(c)2005 the foliage

Marie J. Parker - Vocals, piano, guitar, French Horn, Cello, organ, recorder.

Eric Graalum - Drums, bass, whatever else he wants to play.

I met Charlie Gokey and Eric Graalum at the International Music Camp in July 2001, after our freshmen year in high school. I got along a little better with Charlie at the time, and since I didn't know many other people there, I could usually be seen tagging along with him wherever he went. At one point during camp he had me listen to Neutral Milk Hotel, a band I'd never heard of before. I was instantly hooked.

After leaving camp, the boys and I returned to our respective hometowns: theirs in Fargo, ND and mine in Williston, ND. Charlie and I communicated over the internet (and only over the internet, as Williston and Fargo are almost 500 miles apart) until one night in March 2002 when we decided to start a music project by the name of Marie and the Flying Nuns. For the next few months we exchanged tapes in the mail and edited each other's material using four-track recorders. Our first actual practice, if I'm not mistaken, was in October 2002, when I was in Fargo for a choir festival. This was also about the time when we really started referring to ourselves as a band instead of a project.

I was able to make the occasional trip to Fargo during our Junior year in high school, but practice time was still minimal, and we relied mostly on the internet and postal service. In January 2003, we changed our name to They, Monotone, and around then I let slip to Vanessa Palmer, also from Williston, that I had a long-distance band going. Vanessa, a member of In Ink Please, could relate to my growing frustration at our lack of practice time, as her bandmate, Jerik, lived in Bismarck, ND. IIP actually offered to take us with them on tour during the summer of 2003, but Charlie and I were still in high school, and our parents prohibited a tour.

We changed our name to The Algorithmic Convulsions around November, a month or two after IIP got signed to Fall Records. In December, Charlie was able to make it to Williston for the first time, during which we practiced for a couple days and played a small show for my family and a few friends. This was our first official "show", but I tend not to really think of it as one because of the audience of less than 10. Vanessa also came to see LOTR 3 with us that weekend; I think this was after IIP had started looking for another band to do their first split CD with. Vanessa had mentioned us to Chris Fredericks at Fall Records.

By February 2004 we had agreed to do the split, and The Algorithmic Convulsions were put up on the Fall Records website, with a nice little biography Charlie had written. We also began to discuss which of our songs (we'd written quite a few by this time) that we wanted to release.

After changing our name for the final time (I think) to The Foliage, we decided on three of our songs: I'm Not Here Alone, Leviathan, and Nonmoral Nature, and a cover of Neutral Milk Hotel's Naomi. In March/April I was able to make four trips to Fargo, during which we recorded the cover at Charlie's house and my vocal parts for Leviathan. Two days before going into Raptor Studios to record the last two, however, Charlie sent me a hurriedly-recorded demo of a brand new song of his, Cadence is a Sad Valley Girl (Moon over L.A.) written for a friend of ours (who I also met at IMC) who had moved to CA a couple years back. Surprisingly, we were able to pull this one off.

The Split, How to Make Better Love, was released on May 22, 2004. It's selling pretty well so far; we'll wait and see how everything turns out.

In June 2004 Eric Graalum joined The Foliage as a drummer/bass player at our first "real" show in Fargo. He makes us complete, I think; we perform better as three than we did as two.

That's our history so far, uninteresting as it may be. We'll be adding more to this page in the future, of course.