MORE ABOUT GASLIGHT REVIVAL
In 1998, on the corner of Newbury Street and Massachusetts Avenue in Boston’s Back Bay, a guitarist named David Mansfield and a drummer named Trevor Jones met for the first time on the third floor of the Tower Records building. After exchanging a handshake and a hello, they discovered they were both students at Berklee College of Music and immediately developed a rapport through a common passion for live music, songwriting, and most importantly, rock & roll.
Competitive eagerness to challenge and inspire each other with new artists and new sounds helped plant the seed that eventually got them into a room to jam and share musical ideas. They quickly realized a similar vision, but they also quickly realized they needed to add some pieces to bring the vision to life. A new band was in the making and a search for musicians that shared a common thread was launched.
They, however, hit a snag. Even with all the enthusiasm in the world, the search for like-minded musicians wasn’t easy even at a place like Berklee. They would hire a bass player and lose an organ player. They would bring in a singer and the rhythm guitarist would flake out. The revolving door of players turned for an entire year and before they knew it their arduous search for players was all in vein and their time at Berklee was over.
Their final punctuation came in May 2002 as attendees of a rock show at the Paradise Rock Club on Commonwealth Avenue. They shook hands again and went their separate ways.
Time would pass, contact few and far between. Trevor stayed in the Boston area and dabbled in the local rock scene for another year before ending up in Park Slope Brooklyn. David took his stack of guitars to California and played with bands all around Los Angeles while also doing professional studio work.
While in Brooklyn, Trevor found himself broke and living in a cramped apartment, but still felt inspired to play. Setting up his drums in his apartment wasn't an option and neither was coming up with the money to rent a practice space. Trevor then made a decision to focus on an apartment-friendly instrument: acoustic guitar. He ended up befriending a downstairs musician, learned some chords on his wife's old guitar, and songs naturally and organically started to come together.
David, now residing in Los Angeles, continued to hone his songwriting and playing skills. He found that his catalog of material started to grow at a rapid rate, almost too fast for the band he was in. So he tucked some songs to the side, keeping one pile for himself and another for the band. After three years of uphill battles with musicians and personal demons – an all too familiar story – David eventually grew tired of the Los Angeles scene and in 2005 found his way back to his roots in a town just south of Boston, songs and guitars in hand.
Thru the years the two would check in from time to time and discuss where they were musically, personally, and professionally. They found that their experiences had been very similar even though they both spent the better part of their mid twenty's living in two separate cities on different sides of the country. Eventually Trevor decided to follow suit and move back to his roots in Plymouth, Massachusetts. It was only a matter of time before the paths of David and Trevor were to cross again.
In October 2007, for the first time in six years, David and Trevor came together to make music. With the failure of their first project on the front of their minds, they knew that they needed to approach things differently the second time around. This time they knew they had to handle all aspects of being a fully functional songwriting team and band, all the way from writing the songs to playing all the parts on the recordings of those very songs.
And that they did.
A new band was born.
This is now the project that has come to be known as Gaslight Revival.
Enjoy.
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