremely serious. I’ve been in this band, in some incarnation or another, since sixth grade. We’ve gone through phases, from punk to freeform jazz improvisation to rap to techno to our most recent experimental soundscapes. Even our members have changed: only two of our founding members remain (myself included), but we’ve gone through more than 30 other members.
Really the only constant is our persistence. No matter what, we always push forwards. We have a drive to create; a drive not even stopped by fierce opposition. Despite being rejected from CCHS’s Battle Of The Bands three years running for playing music too experimental and inaccessible for the judges, we’ve signed up for another year’s audition. This is our year, we’re sure of it. In addition to being our ‘battle year,’ this has been one of our most productive. We share a moral aversion to recording our music, but 2009 has seen the taping of 9 Big Trucks songs. This is more than all of our previous years combined. When I consider that we only record one out of every thirty or forty songs we create, this number is astounding. Perhaps we’ll finally have enough material with which to release a coherent album: the time-separation between our tracks has always stopped us in the past.