Mikrowaves

Amazing Ghost: Can You Tell Me Where The Party’s At?
Aug 22, 2009

My first experience encountering Amazing Ghost was at Cous Cous. My friend and co-worker Eddie Prendergast mentioned that he was playing a show. He thought I might dig it and that I should stop by. He played me a song that took the rhythm and beat of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” and flipped it on its head with his rendition entitled “Bone in the USA”. If it was possible, the music I was hearing seemed to capture the personality and charisma of Prendergast. I was eager to see how it played out in a live setting.

As I ventured into Cous Cous, the room was packed. The room was feeding off the vibe of the music provided earlier by the No BS Brass Band, Snow Panda and Scott Burton. Then Amazing Ghost took the stage and I was blown away. The songs were full of insurmountable fun times. I could only imagine how much of a joy it would be to be a part of a band like this. It didn’t hurt that the entire horn section of the No BS Brass Band accompanied their live rendition of “Bone in the USA”. Thus making the song rise up to epic-like standards.

Their lineup includes members of Bio Ritmo, Fight the Big Bull and The Great White Jenkins which is a strong testament to their impressive musical backgrounds. The only downside would be that with all of these obligations to other projects, when would there be time for Amazing Ghost?

Thankfully, Prendergast continued to create new material and the band continued to strive. Each live performance was better than the last and they started to make a dent on Richmond’s music scene. To put it lightly, there really isn’t another band in the city limits that is doing what Amazing Ghost is doing.

I was lucky enough to sit down with Prendergast and fellow musical cohort Bob Miller to discuss the history of Amazing Ghost and how the project is still an ever-evolving process.

Shannon Cleary: At the start, there was Pencilgrass. What year did you start working on that project?

Eddie Prendergast: 2001, 2002, I started making these songs and I got some dudes together from the University of Miami. I was like lets try and make this into a band.

Bob Miller: I don’t think I still have it, but I know that you sent me this CD of the stuff that you had recorded on your own. I was thinking “man, that’s pretty wild.” It never occurred to me that you were going to put a band together to record this stuff. It was pretty cool. The next thing I heard was a better idea of what these songs sounded like with a band behind them. It was pretty wild.

Eddie: It was cool. When I was playing music in Richmond, I was playing with Bio Ritmo. I was like if I ever start another band there aren’t going to be more than three people in the band. And then I got down there and I was like “I need horns, I need keys and so on” and then there ended up being seven people in the band.

Bob: Other than Bio Ritmo, it was like here’s this jazz guy. That was the other weird thing about it. You have this jazz guy, who played a little salsa with us. But once he got down there, he was like a lead singer and it was totally different.

Eddie: It was pretty cool. We did pretty well in Miami. We were playing some good shows. We managed to do a couple tours from Miami, which isn’t easy. Driving up the coast, I mean you got to drive like four hundred miles just to get out of Florida. That’s when we started doing that stuff.

How long did that last? When did you eventually return to Richmond?

Eddie: In 2002, I had graduated. The other guys weren’t graduating from University of Miami until 2003. They all lived by the school in Miami, which was kind of a shitty place to live. You gotta get out of there. There was all of this phoniness. Two of the guys were from Hartford and they suggested we move up to New Haven. It’s close to New York and there’s a little music scene, a little rock scene going on. So I was like alright, might as well check it out. So we moved there in 2003 and stayed there together for like three and a half years. It was one of those things where we broke up and I was up there for another six months not doing anything. Then Bob called me and asked me to play bass again in Bio Ritmo. So then I came back down to Richmond at the end of 2007.

From there, at what point did you set your musical focus on what would eventually become Amazing Ghost?

Eddie: When I first came down, I made a couple songs. As much as I could, because Bio Ritmo was so busy when I returned. It was a lot busier then. Making some money and things like that. I didn’t really have that much time. Then we started to slow down. You go through periods of being really productive and periods where you’re not really doing shit. For the most part, if I can get a couple weeks of really good productivity, I’m not so mad at myself if I take a little time off. It always feels good to do work.

Bob: One thing again was that he was just here mak