The coolfork!! Blueprint

Those new musical discoveries prompted Jaret to do something he had never managed in any previous band: write a freaking song.

Not long after becoming friends with Shrub, he bought a guitar and began writing. He knew very little about the instrument, but for the first time, songwriting felt like something he could actually do.

Jaret and Lance Morrill had known each other since T-ball. They were best friends throughout elementary school—close enough that teachers deliberately separated them into different classes by third grade. That did not stop them from cutting up through junior high and high school, especially in band class.

Lance had played trombone before switching to drums. He also worked at a record store and could order whatever impossible-to-find band Jaret had discovered on Headbangers Ball. When Shrub entered the picture, the three became coolfork!!

The way coolfork!! approached its first show tells you almost everything about the way Jaret approaches a project.

The band rehearsed for an entire year before playing in public. During that time, they recorded an album, made merchandise and spent months putting stickers and flyers all over Wichita Falls. Long before anyone had seen the band, the message began appearing around town:

“coolfork!! It’s not metal. It’s not funk. It’s melodic punk with energy.”

By the night of the first show, the audience already felt invested.

What the hell was this thing?

They sold it out.

This was years before musicians could build an audience with a few social-media posts. It was flyers, conversations, merchandise, repetition and the stubborn belief that presentation mattered just as much as preparation.

Every coolfork!! show was treated like an event. The members even created a Ramones tribute band, The Samones, so they could open for themselves.

The shows happened at The Refuge, a church-affiliated coffeehouse and music venue that was developing into the center of a real Wichita Falls scene. Chris Burney booked bands there. Erik Chandler played with Chris in The Folkadots. Lance, Chris and Erik had another project called Slaw. A young Gary Wiseman played there with Bully Tree and rarely missed a coolfork!! show.

The connections that would shape the next thirty years were already in the room.