My Bands and Musical Projects

UNRING THE BELL

Unring the Bell plays heavy alt-rock that sounds like the love child of Foo Fighters and Weezer. Our song titles make no sense and the band consists of busy people, so we don't play out or record as often as we should. Still, we're not dead yet. 

Instagram: @unringthebell
Bandcamp
Unring the Bell YouTube Channel

 

CLOWN TEETH 

Clown Teeth are the originators and foremost purveyors of lounge punk, an unsettling mix of sleaze punk, alt-folk,and spoken word. Created by brothers Joe and Matt Smith from Buffalo NY, Clown Teeth's music is an ongoing experiment in punk sounds, imagery, and world play.

Instagram: @clownteeth_official
Bandcamp  

WILLCOX GARAGE

Guitars and noise, beauty and monstrosity, clarity and confusion ... these are the forces that drive Willcox Garage to create musical compositions that tickle the ear and haunt the soul. 

Bandcamp 

FORMER BANDS AND PROJECTS

 

 

VISITANTS

Visitants plays sometimes noisy, often prickly, and occasionally soothing indie-rock that speaks to the potential and peril of a time when everything feels untethered. Visitants never played a show and the three songs posted on Bandcamp comprise the entirety of our musical output. Dig it.

Visitants on Bandcamp

SIN LUNG

"Rooted in the hardscrabble Rust Belt ethos of Buffalo NY, Sin Lung's music tested the boundaries of heavy music with its unique approach, employing only bass, drums and vocals. Comprised of brothers Joe Smith (bass) & Matt Smith (vocals), along with drummer Ben Coffinail, Sin Lung's sound is a landscape of dark experimental music straddling metal and hardcore punk, dirty realism, and transgressive poetry."

Well, that's what it says on the band's Bandcamp page. (I didn't write it.) Here's the deal: Sin Lung started in 2023 and ended in late 2025. Our first two shows were in Buffalo, NY. We played in five states. We played some strange shows. We seemed to travel to southern Pennsylvania a lot. We never really got our stage legs under us. Were we too weird for most people? Probably, but it was a hell of a lot of fun while it lasted.

Instagram: @sinlung_official
Bandcamp  

INVISIBLE TELEVISION

Invisible Television was a good idea that just never took off, largely thanks to the pandemic. We wrote only three songs, and we wrote lyrics for only one of them. We never played out and ... yeah. We did, however, manage to record one of our practices at 7 Drum City in Washington, DC. The audio from that practice is at the link below. (The quality isn't great, but you'll get the idea.) The other thing of note about Invisible Television is that I switched from bass to guitar in this band, so that's me strumming the git box on this recording.

Invisible Television on Bandcamp

 

EDGEWOOD

Edgewood started with a post on Craiglist and grew from there. I started off playing guitar and then switched to bass when our original bassist left for greener pastures. Edgewood wrote some solid, radio-friendly tunes and we benefited from a singer who could actually sing. Unfortunately, this band just never took off and never developed a following. Perhaps we were too radio-friendly and sounded like too many other alt-90s rock bands. Who knows. It was fun while it lasted. 

 Edgewood on Bandcamp

 

MANUAL

Manual was a post-punk/post-hardcore band that I got in shortly after moving to Washington, DC in the late 1990s. It turned out my friend Steve, a guy I knew from the music scene in Buffalo, NY, was living 10 or so minutes from me and we decided to get a band going. I have to say, I really loved this band. I thought we were on to something and the music (still) speaks to me as much now as it did then. Unfortunately, the band was short-lived (active from about 1999 to 2001) due to personality conflicts, creative differences, and other issues issues. It still saddens me. Fortunately, I still have a copy of our demo, which I recently added to Internet Archive. You can listen via the link below. 

Manual Demo (2000) - via Internet Archive  

SNAPCASE

If you're into hardcore, you've probably heard of Snapcase. What you may not know is that there were really two incarnations of the band. There was the popular Snapcase that took off when Daryl took over the vocals, and there was the first phase of the band when Chris was doing the singing, Daryl was on bass, and Mike was on drums, and Scott and I played guitar. Anyway, this version of Snapcase goes back to the early 90s salad days of Buffalo, NY, hardcore. I was just a young man back then, and thoughts of musical stardom were completely alien to us ... or at least to me. We were just having fun. Anyhoo, I left the band in 1993 to go study abroad in London. 

Listen to the Snapcase 7-inch via YouTube. 

PS) Fun fact, this recording was engineered by Robby of the Goo Goo Dolls.

WATCHMEN 

My music "career" began in 1988 with Watchmen. I had just picked up the bass, and I didn't know a damn thing about music, but I was inspired by my punk rock heroes to just do it. So, I did. The band started when my friend Mike and I put up a flyer in an independent record store and the rest is history. Before I knew it, I was in a band and off to the races. After a few line-up changes and the fateful addition Doug on guitar, we were recording music (Doug had a studio in his basement) and playing shows. It was a magical time. 

Listen to the Watchmen 7-inch via YouTube