‘What’s In a Name?’

Hi internet. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Bill. I write lyrics, sing, and contribute music from time to time for The Eleventh Hour Initiative. I’m also the American side of the band.

As we get ready to release our debut album I wanted to become more active on the site than I have been in the past. Emrys is great with posting his thoughts on the songs, and to be honest, I’ve kind of enjoyed hiding in the background a bit and reading his slant on things. Him and I are very similar in that we always tend to agree on what we like and what’s ‘good’, but we also seem to get there from completely different directions.

I figured a good place to start would be our band name….

hmmm actually a good place to start would be to point out that despite what Dr. Hughes says on the bio page, I have never, ever worn leather pants!!!

where was I?  haha

oh yeah, ‘The Eleventh Hour Initiative‘.

Initially, when we decided to form a band, I came up with the idea to call ourselves ‘The Eleventh Hour’. My thought was that both of us were at a point in our lives musically where we’d had just enough success to validate the struggle, but not enough to justify the amount of work we both put into our songs, to keep going. Our wells were running dry. Both of us had formed our own bands where we played most, if not all of the instruments, and sang. We did it cause we loved it, but it’s hard work just being the bass player for a band! …let alone the whole band! Then, you release your work and….nothing. You still have to work your day job. You still have to explain why you spend all your free time locked away, hunched over a mixing desk.

When I first met Emrys we were both making our ‘last’ solo albums separately. I put ‘last’ in quotes because song-writing is something you don’t really stop, even if you want to. It’s just in your blood. It’s just what you do. That being said, we were still trying to convince ourselves that the projects we were working on was the end of it. I was going to start collecting stamps while Emrys planned to move onto bird watching…well not really, but you get the idea.

Then came ‘Where We Go Next‘, the first song we collaborated on. We were excited by how that song came out. Their was something there I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It just worked. I didn’t care if anybody else got it or liked it. It expressed what I was feeling. It just clicked. I chose ‘Eleventh Hour’ because that’s where we were with music. We were just about to call it quits and then, as I say in the song, ‘guess so much for giving up.’

We continued to go with ‘The Eleventh Hour’ until fairly recently. You see a funny thing happens when you type ‘Eleventh Hour’ into google. You find that many bands have chosen that name, or a name similar to it. Their was a Christian movie about the rapture with it as the title. It was also a Dr Who Episode(which I kind of liked to be honest )

One day in a joke email I referred to our band as ‘The Eleventh Hour Initiative’ and Emrys liked it.

…and here we are

The ‘initiative’ is to chase after our dreams. It also sounds like an over the top 1970’s spy movie doesn’t it?

‘The Eleventh Hour Initiative‘ starring Sean Connery

I like that the name has an important meaning to us, but at the same time it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

So where do we go next?

As time passes we may bask in the glow of improbable and miraculous success, or we may crash and burn into the empty dark places that only people who don’t cut it live….

either way, it’ll be interesting.

promise.

Please feel free to contact us through this site, soundcloud, or facebook. (we’re looking to get an email address set up soon as well) We want to hear from you!!! Not just to stroke our ego, but to take part in what we’re doing. We’re learning as we go here so anything, good or bad, helps.

and your support is always well appreciated.

Until Next Time Internet….

…bill