Though the title Norfolk, Virginia may suggest otherwise, brash art-punkers Combine didn't put Hampton Roads on the musical map with their 1995 Caroline Records debut release. Tidewater, as it was referred to when I moved here in 1983, was already represented, at least within the seminal pages of Ira Robbins' guide to cool music, the Trouser Press, in the form of the Waxing Poetics.

It's hard to believe that Hampton Roads natives David Middleton-who now resides in New York City working for Caroline Distribution-guitarist Paul Johnson, bassist Sean Henessy and drummer Bil Shearin formed the band almost 17 years ago.

What a blur.

What a drunken mess.

You should have been here yesterday.

It was in 1983 when Middleton was playing in a punk cover band, the Probe, when Johnson had aroused curiosity in an unnamed three piece he had put together. Johnson, known by many as Paul Tiers, had a band without a singer. Middleton was a candidate. And it was Middleton, taking inspiration from a high school teacher at Norfolk Catholic who argued with him over James Joyce's short story, "The Dead," that came up with the band's eventual moniker.

"[My teacher] at the time told me I was waxing poetic," recalls Middleton from his office in New York. "Basically, I was using big words without knowing what they meant."

Middleton added an "s" to "Poetic," posted it on the wall of their rehearsal space, and the Poetics were born, playing their first gig in 1984 off the shady curbside of Hampton Boulevard. The place: Dominics, Formerly Dominics, The Corner, or the Lil' Saddle. Depends on when you stumbled in. Of course, no one ate the food. But they certainly gravitated to the post punk sounds of Waxing Poetics. Garage sensibilities, rock, twang, intelligent prose, Carol Taylor, draft beer headaches and cool t-shirts.

What a beautiful mess it was.

In 1985, the Waxing Poetics released their first recording, 500 copies of a seven inch record that included the song "Hermitage" backed with "Return" on their own imprint known as Celery Records. The band went on to release three studio recordings: Hermitage (1987), Manakin Moon (1988), and Bed Time Story (1990)-through Emergo Records ( the CDs are now re-issued under Trumpeter Records, a local company, against some people's wishes) that included diverse originals inspired by thoughts of coming out of the closet ("Walking on Thin Legs"), great indie rock of the decade, drugs and depression in a writer's colony and Gary U.S. Bond's late-'50s back-up band, the Church Street Five. While R.E.M. and Let's Active were obvious influences, the Poetics also drew their sounds from the likes of Wreckless Eric, Brian Eno, Pink Flag, Wire and Night of the Living Dead. Most of it performed, as Middleton recalls, "through a blitz and a drunken haze."

"I really can't remember much," he says. "It seems as though it was in another lifetime."
 

Waxing Poetics, circa 1988

David Middleton was the band's primary songwriter, an artist in the truest since. He's intelligent, cultured, sensitive, stubborn, cautious and lives in New York.

We first met in 1996 when I was working on a piece for Port Folio magazine. It was rumored that the Poetics were going to do a reunion that summer. Being a fan of the band's since my fake ID days before getting busted at the door of Cafe Loco trying to get in to see them, I was anxious to meet Middleton.

It was my posse and me who drove down Battlefield Blvd. '(we were rednecks from Great Bridge who posed as surfers and never fit in with the Norfolk hipster scene available in black and white at the King's Head and Dominies) loudly listening to Hermitage trying to figure out the words to "Return" while switching it back and forth with R.E.M:s "Shaking Through" and "West of the Fields." Nothing else mattered but good tunes and a pot buzz now and then.

So, finally I was going to meet Middleton.

Colley Cantina. Tuesday night. Sometime when I used to be married. 1996.

"We didn't form the band as a career move," said Middleton during that conversation. I was caught up in the business of music then. Record stores and too many radio friends do that to you after a while. "We did it because it was fun and we were bored with what was going on locally. This was also a time before bands were labeled 'alternative' and thrown at you like pie. It was a time when great bands like Guadalcanal Diary were desperately trying to get on a major label."

Before the Poetics signed their record deal with Emergo, before their first shows at Dominic, and before the countless Wednesday night gigs at the late Dave Sherry's late King's Head Inn, Middleton was playing a mandolin at nine-years-old. His father, who provided the mandolin, bought him an accordion a year later.

"My father played every musical instrument you could imagine," Middleton said of his musically influential father who passed away in 1988. His dad bought him a guitar next. From there, Middleton began to write his songs, penning "If You Knew Sushi," the second song off Hermitage, at the age of 13. Later songsmith expressions included the likes of "Jesus of Nashville" and "Everything You Want is Against the Law" as well as more popular Poetics tunes like "Return." "Baby Jane" and "East 0' Jesus."

But after accomplishing more than they ever set out to do-getting a record deal, working with R.E.M:s Mike Mills and Mitch Easter of Let's Active and Drive-In Studio, touring cross country in the early days of the Connells, and recording a demo requested by Warner Brothers-over a period of seven years, give or take, Waxing Poetics folded in September of 1991.

"After a while, Paul lost interest," explained Middleton. "He saw us going around in circles and a lot of doors were closing in our faces. So he opted to move to New York City. When he told us that, I thought, 'I could replace Paul; but I really didn't want to. He and I were the band-the heart and soul. It was formed over our friendship for 17 years. So instead of replacing Paul, I opted to break up the band and go on to different things."

June 16, 1996: Waxing Poetics, along with local bassist Rob Katherman of Big Bobby and the Nightcaps, perform their first gig in five years. Prior to the Boathouse performance, the Poetics hadn't played together-despite Middleton's and Tiers' post-Poetics collaborations -since their last show at the Outer Limits in 1991.

Saturday, July 24, 1999, at Peabody's in Va. Beach, the Poetics are going to do it again.

Why?

"It's time," says Middleton. [Paul and I] didn't really talk about it. It just came up one day and we said it would be fun. Plus, I wanted to sing really bad. When you write songs and are used to fronting a band, it doesn't leave you."

Since moving to New York, Middleton has experienced both the business of music and the music. He's worked for Tower Records and now Caroline Distribution while playing bass in a noise band Splotch, a pop band called Gordo 77 and his latest project, Grillmaster. But he doesn't sing in any of them.

Since the last reunion show, Poetics member Paul Tiers has set up shop in Brooklyn, operating a home studio, working with Peter Zaremba of the Fleshtones. Bil Shearin still lives in Hampton Roads, and currently plays drums with the pop, fourpiece band Rumble Fish. Of course Middleton is still working with southern states' mom and pop record stores that deal with Caroline Distribution.

And occasionally, you can hear Poetics songs left of the dial on any of the several rock radio stations in Hampton Roads.

"What ever happened to Baby Jane ... "

What a beautiful mess it was.

Bonn Garrett, ninevolt, July 1999