An ongoing history of KING TUT...

In the beginning of high school, the coolest, most fun things to attend were the Bandfests... I was too shy in my early years of high school to really rock out the way I wanted to at them, and sadly by the time I came out of my shell, they were in their dying days. I went through a phase in grade 12 and first year University where I tried desperately to create a "Bandfest Revival" but all Ancaster venues would have none of it... Bandfests had resulted in broken windows, countless fights, kids leaving in ambulances due to alcohol poisoning, etc, leaving venue owners, understandably, completely uninterested in the idea... I on the other hand, LOVED that shit. They were one of the more influential things to leave a lasting impression on me... Watching some of the more popular bands take to the stage and then set it on fire really made me admire the kids in those bands. I wanted to do what they did. I don't remember wanting to specifically be a drummer that early on, but I wanted to be one of them. Being the one to make people lose their minds looked like a pretty wicked feeling. I think my earliest interest in drumming came from watching Harvey Medcalf (spelling?) rock the fuck out in SPANK. I remember knowing that he rocked at drums from watching him, and it was really entertaining. But the real interest started in multiple drummer friends' basements. Particularly, Colin MacFarland's.  He was really good rudimentally when it came to fills. My friends Will, Ed, Rob, Gordy and Corey were also drummers so I was starting to be surrounded by it on a regular basis. Really, all my close friends played instruments, come to think of it... In late 2004 or early 2005, I made the decision to start playing the drums. I bought my first kit (Pearl Forum) in April 2005, near the end of grade 10.

 I was entering my senior years of high school and if I wanted to start playing bandfests and coffeehouses, I needed to get good... I don't remember this being what drove me to get better. I don't remember what it was, or really if I had any drive at that time (probably not). But sporadically, I would go down to my drum kit and rock out the best I could. At the end of grade 11, I joined my first band, "Suzie and the hTones." My friend Spam (or Suzie Gurl) rocked vocals, John on Bass, Owen on Guitar and me on drums. By this point, I was a pretty decent drummer. I remember flooring all of our friends when we came out of nowhere and played our first show at Ancaster High's first coffeehouse of our grade 12 year. We opened with RHCP's "Around the World," then played "No Woman No Cry" by Sublime, "Say it ain't so" by Weezer and finished with "Give it all" by Rise Against. It was amazing. We played a couple of my house parties and the other 2 coffeehouses later in the year.

Introducing the Muthafuckan hTones. Or "Dopehead" if you will...

The Bajiggidy Wack Bash

The hTones' introduction to the music scene, Coffeehouse Gr.12

Intense stage presence.

The hTones play The Fawigglywucked Partois, First Year Uni

The hTones play Zack's New Years Party

During the high school summers, The hTones and The Minstrals would combine band members to form a hardcore foreign presence named Mikoslatte. The band consisted of Zack Shaw on sax and vocals, Esther Matthews on trumpet, Crack Moo Moo on Bass (John Hoogendoorn), Byrnsey (Nathan Byrnes) on Guitar, and myself (Dumpster Debbie Darbs) on drums. The first year we played, there are no pictures (well, there is one of my friends representing hard), just a funny video of us playing "Super Orgy Porno Party" by the Planet Smashers on my youtube channel. (www.youtube.com/nathanafi) That year, we pretended to be a bunch of feorigners from different parts of the world and wore the chroniest outfits to the gig. So much fun. Then, the following summer, we regrouped to perform an even phatter set. This time, the style was more hippie-ish and heavily influenced by people like Hendrix as you can definately see in Byrnsey. Our set was amazing. It consisted of The Beatles' "She came in through the bathroom window," Jimi Hendrix's "Fire," David Bowie's "John I'm only dancing," James Brown's "Get up offa that thang," annnnd ugh. Something else I can't remember right now. But, it was explosive.

The Hacksquare representing hard at our first Battle of the Bands.

Mikoslatte, in all their glory.

B Shugz comes up to the stage to get the crowd into a "Horsepauer" frenzy. Hilarious.

By this point, bandfest was dead and not coming back. My house parties and participating in random gigs were the best I could do for recreating that energy. Long story short, first year university came and I started to get more serious about pursuing drumming professionally. Those involved with planning the Bandfests were in one of my favourite bands from high school, "The Kids who thought they were going places." Or for short, "The Kids." It turns out that Mark Hornich, the lead singer and guitarist for the kids, was also attending U of T. I don't remember how I found this out but I ended up getting in touch with him. We ended up jamming every thursday with his friends Jim and Brett. It was amazing and every jam I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. Watching the way Mark was taken away by the music sometimes was amazing. This was the final step towards realising music needed to be my life.

I got the kids to play my Fawigglywucked Partois, which was a big deal for my
friends and I...which come to think of it, is definately how me and Mark
ended up playing together during my first year at U of T.

I remember Mark emailing me after the party saying how pumped and floored he
was at how awesome it was to play at my party. I'm not sure they had any idea how
loyal a fanbase they had within the hacksquare....And I like to think that this party
was their inspiration for giving the kids one final go and getting a few more shows in
the Toronto area. Because before this, the passion had seemed to fade as
Crop Failure had replaced the kids as Mark's new music interest.

I remember during the middle of my second semester I literally gave up and started putting my efforts towards applying to Humber for music... I botched that audition hard and ended up just going there for business with intentions of meeting the music kids on my own. I quickly found that they were lame and far too obsessed with theory and overly intense forms of jazz...So botching the audition was a good thing. All throughout my first semester of Humber after a year of working (because I failed the audition and didn't see a future in social sciences at U of T so I worked for a year....we're in fall 2009 now), I was actively looking for people who loved heavy funk to start a band with. Everyone would say "YEAH man! I love funk!" So I would go rent a room at the Rehearsal factory with them and realise that no, in fact, they liked metal. And somehow found "funk," in metal. Lame. Not down. Go away. I started to get frustrated. During this year, I managed to get some musical creativity out through jamming with my new friend, Dave Humphrey. We ended up making an album together. His band's name was "Through the Sunset." Pretty sick. You can find the tracks on youtube. Had a lot more potential than the finished product shows though... But it was fun, and one of the things that was making me more and more serious about music. Dave was on a different path than me however, and it wasn't enough. On the train home to Ancaster one day, I decided to vent to my friend Stacey over the phone that if I didn't find a band soon, I was going to be suicidal. Joking of course, BUT KINDA DOWN. She quickly went on craigslist and searched for drummer wanted ads for me. She started to read one to me and sounded mildly excited about it before cutting herself off to say, "NO! This one's WAY better!" She proceeded to read the ad to me that was probably 1 or 2 paragraphs long, but managed to get across that the drummer they wanted randomly had the same name as me. Weird!

This was the beginning... I contacted them through craigslist and began sending really long emails back and forth with Dave, getting more and more excited about jamming with them. The long excited emails started after I had described through an email to Dave that the sound I wanted would be like if RHCP's "Sexy Mexican Maid" were combined with Hendrix's "Voodoo Child" and then recorded with modern day face blasting technology. He lost his shit. I jammed with Brandon (guitar) and Dave (bass) for the first time on February 2, 2010. We jammed and I jammed along to some of their songs. Some included "Dynamite" and "Pylons." Dynamite was the one that won me over. Brandon told me later that he knew I was their guy 20 seconds into the first jam. I was pretty excited about them too. The rest is a blur of practising 1-3 times a week, playing a few open mic Sundays at the Supermarket on Sundays in Kensington Market, searching endlessly for our distinct, unique, different, male rockstar vocalist through hundreds of post-up flyers, email advertisements, etc. We created hundreds of hours of music together and had endless material to refer back to and create songs from. Our jam files now consist of over 10 gigs of music in my library. That's over 5 days worth of music. We were getting tighter and tighter and each of us was improving dramatically at our instruments. On November 4th 2010, we switched from the Rehearsal Factory that we had been jamming at, at Bathhurst and Richmond, because Alex was a c%ck and always let us in late and provided broken gear. We met Grant at the Front and Sherbourne location and never went back. Grant was a super nice guy and the rooms there were WAYYYY BETTER. We started jamming there twice a week, and on November 15th, their friend Cayton (who I had met at a few jams at their house before) started coming around and singing with us just for fun.

Our fifth SuperMarket performance as "3 guys."

Regular, "Jesus LasVegas," gets up on stage to yell a bunch of cusses to
our song, "Dynamite." And yes, that is his legal name.

Supermarket Performance #9. Pre-Jam flirting sesh.

SuperMarket performance #10.
Dave: So yeah, come talk to us if you're interested.
We're tired of looking for a vocalist and we're getting old.
What Dave's actually trying to say:
FUCKING SHOW YOURSELF BEFORE I SLIT MY WRISTS
AND THROW MYSELF HEADFIRST OVER A BRIDGE!!!!

Always a solid crowd and 30-50 performances every sunday night.

February 2012 at the Front/Sherbourne Rehearsal Factory.

We took on Cayton as our official singer only recently, but already we've made some insane songs. Things are only just starting to heat up now as we've finally chosen our official band name, set up all our social networking sites, started making contacts and went into Fanshaw's studio in London with our friend Taylor for the first time to lay down some tracks. Our first official show ever will be this Saturday at King Henry's Bar in Uxbridge... Little will the attendees know that several years after we've fucked their ears off, they will realize they had just witnessed an epic moment in rock history...

Saturday April 7, 2012. KING TUT at King Henry's, Uxbridge ON.

Friday, April 6 2012. 1:00am.   (Updated April 18, 2012)