The sun is setting, the red-tailed hawks that hang out in the back yard are likely around somewhere, hidden in the dusk. The rehearsal is supposed to be starting now — about 45 minutes ago, actually, and the bass player is nowhere in sight. Will he show? No one knows. He’s got phone, car and work issues, apparently. A triple threat. Nobody seems too worried about it, they’re all pretty laid back about it — way too laid back. Clearly someone needs to stir the pot, and it looks like it’s gotta be me. Everybody else is too well adjusted. “You know,” I say. “You should fire his ass, if, for no other reason, to get even with him for the despicable way he treated you during the Dink era,” that period being a brief portion of middle school more than a decade and a half ago. Alexander Sandman laughs at the reference. As he probably should, since it’s such a terrible and, well, juvenile name for a band! Then again, right around the same time, Sandman was playing in an equally unfortunately named band, Dying Cat, a short-lived project with a logo showing a bloody cat with crosses for eyes. (“It was about being in a band,” he says, “not about being good — or especially clever.”) It doesn’t matter anyhow, because Benny Zanfagna isn’t biting. He wants to talk about Red Tail Hawk, his latest project, not temporarily wayward bassist Mike Gruen.
