Disintegration Factory

Travis LeRoy: Bass & Vocals, Junior: Drums, Pat Searcy: Guitars, Tom Giere: Percussion

Disintegration Factory is a band I am very proud of. My friend Junior and I formed it in 1994. The idea was to have no limits on the type of music we played and to scrap most of the traditional ideas of what a band consists of (drums, bass, vocals and guitars). What I really liked about this band are the chances we took. I worked very hard on this project.

We experimented with a lot of different formations. I think the craziest version was me singing and playing bass, Junior (ex The Dark) playing keyboards, Tom Giere (ex Trip Romeo) playing electronic percussion, Scott Davies (ex Salem Spade) playing drums, Pat Searcy playing guitars and a female vocalist named Amy singing backups. Note that Junior, Scott and Tom were the drummers in my previous three bands! It was actually pretty cool.

As things settled, the band became Junior, Pat, Tom and myself. We wrote some really good songs. My goal was to create something like the moodiness of The Cure/The Sisters of Mercy, the electronic edge of Nine Inch Nails and the power of White Zombie into one diversified, gothic looking band. That is actually a decent description of how Disintegration Factory turned out. Obviously, we did not make it and the band eventually fell apart. The "how" and "why" are not important. The time I spent in Disintegration Factory was a great part of my life.

After the project ended, I wanted a break from the original music scene. Original music is a tough business. I started a few cover projects. These bands were OK but nothing amazing. After a few years, I decided to completely take a break from being in a band. I was 30 years old and I considered quitting music altogether. As I would later find out, once you are a musician, it is hard to get it out of your system. After about a year, I decided to put together one last project. The plan was to incorporate everything I had learned so far to try and make this group great, but with reasonable expectations. Little did I know that this next band would be the most significant band of my career. The band still performs today. I named it That Eighties Band.