This webpage is for all our friends and family who supported us over the years, its also for all the former members of the band.
Just Like Me was formed by four best friends from Moorestown, New Jersey. Brian, Steve, Troy, and myself (Frank). We were in seventh grade at the time, and hardly knew how to play our instruments. Troy had the most musical experience, having played drums in the middle school band. Me and Steve were just picking up guitars and Brian barely knew what a bass was. I became the singer by default, since i was the most courageous member of the band. We were very persistent, and we were writing songs with limited musical knowledge. Our first big break was opening the eigth grade talent show where we played an original song called "Changing our minds." During this time our band was called Jinx, it wasn't until the second year of high school that we changed it to "Just Like Me." It was around this time that me and one of my friends bought a Roland Br8 digital recorder. Newly named "Just Like Me" recorded a 14 song cd in the summer going into our sophmore year of high school, entited "It's All Too Easy." The entire cd was constructed of originals, and i do say humbly that we had almost no recording experience though we had the do it yourself attitude down pretty good.
The four of us played together all through high school and even into college. It was in college that we replaced our buddy Steve (sorry dude), and acquired our friend and guitarist Geoff. When Geoff joined the band we were writing alot of new music and spirits were high. We were playing our first shows in Philly and we were very eager to make an album. We flirted with a professional recording studio, but found the results to be lackluster. Therefore we became alot more invested in recording ourselves, so we got a mac, pro tools, and bunch of mics, and got to work. I myself was eager to make a cd that defined myself as a songwriter and a musician. We all put alot of work into this album. Therefore, we spent two years recording and polishing songs for an album that would never offically be realeased. There was an internal conflict in the band, and Geoff had to part. This was a serious blow since we were about to finish a full length album without a key member. So we did the most unthinkable thing and........ got a saxophone and a keyboard to replace him. And to make matters worst, we never released the album, an action we regret to this day. (Tracklist for lost album: The Process, The Calling, Hiding in My Dreams, Ending Gates, The Serpeant, Looking Past, Constant Cycle.)
So this is how we went from having two guitars, bass and drums to; one guitar, bass, drums, sax, keyboard. Before the catastrophe of losing our guitarist Geoff, we were planning a mega sweet show for the cd release party. We wanted to do a bunch of classic funk songs with some guest musicians. So we invited Matt and Brandon to come play as guest musicians at the release. But..... The Cd release never happened. But since we had already started rehearsing everyone still wanted to do the show, which was at the fire, and which was very fun. To our surprise, after the show Matt and Brandon decided to join the band full time, and Just Like Me was now completely different than it had ever been before. The situation wasn't all that bad. We managed to get the two sickest musicians in the world to play with us. Matt and Brandon were both students in Temple's prestigious Jazz program. We did alot of improvised jamming and really improved our live show. Before we knew it we were headling saturday night gigs all around the city, and even playing weekends in New York.
So lets recap, the band is now Brian, Frank, Troy, Brandon, Matt and is still playing under the name Just Like Me, though it is the third rotation of band mates. I guess we figured that since three of the original four members were still in the band, why change the name??
We messed with our version of psychadelic fusion rock for a couple years and had alot of fun. We released a couple small eps but nothing official. Yet after a couple years it became obvious that everyone wanted to head in different directions. So we broke up and everyone went off to do their own thing. But me and Troy were relentless, we stayed together.
The Final Chapter
Josh Dowiak played bass and sang lead vocals for a Moorestown band called Finding Opus in high school. I should know this, since i engineered their recording sessions for their cd. Josh was studying bass at Temple's music school when me and Troy asked him to join us as our bassist. To eveyones suprise, we played our first show as a trio at Grape Street under the name Just Like Me. Thats right, we didn't change our name. We really should of, but we didn't. We played as a trio for only a year. In this short time we recorded and released our only official album "Afraid of Rock and Roll." With Brians help we recorded all the music ourselves. We outsourced the mastering and only made a thousand copies. "Afraid of Rock and Roll" contained 10 songs and spanned all musical styles. After the release of the album we decided to add a new member to the band. We asked Joshes roommate Jay to join us as a second guitar. When Jay joined, we really knew we were a completely different band. And for artistic purposes, we finnally changed our band name to "The Once Was."
Just Like Me existed for a very long time with many different member line ups. I am thankful for all the members who put their time into this band, and especially thankfull for all our friends and family who did so much to help promote and build us up. I am happy to be able to retire this band name, and give it back to all my friends who made it possible for me to pursue my songwriting career. Me and Troy both thank you all. So thats the story, hope you liked it
sincerely,
Frank Cervantes
Just Like Me -
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"Worrying about All the Little Things," Live at Phila Funk, 9/8/07
