ISSUE 20 -THE IVY LEAGUE

by Brian Tucker

In the summer of 2005 The Ivy League shared the bill with Thunderlip for a show at Lucky’s Pub. It was hot outside and inside was no different. People traded the heat for heat with a soundtrack accompanied with smoke, a thick crowd, and dim light, The Ivy League played a raucous set of music. Attendees watched from the bar, many moshed in the pit circle and from the sound board continuing on to the stage was covered with crushed beer cans and fans. Towards the end of the set lead singer Brandon Creep announced to the crowd that their drummer, Alex McBride was off to Iraq, this was his last show. The place was filled with cheers of support, with everyone thinking the same thing; come home alive.


Brandon Creep stands under a poorly lit marquis sign, the stale plastic that holds individual letters, once bright and new now stained like aged teeth. The sign reads BANDS and The Ivy League is playing another show tonight at Lucky’s Pub. It is late September 2006 and although it feels like summer the scent of Autumn is high in the air. At 24, he is flanked by a circle of people, standing up against the rear of a car. I approach and the circle of friends all turn to me, seemingly protective. Brandon looks at me emotionless when I say his name.
I enter the circle of people keeping eye contact with Brandon and mention I’m here to interview him. His response is calm and certain, caught off guard at first. Once the ice is broken he is genteel and friendly. The man’s posture is perfect and he’s dressed in a black button down shirt, black pants and black shoes. He looks like a pastor, a young preacher, talking to younger people.
We walk away from the club to talk, away from the crowd and the heavy sound of music pouring out the front doors. Brandon walks with a shuffle, reminiscent of how a grandfather may take a walk, that carefree stride that comes with knowing who you are and a dose of wisdom.
Once away from the bustle of the club the singer lights a cigarette and is attentive. His eyes always look a little tired, a little sleepy, but piercing nonetheless. Engage him in conversation and he’s friendly and easy to talk to.
We’ve barely begun to talk when his cell phone goes off with a noticeably different ring. It’s blasting a new track from Ice Cube. It’s a new song, ‘Child Support.’ On the new cut Cube is basically talking shit about new wannabe gangsta rappers, making the claim I created you, you’re not kings, I created you. It’s fairly accurate.
Brandon chuckles, his face possibly turning a little red if the lighting were better. He pulls the phone out, eyes the number, and puts its away. He apologizes and says he needs to keep it on in case his girlfriend calls.
“People give me hell,” he says then imitating what others say to him. “You’re a white boy from Wilmington. What do you listen to that for?”
But the answer the question is twofold, if not more. The Ivy League has often been perceived as one type of band. During the summer of 2005 the band was different. Before then they were primarily street punk and Oi band. That was the roots. But they don’t consider themselves an Oi band and strive to be their own entity, not pigeonholed and classified.
A long time ago there shows that got out of hand and the repercussions were a negative stigma associated with the band name. The music is energetic to begin with. Anyone who’s been to any show knows what can happen. One apple can spoil it for all. A girl stands too close to the stage and gets bumped and male ego’s get upped. And mix that with alcohol. Sometimes the wrong set of circumstances come together and causes problems. Sometimes it’s just a couple of guys. And a band is marred for a long time undeservedly.
The Ivy League is not a skin head band either. They are a rock and roll band. Books still get judged by their covers. Bands evolve from punk to rock (Green Day) or from punk to hip hop (Beastie Boys). Years ago, they were starting with a singular sound and vibe but evolution is a close cousin to the mother of invention. Listening to their music, and the forthcoming disc, The 11th Hour, one can hear a range of musical influences.
Ivy League bassist Ben McAndrew defends Brandon. “Alex and I are huge on jazz, and Brandon is on left field. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve got in his car and Biggie Smalls is playing. You don’t see that looking at him and then you get in his car.” McAndrew himself will listen to anything from classical to Tupac. “If it’s good I’ll listen to it. Even if it’s crappy I’ll give it a shot. It’s music.”
Brandon, like the band’s other musicians, maintain a wide range of musical influences and backgrounds. Their lives have been occupied with struggle, constant traveling, hard work and worst of all, military combat. Experiences that shape a human being also affect the music of creative musicians.
Regarding the ring tone Brandon makes no apologies. He is headstrong about who he is and where he’s going.
“It (rap) has the edge that rock and roll doesn’t anymore – we are subject to the My Chemical Romance’s that are big. They don’t really have anything to say,” he says, rap music clearly making the case with lyrics about real life.
“I like gangsta rap. All kinds of stuff. Street level stuff,” he says. “One of my biggest writing influences is Tupac because the stuff he said about what you go through. I want to be able to portray what people go through.” Onstage, Brandon doesn’t rap, but you can hear it in the cadence of his delivery. There is little doubt that The Ivy League is a rock and roll band. But underneath there’s a handful of flavors seeping through. You can hear the Clash but not as a direct rip off. You can hear Social Distortion’s Mike Ness on a song guitarist Drew Kane does. There’s jazz and Johnny Cash and AFI. There’s old school punk, but it’s blended together like some monster liquor drink a bartender keeps mum about the recipe. Whatever the case, it’s musical a representation of real life. Much of the material on the 11th Hour is catered to that same philosophy.
“Our stuff is really on the level,” he says. “Anything we write about is stuff we’ve experienced or seen that’s going on in the world or stuff that’s happened to people close to us.”
For instance, ‘Cold Blue Sea’ is a familiar story, the story of a young man having to go to war and leave his friends behind. ‘My Hell, My Life’ is a companion track to ‘Cold Blue Sea.’ Its lyrics revolve around a young man alone overseas surrounded by gunfire and chaos. The song’s center is a moment when everything ceases and the soldier takes a step outside of being a soldier for a moment. The soldier looks back on his life and how he’s far away from home. Songs such as these are clear of politics and operate merely as commentary. And derived from reliable source material, the band’s drummer Alex McBride, who spent his fair share of time overseas serving two tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq.
“We all came from troubled pasts and that’s why Brandon is so good,” McBride says. “It’s all something people can relate to.”
Its rather doubtful Brandon will ever write “happy go lucky” material as he calls it. He won’t be caught singing ‘Shiny Happy People.’ He confesses a dark side, not as dark as The Misfits but does a have a cynical side, a realistic approach to lyric writing. Much of it stems from what he’s seen happen to friends.
“I grew up in the punk scene. We’re a rock and roll band with a punk influence,” he explains. “And a realistic, cynical outlook.”
If it not for fronting The Ivy League he would be a writer. It’s his biggest passion, writing, and wants to produce material that means something to people. His band mates all say the same thing, that he’s a lyrical genius. Like the ring tone, his foray into music is also indifferent to what might be expected from a guy who fronts a punk rock and roll band.
A former Hoggard High School student, he works a full time job at the airport. Singing came at a young age, cutting his teeth on Michael Jackson and a-ha. Later on, The Cure and Joy Division became strong influences. His tastes in Eighties music are varied, but the tone and mood of some of those influences tell a lot about his stake in local music. His vocals are night and day to his conversational voice, his vocals are throaty but not like hardcore. Think Mighty Mighty Bosstones, more aggressive.
“I want you to understand what I’m singing,” he says.
He doesn’t really scream or yell. He testifies onstage, walking around like a black panther. At times, he’ll stand to the rear as if on pause while the band plays on. When he’s off, guitarist Kane will unconsciously take over, exploding with energy and jumping off speakers and monitors.
Watching him stalk the stage you could assume you’d be in for a fight if you looked at him wrong. Onstage, and in public, you’d unlikely be able to see him smile. It’s in the comfort of friends that his guard melts away. His thing is to catch a vibe off people, and determine whether he feels comfortable with them to talk and be around. He’s apt to keep to himself but around the guys in the band he lights up.
Musical training at first came from the do it yourself method, buying compilation cd’s and attending numerous shows in the area to learn about bands. As a young kid, catching shows by The Convicts, Patriot and Disorderly Conduct started lighting a fire. It was the influence of seeing other bands playing live, even before being old enough to go in bars and see shows, that got him started.
But it was a local band from the mid 90’s that cemented the idea of fronting one. He took guitar lessons at Finklestein’s from Scott Shaw, a horn player who played in the local funk trio Three Bean Soup.
“I’d go watch them play live and they didn’t have a front man, no vocals,” he says. The allure of that atmosphere, of people coming to see you play live, performing music that musicians put their heart and soul into.
“I decided then that I wanted to play live and people see me. I’m the type pf person who can’t stand in front of a class and talk about a paper but I can stand in front of a crowd and sing a song that means more to me than that paper. Nervousness goes out the window.”





He and future Ivy League guitarist Kane included, formed The Creeps. They would put on their own shows, renting out Eastwood Skate Park, bringing their PA and play. And as other bands would do, they’d perform at the Skate Barn in Hampstead. The music scene was different ten years ago. Between 1996 and 2000 it was a relatively thin time for bands in the area.
“Music and a scene can change a person’s life, give them something to belong to,” Brandon says. “I’d love to see another band, I’d love it to be my band, but any band to come along and change things, step up and give that feeling that Nirvana gave kids, that belonging, that you don’t have to listen whatever’s big. Even rap now is wholly commercial, all bells and whistles.”
Several things have happened to cause this change. The Internet and the hard fact that what once had an edge has seemingly lost its voice. Safety in music, primarily in selling music, is due to the science of marketing. It’s like genetic code specification, finding the right match. There’s little room for experience or taking chances for music listeners anymore. Everything is carved up, packaged and placed on the right shelf. Musically, where’s the discovery in that? Original voices are difficult to come by today.



The band name is tongue-in-cheek. The Ivy League, as a band, stands in contrast to those in the upper echelons of moneyed society. They are salt of the earth and educated working class fellows. But the band has gone through many changes in the last year. In the last six months they have added a rhythm guitarist only to lose him, add another as a hired gun only to replace him as well.
“In the last year…a ton has changed musically in the last year,” Brandon says. “We were a punk band in the beginning, three chord, fast punk songs.”
He met drummer Alex McBride through mutual friends, both disliking each other from the beginning.
“Something didn’t click. When I first met him I didn’t like him,” Brandon explains. “Most of my best friends I have started out that way.”
While Brandon was in The Creeps, he and McBride would stay up and talk about what to do as a band musically. When The Creeps dissipated another door opened. Andrew Christian, now guitarist for The Speed Kings, came to Brandon with an idea for a band and wanted to call it The Ivy League. Brandon suggested his new friend McBride for a drummer that was in the Marines but about to be deployed to Afghanistan. That was April 2004. And they needed a bass player.
Enter Ben McAndrew who had been living in Wilmington briefly prior to meeting Brandon. The introduction came by way of Christian whom McAndrew met through his sister. During this time they all spent a lot of time at Lula’s, a downtown bar quietly tucked away near the end of Front Street,
“A home away from home,” McAndrew says. “When I first moved there we hung out there a lot.”
McAndrew is the quietest member of the band. Tall, wearing wire rimmed glasses; his conversation is sparse but answers questions openly and without hesitation. Originally from California, McAndrew’s father was in the Navy for twenty one years, a fact that meant the family moved around a lot. With his father retiring in Virginia, the younger McAndrew grew restless. In Virginia the family started to get comfortable and he wondered why. All his life they were always on the move, unable to make good friends. McAndrew and his sister never had a lot of friends and never knew where they would be living next.
McAndrew’s grandmother was a country singer and introduced him to guitar. She taught him enough to get started. Practice was tough going but a friend of his father’s taught him to play Spanish guitar and some blues.
“My influences when I started were blues and jazz,” he says. “It made me feel like I was getting somewhere.” A friend from high school started playing guitar with him and they’d practice together, playing ‘Mary had a Little Lamb’ till their parents wanted to “shoot us” he recalls. The friend later took classical lessons while McAndrew focused on blues and jazz. But his father’s work in the Navy took the family elsewhere.
“Just when we get comfortable,” McAndrew explains. We’d have to move again.” After high school he hit the road, Philadelphia, back to Virginia. McAndrew even ended up in Texas for a while.
“My sister was living in Wilmington so I came here.”
McAndrew began hanging out a lot at Lula’s and from time to time, discussing music with Christian there from time to time.
“Then one day Brandon and Christian called me up.”
The phone call came one afternoon and McAndrew was asked to play bass. But McAndrew didn’t play bass. He played guitar.
“They told me it didn’t matter, it’s three chord punk. Come on over.”

Learning to play bass for the Ivy League was rough going, his hands hurt the first few months. Playing ripped all the guitar calluses off since the strings so much thicker compared to guitar. He tried playing solely with his fingers, is still trying, but says he can’t keep a solid beat with his fingers.
“So I keep a pick. It’s a little bit easier. I thought everyone played with their fingers and I was a retard because I couldn’t do it.” He still plays a guitar but keeps the focus on playing bass. “If I pick up a guitar I end just playing the top four strings unless I come up with a song then I’m playing chords. But I try to avoid it, just practice the scales.”
He practices by picking that one string over and over again instead of just strumming the whole thing. During the recording of the band’s first demo he was nervous.
“I didn’t know if was going to be able to not hit another string. Even then my fingers were raw and my hand hurt because I wasn’t used to stretching that far. On a guitar the frets are closer together. It’s easier to go three or four frets down. Now, hitting four is painful,” McAndrew says.
But McAndrew relishes a challenge. ‘Loser’s Destiny’ is his favorite song lyrically but his favorite to play is one Kane wrote called ‘Start.’
“Because it’s so difficult to play, one of the most difficult bass lines I’ve had to do in 2 ½ years of playing,” he says. “That, to me, makes it fun. That makes it worth it.”
It was a year ago, the band started to realize they had something, music that wasn’t the typical three chord, screw everybody, let’s have fun mentality. Something was clicking, and they all liked the idea that there was a message they were trying to get across.
“It became clear what we wanted to do. If it takes migraines to write something that someone can get something out of musically,” McAndrew says, “and have it mean something to someone else.”
Over time the band grew musically. McAndrew feels the band plays smarter now. The songs aren’t simply verse-chorus-verse configurations, becoming more technical.
“We’re adding refrains, not super extending the songs, but just smart songwriting, taking this part and putting it here instead of at the end, adding this in,” McAndrew says. “Sitting down and thinking, this is the basic idea of the song, what can we do to make it better, make it big as possible?”
But in time Christian left the band and went on to form The Speed Kings, citing the decision to go in a different musical direction. There were no hard feelings.


Enter former Creeps guitarist Kane. Kane and Brandon were friends for a long time, both hailing from Wilmington.
“I went to Winston Salem for school and The Creeps kind of dissipated,” Kane says with an air if disappointment. “Brandon was in The Ivy League now and he said I needed to be in it. He kept saying, you’re destined to be in this.”
Six months before Kane moved back, Christian is quitting The Ivy League. Brandon calls on Kane again, “Why don’t you play guitar?”
“Fuck yeah,” Kane yells recounting the feeling. “I listened to their songs and said I got to put my style on it. These are great songs.”
Kane began the task of learning the songs while still in school in Winston Salem so when Christian left Kane came in prepared, bringing his style to an emerging band.
“He’s into a lot of older rock and roll music,” says McAndrew of Kane’s style of playing.
The songs are similar to their origin but Kane has added his touch. “Andrew Christian wrote fucking great songs. Look at him now. The Speed Kings are a fun band. I love those guys.”
Kane is an overcharged battery, to put it lightly. He’s always on, begging the question, does he sleep? There’s not enough room for him onstage. You can see him wanting to move around more but there’s not enough room to satisfy the need. As a lead vocalist Brandon can be laid back as well as stalking the stage. It’s an interesting dynamic.





“I’m running around back and forth. Everybody’s got their own thing. I’m used to guys watching jumping all around,” says Kane.
The guitarist sports slicked back jet black hair, usually black clothing, jeans and boots. He exudes the energy of music defined by raw, intense power. Blame his brother.
“My brother got me into punk.” Kane says. The older brother owned a large stereo system and would yell for elementary school age Kane to come into his room. “He’d yell, Hey Kane, come check this out. The first song I remember listening to was ‘The Bruise.”
The older brother would be playing NOFX or Rancid. The experience was his first exposure to music other than listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. From then on Kane was hooked.
“It totally consumed me,” he says. “I really got into street punk, then started listening to The Casualties, The Unseen. The raw power of that type of music. It was the pure energy, a brotherhood, it’s own society.”
At school, not many knew about it. For Kane, the relationship to it was remarkable and special. Then he discovered Social Distortion. Again, blame his brother who was sifting through used tapes at Manifest Music. He found Social Distortion’s self titled release. Kane was in middle school then and he found out, all true, his friend’s grandmother had a Social Distortion cd.
“Ball and Chain’ is my favorite song to this day.”
Kane is born and raised in Wilmington. His love for the city led to writing a tribute song, ‘Broken City.’ Tucked away at school in Winston Salem he grew to miss not only home but this city he felt comfortable in, for better or worse. He came home for the weekend to visit and realized how much he missed the town.
“It don’t look pretty all the time but you love it. Something draws us to it. That’s what the song is about,” he says. “This city, we love it, but we don’t just love the pretty things but the dirty things.” It’s a high wire song, especially when played live, a combination of rapid tempo and a guitar riff that whirls about like a lasso.
In all that time Kane’s been writing a lot of country music as well and concentrating on trying to write good songs. His approach is that every song is already there but if it doesn’t feel right then that’s not how its supposed to be.
“You gotta let it come through you.”
The interest in country emanates from a fondness and the discovery of artists like Johnny Cash. It’s not just the sudden cool factor Cash has acquired in the public over the last several years. Cash never changed, the public and the music industry did. His music and his personality resonated substance and that’s what drew U2 and producer Rick Rubin to him. And musicians like Kane.
It’s obvious Cash has become the new t-shirt for people to wear, after Malcolm X, Che Guevara and Sid Vicious. You know, when some pop star throws on a Ramones shirt, you just feel it’s a fraud? Kane draws from the personal aspects of Cash’s music, that they are real. His sentiment is real when he talks about his passion for honest music, whether it’s Cash or The Clash.
An Ivy League show moves around the musical terrain. There are different arcs. Kane sings back up but sings lead on a few songs such as ‘Last Train’ and ‘Start.’ His numerous influences screams a mantra of let’s play everything. He’d like to play a hip hop show.
“I wanna play country, blues, and punk stuff,” he says. “We did it in the Creeps too. We come from different directions, clash and meet somewhere in the middle.” That’s rock and roll. That’s great music.
Such variety is commonplace and friends remain just that. Ivy League’s Kane and McBride also play in a psychobilly band with The Speed Kings’ Will Lear, The Hot Rod Davidians.



Alex McBride left for Iraq and shortly thereafter Christian left the band. The drummer did three deployments, extending his commitment for the third deployment. He was a squad leader, involved in Operation Iron Fist and Steel Curtain, two of the biggest offensive pushes since the invasion of Fallujah.
“I did my time. I did what I had to do. I was infantry,” he says. “I was a squad leader. I led marines into combat.” McBride is twenty-three years old and seems a good decade beyond that. The sense of age is not in his appearance or his face. It’s in the way he carries himself, the way he speaks frankly or viewing things. He’s stocky and the shortest member of the band, living a life that brought more experience, more than others who’ve never been in the heat of combat.
McBride has lived in Wilmington for two years, roughly the same amount of time the band has been together. Just after entering the Marine Corps he learned that Agnostic Front was playing in Wilmington. Without a car, he took a fifty dollar cab ride from Camp LeJeune to Bessie’s downtown to see them play. After that visit he began looking more into the area.
“I started meeting people in the area, met Brandon and couldn’t stand him at first. He’s from here and my friends were transplants who were in the Marine Corps.”
Brandon being quiet, a year older, he was sketchy of McBride and his friends and they were equally sketchy of him.
“One time he was talking shit and we were talking shit,” McBride says. “But we got to know one another and he’s turned out to be one of my best friends.”
Staying in Wilmington with a fellow marine he began playing drums in The Creeps shortly before that band fell apart.
“Brandon and I talked about forming another band. We found Ben and Christian, jammed a little bit.” The Ivy League had begun. Then McBride left for Afghanistan, his first deployment.
While McBride was in Afghanistan he received a three song demo in the mail. The band found a fill in drummer and recorded some songs, recording ‘Intro/Pain On Tap,’ ‘My Hell, My Life’ and ‘Port City Beer Boys.’
“I heard that and I was so excited. I couldn’t believe that Brandon got off his ass and recorded these songs,” McBride says.
Brandon wrote ‘My Hell, My Life’ for Alex after the two wrote letters back and forth. Brandon was getting a picture of McBride’s life in Afghanistan. Brandon didn’t want to write another typical song that could be taken as pro war or pro military.
“We want people to think about things,” says McBride. “Brandon thought, here’s another way to think about something.”
Brandon concurs, “We all have opinions on the war but its not what we’re about. We get branded as being political sometimes but it’s not that. It’s not politics, it’s people, people trying to live.”
The song, ‘My Hell, My Life’ concerns the time McBride spent overseas, an account of what it was like to be there as an individual, being lonely, being in combat.
“I’ve had some of the worst shit happen to me being overseas, coming home single, girlfriends not being there, having friends killed.”
The tape was survival material because it was killing the drummer not playing while deployed. He would find himself banging on tables unconsciously. But the down time offered another, more positive effect. McBride would lay in his rack resting, listening to music. Then, really listening to music.
“I didn’t have a choice, but over there, I became a listener of music. You’d find a good CD and wear it out and each time you’d hear something different. It’s so cool hearing all the little added stuff.”


As a teenager McBride grew up DC, where learning street smarts prepared him for life. He didn’t find many friends in his age group, connecting more to older people. Yet, in conversation, he still carries a distinct line between maturity and youthfulness.
His father was a grunt in the Marines. McBride was never the toughest kid growing up, just an average kid that liked to play music, played since the age of twelve. Always played drums. As a student he took five years of jazz instruction. Then studied sight reading, rock, funk, under three different teachers.
“In High School I was in marching band, pit orchestra, symphonic band, pep band,” he says. “I had my own jazz combo.”
There is a power to his playing but also a precision that comes from the schooling. McBride is a tight player, deeply focused but plays with ferocity and discipline. He sits upright behind the kit as if keeping an eye on the drums. His focus rarely breaks except maybe during the break in ‘Cold Blue Sea’ when stands over the drum kit, sticks pointed out at the audience singing along to the lines, Set sail on that Cold Blue Sea…
“Music has been my life since I can remember. It’s all I think about, all I care about. All I wanna do.”
His favorite type of jazz is hard bop, Art Blakely, Max Roach. Recounting a Bobby Timmins record he explains that Timmins is going off on a piano solo and you can hear him in the background singing. It’s the type of thing you don’t catch until after a little while, after you’ve been listening to it. He says its the same with Art Blakely, when he’s going off on a well thought out drum solo and you can hear him talking like he’s singing it. A moment when a musician is really feeling it and he’s got that passion.
“I’ve played in every type of band – jazz combos, hardcore and punk rock bands. That’s one of the things I miss the most is playing in big band jazz, cause I’d sit there and read charts and play. I was doing a lot of stuff. I was doing everything I could to play, playing with people better than me. I did two jazz consortiums when I was in high school at the local college.”
After high school he worked at a guitar center. The plan was to join a big band but before long the drummer traded his sticks for a rifle. Joining the Marines had nothing to do with the fact his father was also in the military, nor was it politically motivated.
“I guess I had something to prove to myself and to other people because I was smaller than everybody else,” he explains. “A big fuck you to everyone.”
Motivations also didn’t stem from an ideology of trying to change the world but more from a desire to go through the experiences, to be able to feel them and really know what it was like. That is, the entire spectrum of being a Marine, more specifically combat, to test himself and push the limits.
“I really wanted to try and do something with my life to get it started where I got a lot of life experience under my belt. I didn’t want to go to college. I want to work with my hands. I couldn’t sit behind a desk,” he says. “And I love to shoot guns. I enjoy target shooting, not random things. In the Marine Corps I was a designated marksman. That’s not a sniper. It’s an urban sniper. I didn’t go to sniper school.”
Returning home from Afghanistan, The Ivy League’s members were Christian, McBride, Ben and Brandon. Within months they would play Alex’s last show at Lucky’s before leaving for Iraq in July 2005.


On Day Two of Steel Curtain as his squad of men were pushing through the city they approached a building that was previously attacked. The squad went to breach a door and a guy was throwing grenades at McBride’s first three men on point. All three ended up getting wounded.
“The blood and guts didn’t bother me. One of the new guys got killed, that bothered me.”
The Medics put the soldier in a stretcher and McBride saw his leg dangling off a stretcher. His cammies were so soaked with blood and it was that image that troubled him. The thought of it still lingers but he reasons it away.
“Survival of you and your friends is what’s going through your head. That’s why we do so well. The camaraderie between each other, you don’t want your friends to die. You kill as an act of survival. In the heat of the moment it’s because someone is shooting at you. Afterwards you may think other things. It’s a rush.”
McBride came home in March of 2006 and left the Marines for good on June 10th having served 4 years and 3 months.
“You don’t even realize all the things that go through your head until you actually get out - get out, because you’re still somewhat attached to that life style.”
He has friends to talk to, also having shared combat experience. But, as a former soldier, he was on his own, as in, not being around the alpha male scenario all the time. The former soldier is immersed in a different lifestyle, around regular people. The whole mentality of life is completely dissimilar. The whole life mentality is different.
“It can be hard to adjust sometimes.”
It has taken time to acclimatize to civilian life, to being home. McBride reminds himself that its alright to let his guard down, to cut up and have a little fun. Having a conversation with him it’s hard to imagine he has to do this. At times, one on one, he’s very serious and focused, intense. When his band mates are around he’s another man, jovial, fun – a cut up. He knows that when things don’t happen, its not life and death.
“I stress out over almost nothing. When big things happen I probably don’t stress enough because I see that its not life or death. Over there, its life or death because somebody’s gonna die.”
He expounds by reinforcing that decisions, stupid decisions, are the difference between a dead soldier and breathing soldier. Things work and succeed for specific reasons, doing what you’re told, what you’ve been trained for. The training keeps you alive. Being at home doesn’t stress him out. Working his construction job doesn’t stress him out. He finds humor in some things that people fret over. Because they are nothing, they are not analogous to life and death.
McBride sits silent as if thinking about something serious then offers, “One of the little things that stresses me out is getting things in order with this band.”


The band has been recording their full length off and on for the last several months. Last October, Ben McAndrew shares a room with Ian Millard at Cape Fear Studios. McAndrew sits playing a bass line for the song ‘Start.’ He gives it another run through, then stands, to play it again. It’s a bouncing line, fun and repetitive.
Kane shows later than everyone else. He’s carrying a six pack under his arm and everyone is happy to see him. They razz him about the tardiness but announces he ahs an excuse.
“I got off work and brother calls me up,” he says with a serious tone, “come over and drink with me. I’ve been drinking whiskey all afternoon with my brother.”
It’s just after eight and the band is there to tweak some things on the band’s forthcoming disc The 11th Hour, due March 30th. Both Brandon and Kane will add vocals tonight in addition to the bass line.
“Basically 11th hour stands for those final minutes while you're desperately gasping for air before you drown,” says McBride.
Brandon takes a similar approach to explain the songs on the album. “It’s a combination of a dark outlook on life and the aggression of struggling.”
A few of the tracks have been around a while, three from the early days and the remaining eight songs are new. One new song, ‘I’m Not Okay,’ concerns a friend who attempted suicide, an atypical approach to the subject matter.
“The song is not saying do it or don’t do it. It’s the feeling you get in the eleventh hour right before you’re about to make that decision on what you’re gonna do,” says McBride. The band wrote it during the practice prior to recording. “We wanted to get the song done because it relates to the theme of the album which is about loneliness. All is I can say is loneliness is the best word to describe that album, romanticizing misery. It also lets people know they’re not alone.”
The 11th Hour is not a depressing disc by any stretch. Many of the tracks are anthem worthy and purely fun. Take ‘Small Town Anthem’ for example, it echoes brotherhood and the love of home, The city we live in / the streets we roam / the bars we drink in / this place our home. It’s the type of song made for radio airplay. Tracks on the record take on life as people know it, talk about it, making the idaes accessible coupled with plenty of energy.
“We have a more poetic outlook on life whether positive or negative,” Brandon says. “If you come from an ascribed status of being lower level, poor, any little thing that can keep you down. You’ll either keel over from not being able to take it or you’re be tough as nails or you’re gonna not back down.”






Take 11th Hour as armor, a creative burst of musical energy that reaffirms there are still albums that people can relate to, steeped in something other than pop leftovers and shaky marketing schemes. Evident are the sounds of rock and roll’s tribal history in their music, from the American garage to Springsteen to The Clash. The album is an electric mix of working class people and energetic rock and roll, music to drive fast to, identify with, or go to a show and get loaded to. The Ivy League has crafted songs about real life, drenched in sweat. And you can dance to them.


Behind Lucky’s Pub, the band’s home away from home, a stale yellow light glows against the concrete wall. A sign states NO DRINKING IN PARKING LOT. The message seems pointless as cigarette smoke pours out the back door into the steady drizzle of rain. The January cold is enough that your breath is noticeable. Jacket weather certainly, but just right for a night in a heated club where the music is loud and pounding.
A band from NYC is onstage, P.O.R. and they’re killing it. Sounding like old school punk and grinding metal. One song that is completely jamming segues into a two minute punk explosion.
McBride is digging it, reflecting on the history of the band’s sound, their impossible to miss influences. He knows his music history, from jazz to punk.
Away from that yellow light the parking is dark. There are several vans and almost too many cars. Agnostic Front, the band McBride took a fifty dollar cab ride to Wilmington to see, is headlining the show and there is a sizable crowd on this Sunday night.
The Ivy League finishes loading equipment after playing their set. They stand in the overhang of the building. It’s dark and evident that they are comfortable with one another. They pose for pictures, hanging on one another, striking poses and goofing off. But mostly they are enjoying themselves. They have spent the last several months preparing for The 11th Hour. The title has changed, they’ve ran through several lead guitarists but the music is still remains. The attitude is still the same. The heart of the band is still determined and honest. They are just like anyone else, but more than some are diligent in chasing the dream. They all have day jobs, decent ones, but ones worth risking to chase it.
The sound of P.O.R. still emanates from the club. In the shadow of the building’s overhang McBride, Brandon and McAndrew are talking when their manager Dave Friend approaches. They playfully wrestle standing up, like brothers, tugging and pushing at one another. A man with short brown hair and a full beard walk directly to them from the dark of the parking lot. No one is quite sure what to make of him yet.
“I liked what I saw on stage tonight. I was really taken with what I heard,” he says. The man is in town with P.O.R. He’s from Boston and has a small record label with fingers into, he says, a larger piece of the music pie. The man doesn’t come off a hustler, but who knows. He is knowledgeable of music and even comes off nervous at first. Years ago his grandfather left him an inheritance and he started a small record store and eventually parlayed that, along with a friend, into a record label. He is interested in The Ivy League. He talks at length about making CD’s and promoting bands.
McBride interjects and apologizes for interrupting.
“I grew up on punk,” he says. “But punk as it was and what was great about it has been done and is dead. There’s no point in repeating it because it’s been done. That’s not what we’re about.”
McBride is honest with people, straight up. But he’s very kind about it, done in a way one can appreciated.
“What this band is about…Everyone in this band brings a different influence with them. We are five different parts and we are trying to forge something different by combining them.”
In Pump up the Volume Christian Slater’s character talks about how all the great themes have been used up and that everything’s been turned into a theme park. Over fifteen years later the dialogue from the film still resonates, still drives a point. How does anyone, especially artists, create something new in this modern world? The poor, the working class have always had skills to survive. In the absence of wealth one has to fight and struggle. It is in these struggles that creativity flows and is grows wildly. Rich kids don’t always make the best music. Art is about influence, inspiration, emotion and a singular fresh voice.
With The 11th Hour The Ivy League have melded different sounds to create their own brand of rock and roll, blending the likes of Social Distortion, old school punk rock, A.F.I., country, The Ramones and maybe a little Art Blakely. Here comes the new stew. In a time where there’s dozens of bands and hip hop stars churning out similar versions of a familiar sound there are bands like The Ivy League working to forge a new sound.
Around the time Pump Up the Volume was being released in cinemas a unknown band in Aberdeen, Washington was mixing up punk rock and Cheap Trick. Their name was Nirvana.