Kevin Albrecht

The Story of False Impression (As Told By Me)

I Learn Guitar

It was January 2001. Like many college students, my friends and I spent every night we were together watching TV, playing video games, and occasionally playing a boardgame. My closest friend, Matt Boonstra, and I realized how boring this was and decided to find something more creative to do with our spare time. So Matt made a list of some things we could do and brought it to me in one of our classes at our college. The list was something to the effect of:

- make a boardgame
- design a computer game
- build something out of wood
- start a band

I thought about it a little bit and told Matt we should start a band. Matt had played guitar for about 5 years, but the only instrument that I had any experience on was the piano, and very little experience at that. But I decided to learn guitar. Matt lent me his Squier guitar (a strat-copy) and I started learning. I spent about 3 hours a day playing guitar for the first couple of weeks.

About a week after I started, I made a trip to my local music store and made a impulse buy. I bought a Jay Turser strat-copy and a used 50-watt amp. I soon learned that for the amount I spent, I could have bought a much better guitar and amp. I continued practicing for months. I practiced constantly and even practiced when my friends were visiting. I'm sure they all got very annoyed during those first few months.

The Band Begins

While I was still learning guitar, Matt and I were looking for some band mates, because two guitars does not a band make. So our friend Dave, who was learning keyboards at the time, said he would join our not-yet-extant band. After about two months, Dave transfered to a different university and his brief stint in our band came to an end.

One day Matt and I were driving with some friends when Eric starting rapping the lyrics to Ice, Ice, Baby. Matt and I convinced Eric to be our singer and the band had officially grown to 3 people. Eric tried singing, but we quickly decided that we probably needed someone else to sing, so Eric decided to learn to play the bass guitar.

Eric picked up the bass quickly, and the three of us had our first practice session in the summer of 2001. We spent our entire first session, 12 hours, leaning Creep by Radiohead. It was long and painful, but that day we learned how to work together as a cohesive unit. The three of us learned to play together over the next few months as we practiced weekly in Eric's dorm. We learned about six covers-- at least most of the songs.

One night while practicing, we all felt especially brave and we decided to put on a performance in the dorm's lobby. We quickly learned Tainted Love and headed down to the lobby. We set up our equipment and everyone watched us play. We played Tainted Love while some of the residents sang along. We played a few more songs until we realized that we had no business doing a concert without a drummer or a singer.

Finding a Drummer and Singer(s)

Ever since we had begun playing together, we had been trying to convince one of our friends to learn drums, but we had no luck. So in January of 2002, I put and ad in the school newspaper:

DRUMMER WANTED. Looking for fellow non-pothead to be in rock band. Must have own drumset. Call 555-5555.

The first person to respond was a guy named Jarred. He exceeded all our expectations for a drummer and we basically invited him to join the band on the spot. He had never been in a band before, but had been playing for a few years. We began practicing with him and made progress quickly.

His girlfriend, Angela, was a great singer, so about a month after Jarred joined the band Angela joined as well. Although Angela turned out to be a great singer, we soon decided that we also wanted a male voice for our band as well, so we decided to have two lead singers. Around this time, we finally settled on a name for our band: False Impression.

We put an ad in the school paper again looking for a male vocalist. We interviewed many singers, but quickly learned that it takes more than just ability to sing for a band, it requires reliability as well. Multiple respondants to the ad never returned calls or were just plain terrible singers. Eventually, we found exactly who we were looking for... ourselves!

Once we realized that Eric and I could do the necessary singing, we added some rapping and back-up vocals by Eric and some vocals by me, and we had False Impression.

False Impression... Mark II

We played concerts together until November of 2002, and had a lot of fun doing it. But by the end of the year, Matt realized that with school he would be unable to continue with the band. With Matt gone, the search began for a new lead guitarist.

After three months of interviews, we finally found someone in March of 2003 to take over lead guitar duties. Sean was more than capable of playing lead for the band and we began a new era of False Impression.