WEIRD BEARDS
Years Playing 1990 - 1992
Members:
         Jim Feurholzer - guitar, bass & Vocals, art & graphic design
         Keat Dyas - drums, bass & Vocals
         M. A. Farrar - guitar, bass & Vocals, art & graphic design
Releases:
Members came from:
Members went to: Catholic Guilt, Fish Box, gel-403" class="band-link">Morphine Angel

From Michael Farrar: No releases, but I recorded every practice session - many of which we edited down, gave titles to and gave out to friends.

Jim Feurholzer and I worked together with Hiedi Ore, John Taylor, Bob Crisler, and Mike Davis (as well as many others from the indie art scene) at a strange place doing Yellow Pages phone books. I can't remember what Jim's previous band was called - but I do remember that they'd put out a 7" demo and had a track that got played on local radio from time to time. Jim was attending UNL working on a post graduate degree in psychology - and he was also one of the more notable of local artists. Keat had been around during the Brickyard and Malone center days, playing drums whenever anybody would let him (I think he played a couple of shows, unofficially, with Hymn To Joy). The only time that we played outside of Keats basement was at a "demolition party". I forget the address (and since it's been over 10 years since I've even been in Lincoln I couldn't even guess what street it's on) but it was a small four or six unit apartment building that ended up being torn down and a small law/attorney office went up in it's place. Many of the people that lived there were coworkers/friends and since their leases had terminated and they were essentially being kicked out they decided to throw a party on the last night they were allowed to be there. What better place to throw as wild of a party as possible than a place that was going to be torn down in a couple of days? So - we set up shop in one of the up-stairs units and cranked the amps. A good time was had - many windows and walls were broken - many visits by the police (who ended up hanging out listening to us play for a while - yes, there are occasionally some cool cops).

The band was at one time called Sometime October since my birthday is Oct. 10th, Jim's is Oct. 11th, and Keat's is Oct. 12th. It later changed to Weird Beards when all three of us attempted to grow beards at the same time (or planning - just coincidence) and yet not really being able to (they were kind of scraggly and spotted). Sheri Shwarz (girlfriend of local jazz pianist John Carlini) who we worked with commented that our beards were "weird". This was when the David Lynch version of Dune had just come out and Jim was fascinated by the "weirding way" in the movie. We did some dictionary digging to find out that 'weird' can be used to pertain to the occult or supernatural and that the word 'beard' can be used as a term of defiance. So, in light of those definitions, Weird Beards stuck.

We were loud and noisy and completely unpredictable - almost never played the same thing the same way twice and known to go off on 20 - 30 minute jams. Jim described it best as Bauhaus meets The Fuzz Tones meets Metallica. Or in other words - we were pretty sloppy and not very good - but it was a lot of fun.

Jim quit to focus on his studies and eventually moved to Chicago. Keat and I somehow hooked up with John Fynbu (Hymn To Joy, Four Against One) and then later recruited Steve Case (owner of Project Imports record store - one of the first shops to open in the Berkholder Project in the Haymarket) to play drums and form Fish Box.