This is a cover of the mighty X. Is it really a surprise that a band named in part after a X song would cover one of their songs? Other covers we did included D.I.'s Guns, Agent Orange's America, Black Flag's American Waste and the Pleasure Fuckers' Caption Igloo.

It's amazing what John Doe can paint in just 12 lines. Joey played drums on this, even when we did it live. Greg would sing the first two verses with me on back up and then we'd switch on the last one which is how we did it on the demo.

Ah, the Have Nots love songs.

Chicken Hawk was about Greg, plain and simple. At the time he was 31 or 32 and messing around girls still in high school. Joey wrote the music and we thought the short cover of TSOL's Code Blue in the center because Joey wanted to have a slow part but nothing seemed to be working. In a way it is our ode to the Vandals including the aping the drumming style of Josh Freeze. 

The lyrics are a combination of about 10 other songs I wrote. We have all known someone that no matter what they do, they never admit their crime or seem to be held accountable for their actions. These song is about one of the most effective ways to avoid accountability, tearing down the credibility of everyone around you. throw shit talking they divert all the negative attention to others while all the while coming off as a "good friend".

One thing that always stuck out in my head was a quote from the film 'In Cold Blood', it basically was that the two killers wouldn't have killed that family in Kansas. It was the combination of the two killer's personality that created a third personally that committed the crime. During my teens and early twenties there were a few people that when I interacted with them, we created a third personality. That personality was often aggressive, evil and found a great deal of joy in having fun at the expense of others. 

I wrote this song in my car coming back from a show in Iowa City. I'm not sure why it struck me at that point but it did. It's about the passive crowd that always seems to be quick to judge but thinks too much and never does anything.  This song was written by Jay Burmet and myself in 94 or 95. He was trying to get us to play something that Brian and I thought was a little too complicated and we said we wanted something simpler. He jokingly began playing this song and of course it became one of the regular songs we did during this line up.

This was the first song we wrote and I got the virus and the chorus mixed up and didn't figure it out until we hit the studio.

Often this was referred to the as the slow song. I got the idea of this song from this lady in this Store back in 93 complaining about the manager not wanting to take responsibility for the price of milk. She just kept saying over and over, "Pass the buck, pass the Blame."

Wrote the lyrics to this song after seeing Gold Finger in Ames. It's more about the changes in the scene I saw happening back in 1996 and the lack of control the kids had over their own scene. Partly because Punk rock had become successful to some degree. The whole thing seemed manufactured to me and not a homegrown scene with kids playing music for kids. Yes, Punk Rock had become a marketing term where a band could be a record industry project, get on MTV and start selling out shows. It left a bad taste in my mouth and this was my reaction.

The Have Nots were formed by David "DaVo" Wilkins and Paul Gray in the Spring of 1996 and were a staple of Safari and the Des Moines Music Scene. Over the roughly 20 months that they existed they played opened for countless national acts including Fastball, Murphy's Law, Quincy Punx, Apocalypse Hoboken, Mercy Rule, Blanks 77 and countless others. Though it was a punk band it featured three current or future members of Slipknot Paul Gray (Guitar), Joey Jordison (Guitar) and Greg "Babyface" Welts (Drums).

Buy MP3s of the 1996 Demo on CD Baby, iTunes, Google Play and