The Countermen started off as a soundtrack to the short film “Someday,” which Justin Clare was writing and directing in 2017. As it was described in its announcement Instagram post, “Someday is about High School, Guitars, and Dreams.” While the final project is not publicly available, I can confirm that synopsis is apt; the 23-minute story centers on the longingness of big-time dreams while living stuck in a small town (a theme all too understandable for both The Countermen and myself, all of us starting off in Placerville, CA). Andrew Vardanega was just about to move back to Placerville from San Francisco when he ran into Justin Clare, a close friend from high school, at a party. As both had bonded over music in high school, Justin asked for Andrew’s help in writing the soundtrack for the film. At around the same time this conversation happened, Andrew had been playing as a fill-in for another band, where he met the drummer Dante Cairns, who he included in the project; Justin met Trevor Matson, a mutual friend through Andrew, and invited him to play bass with them. The opening shots of the short film (a fair portion of which was filmed in Andrew’s house) linger on a Strokes album, and photographs of The White Stripes and Morrissey, all of whom can be listed as influences on the band. Moments later, as the screen displays the title card of the film, the recognizable opening riff of 2 AM starts playing.
The version that plays in “Someday” is the first recorded version of 2 AM; the version now available on Spotify and Apple is the fourth. From the first time the rest of the band heard Justin play the opening riff for the first time, they knew they had to do something with it- they hammered out the chords of the song the same day. And then, coming home from work a couple days later, the lyrics came to Andrew and the band pulled their gear into his living room immediately and played through the song, and afterwards went to Bricks (a restaurant and bar on Main Street in Placerville) to celebrate the occasion. The first recording was basically an at-home demo which was featured in Justin’s film. The sound is alright, though the structure and sound of the song has evolved through years of play and with more opportunities available in a studio setting. While the band liked the recording, they were unhappy with the tempo, feeling it wasn’t fast enough to match the speed and energy of how it sounds live. And so, they tried again while they were recording the songs that would make up their debut EP which came out July of last year, but once again, they just couldn’t seem to match the feel and speed they felt the song needed, even after a long and eventually intoxicated quest of Andrew’s to nail the solo. An extremely limited release of the cassette tape edition of their EP actually has the original recording of 2 AM as a hidden bonus track; when asked if that version may be released digitally in the future, Andrew responded “Maybe like a long time from now. We kind of want it to be an exclusive thing for those people who bought the tapes, who wanted to support us so early on, a special sort of thing just those people will own.” After the first two attempts, the band was more resolved to make sure the next time they recorded, they would have the finished product they wanted. When they went to Sacramento’s Earth Tone studio, they came armed with live recordings of the song to play along to to make sure they had a tempo that was fast enough. Their first run at it (recording number three, for those of you keeping track at home) still didn’t meet what they wanted, so they started over and went at it with all they had, which is all the more impressive that both Andrew and Dante were three days into a flu and “felt like absolute shit, honestly.” But, at long last, they finally had a version they were happy with- “This song’s a long time coming. It’s a really important one to the band and it’s exciting to see it finally done and out.”
