My son was born in Santa Monica, California. It was a sunny February day. Three months later, to the day, I packed all of our belongings into eight cubic feet of IBF moving tractor trailer  - dropped it off in front of our apartment on E Kensington. Joe Bass and I loaded it up, and they came and took it away. Then I packed my wife and the heir apparent into my 4Runner and got on the 101-N. It was May 15, 2005.

We moved up to the promise of an easy in on buying a house in Tacoma. I would play drums for this Tacoma band - Top Heavy Crush - and their financial backer/boyhood buddy turned real-estate investor would sell me one of the many houses he owned and flipped on a regular basis. It was a no-brainer. That's what we did.

Just after arriving back in the Northwest, I also got a day job at a paint store I had worked at in my twenties. I had a wife and kid, after all, and while there was money being thrown around within the band, it was certainly time to have a day job. I had the job almost a year before the new enrollee window opened up for benefits. It wasn't until December 2006 that I finally got the family covered with health and dental. I had never enrolled in any plan that would do anything except take the lowest amount possible out of each paycheck - the few times in the past that I actually HAD health insurance. This time, though, again not thinking of myself, I allowed myself to wonder "What if?", and decided on quite a few notches higher than bare bones.   

There were high, high hopes for this band: TONS of talent, and a bunch of easygoing guys. We all got along and it was a really easy environment to be creative in. Between 2005 and 2007 we wrote and recorded dozens and dozens of songs, every time with the hopes that THIS recording was the one we would release (somehow) and would send us on our way to being a working band. We had the finest management the South End had to offer - a man with a proven track record of putting bands to work. We played the best local shows that came through town. All the pieces were there... Except one. 

Our financial backer was a young man of extremes. It was a mixed blessing. The booze would make him quite confrontational - not just with people. Stationary objects often caught the wrath. They didn't always come out the loser, either. After one extended evening of the regular occurring post rehearsal drinks, our good man decided a run over the top of a parked car was in order. He got a good run at and up he went. I think his idea was three single bounds - right leg to the hood, left leg to the roof, right leg to the trunk and then jumping to the ground.

He got all the way to leaping off the roof before Tacoma at 2:30 in the morning came into play. It was damp out (shocker) and the foot that he had entrusted to catch all of his weight on the trunk, made contact for just a split second before relinquishing responsibility to the next closest extremity, his head - which was gracious enough break his fall on the pavement.  He broke some teeth and his jaw and punctured his tongue. It was grisly. But he lived. He was more rock and roll than any of us. 

In addition to the literally dozens of houses he owned in Tacoma, Mr. Financial Backer had taken to buying huge apartment buildings and converting them into high-end condos. He took huge debt risks, but with huge risk came huge rewards. In 2007 his latest project was in Nashville. He spent A LOT of time there, and at no time was he ever without a Top Heavy Crush demo CD on his person. He LOVED the band, believed in us (and the singer in particular, who he had matriculated from K-12 with), and took every opportunity to blow our horn to anyone who would listen.  

While in Nashville he crossed paths with the producer who had discovered Evanescence. His name was Pete Mathews, and Mr. Financial Backer verbally accosted him until he agreed to come sit in his car and listen to the band. Pete was blown away. The final piece of the puzzle had arrived. A producer. 

At the end of 2006 Pete came out to Tacoma to meet us and see if we could work together. The vibe between us was immediate. Our manager drew up contracts, and we REALLY started to put Mr. Financial Booker's financial confidence to the test. We were going to make a REAL record. Two weeks at London Bridge Studios (Peal Jam, Alice in Chains, Temple of the Dog, Blind Melon) to do the drums and bass tracks, and then a whopping eight weeks at Ardent Studios in Memphis for guitars and vocals and mixing. The RECORDING budget alone was $250,000. I'd never spent that much money on a recording, and I had made THREE records for big budget major labels. 

March 23, 2007 was the day three-fifths of Top Heavy Crush flew to Memphis to start the second phase of the recording. It was also the day I was diagnosed with stage three Col-Rectal Cancer. 

I had waited a couple months after getting insurance to go in and get checked for what had become a constant, nagging problem. After seeing a general practitioner and being sent up the river to a GI specialist (gastro intestinal), I was told that - in all likelihood - there was a defective muscle inside me that acted like a hammock, holding the internal organs in place. For lots of men, once they hit their 40s the "hammock" - which is supposed to lift everything out the way when you sit down so your bowels can drop and allow you to do your business - stops working properly. The specialist said it was an easy fix, but first we would need a colonoscopy to make sure that was what we're dealing with here.  She was NOT worried. She was very matter of fact - very surgeon like. 

I was actually relieved. I had been convinced for years I'd had "The Cancer" festering within me. But if my surgeon wasn't worried, why should I be? I put the colonoscopy off for two weeks, so we could do the local end of our recording. When I went in for the procedure, I was totally sold on the "Hammock" theory.

Before I was even off the operating table, I was aware the hammock option had been taken off the table for something far less casual. Still woozy from the amnesia medicine they put in the IV so if you wake up in the middle of the ordeal, you won't remember waking up, my surgeon tells me the tumor inside me is so big she couldn't get the smallest scope past it to perform the rest of the look-see. She was 100% sure it was cancer.... My son was three months and ten days past his second birthday.

Drummer Geoff Reading - who writes a bi-weekly online column (Fridays) for the Weekly Volcano called "Holding Down the 253" in addition to his weekly Wednesday music column - has played music in tons of Northwest bands - Green Apple Quick Step, New American Shame, Top Heavy Crush and most recently Duff McKagan's LOADED - to name but a few. He's toured the world several times over, sharing stages with the likes of Slipknot, The Cult, Buckcherry, Korn, Journey, The Sex Pistols, Nine Inch Nails and on and on. He has called Tacoma home since 2005, and lives in the North End with his wife and son.