Outgunned began in a Plano, Texas garage in the fall of 1997 by Greg Nance, Jon Kennedy, Bobby Johnson, and Andrew Saunders. Nance and Saunders met in their high school geography class, and discovered the mutual interest for playing the guitar and writing music. Saunders was friends with drummer Kennedy, and Nance had been with in another band with Johnson, and once all four members jammed in the garage, they all knew they had something special,
even if it was especially terrible at that time.
In the beginning there were one hour practices followed by four hour bouts of Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64, but as time passed, music began emerging from the cacauphony, and the band became more dedicated to pursuing excellence in the writing and performance of the music. A year and a half passed before the band would perform its first show.The Name
The band went unnamed for several months, until the four decided on the moniker "Prophet", which held until the first gig, where there was some confusion as to if the name was "Prophet" or "Profit". Seeing as how this confusion was held by the actual members of the band, the band went though a second search for a band name, and settled on Dr. "Doak", named after a very minor character from the game Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64. This name was quickly eschewed as well due to lack of meaning. The third round of name-brainstorming brought about Outgunned, and the vote was unanimously "yea!". The name was chosen because of the band's musical output was notably outside the scope of the popular music being played by other bands in the area. Plus, Plano's reputation of being a well-to-do city meant these bands generally possessed better equipment than Outgunned did. The band chose the name to embrace its self-proclaimed underdog status, and the name stuck.
The Glory Weeks
The band went on to play a few great shows in mid-2000, and the crowd respose was very enthusiastic. The band reached its prime, and then its was time to part ways. Nance and Kennedy both departed from Outgunned in August 2000 to attend college in other cities. The last show with the founding members was Kennedy's own "Going away party".
A Change of Gears
Johnson and Saunders decided to keep the band alive, hired drummer Kevin Albert, and continued as a trio.
The departure of Nance was deeply felt as the band had lost a guitar player, a lead vocalist, and an engaging front man. Saunders took up the slack by assuming the lead vocal and guitar roles, but found it difficult to fill Nance's shoes as well as his own. The three saw that the drastic change in band personnel would bring about a dramatic change in the music. Johnson began bringing in acoustic pieces that experimented with alternate guitar tunings and the band began experiencing more with shifting time signatures and rhythms. The band played a number of shows during 2001 that were moderately successful, but the trio had some difficulty performing the newer complex songs with just one guitar. Searches for a second guitarist were unfruitful, as were searches for a lead vocalist. The same period that brought forth much creativity also birthed much frustration. In the summer of 2001, the founding members briefly reunited for a couple of shows while Nance and Kennedy were in town. Saunders and Kennedy held some practice sessions during these months, and these sessions lead to the creation of the tentatively titled "Rain Song" which eventually became "Rain Schtick" on the band's 2007 release.The Frustration Years
After Nance and Kennedy returned to school in fall of 2001, Johnson and Saunders sought out a new drummer,
and found Bryce Eddy. Not long into the practices, Johnson had to pull away from the band for personal reasons, which put the band on hiatus. In 2002, Johnson and Saunders began working on more new material, and the band began searching for drummers once again. After several false starts, the band resumed with Eddy on the skins in late 2002. After a few months, Johnson decided to resign from the band to devote more time to his family. The band lost an essential member, and the year that followed was wrought with upsets and false starts as the many held auditions never replaced the missing piece. A small glimmer of hope was found when the band hired bassist Devin Connelly. Outgunned played two shows in early 2004, but the diverging musical directions of the band members brought Saunders to disband the group.A New Start
After disbanding the group, Saunders immediately began working on polishing the material that he had written while the band was on hiatus. What started as laying down some song ideas turned into a whole recording project, and after a few months the goal switched from recording some scratch ideas to recording 21 songs for an official double album, tentatively titled after the intented first track, "W.T.C.B.S." The recording began in June of 2004 and concluded in March of 2006. The recordings would several unreleased songs that Outgunned performed in previous years, such as "Rain Shtick" (the Rain Song) "Amaterasu", two songs from Saunders "Aural Therapy" project in the summer of 2002, "House of Cards" and "The Pendulum's Sway", and new material written but never performed. The 21 songs were completely recorded for the double album, but Saunders lacked the funds to release a dual album, so he begrudgingly decided to split the songs into two separate albums, "Vol. I" and "Vol II." Vol I. was mixed by friend Ryan Lipman during 2006, and the album was officially released on March 2, 2007.
Things to Come
While "Vol. I" was inthe mixing stages, Saunders held some practice sessions with bassist Scott Ramsey, and in mid-2007, Ramsey was offered the bass role for the re-recording of "Vol. II". The recording for the groups third album began mid-2007, and the group is focusing solely on the recording for the time being. The question of whether or not Outgunned will be fully reborn as a performing group will remain open-ended, for the time being.