THE SOURCE OF THE COURSE OF THE JOURNEY OF FLOW

This story begins about 1000 years ago at the headwaters of a mighty river in a place now known as Tilton, New Hampshire, USA, where the Winnisquam river (bringing water from Lake Winnipesaukee) and the Pemmijawassett river (bringing water from the White Mountains) converge to form the mighty Merrimack river, which flows all the way to the Atlantic ocean.

The first inhabitants of this region were a tribe of Native Americans known as the Abenaki ( which means People Of The Dawn), as they were one of the most eastern of the tribes. Their Holy mountain is called Katahdinh and it's peak is said to be the first place that sunlight touches North America. Living as they did, along the eastern seacoast and its network of rivers and lakes, they were among the first tribes to encounter the strange refugees from the east who called themselves "Pilgrims" and who had crossed the Atlantic to meet them.

The first English colony was established in Plymouth, Massachuessettes, near where the mighty Merrimack empties into the ocean, when the Pilgrims claimed all the land around a big rock they found on the beach. "Claiming" was a new concept to the Indians.It was accomplished by first finding a big rock then hammering your name on it, thus CLAIMING all the land around the rock, the bigger the rock, the bigger the claim. (The last big claim the Indians lost in this fashion was when some white people hammered some faces on Mt.Rushmore and claimed North and South Dakota.) The Indians never understood this concept. They figured their claim was the rock itself.

The English Settlers were a pretty pathetic bunch when they first arrived, sick and starving, with no food or shelter for the hard months ahead. They would have all died that first winter if the Indians hadn't taken pity on them, fed them and kept them alive long enough to teach them how to grow corn. Pretty soon the colonists were back on their feet, and their colony began to grow. They started claiming more and more of the land around them and eventually got to the Merrimack. The Governor of the colony decided it would be a good idea to send a couple of scouts up that river to see how far it would go and to claim all the land around it for the colony and the King.

So the Governor borrowed some canoes from the Indians, gave them to the scouts and up the river they went. They paddled for a long, long time and one day came to a fork in the river. They looked at the two small rivers ahead of them and couldn't decide which way to go, so they asked the Abenakis about them. The Abenakis told them the one on the right was the Winnisquam and the one on the left was the Pemmijawassett. Well, the scouts couldn't say Pemmijawassett much less spell it on their survey map,so they went up the Winnisquam.

It wasn't long until they came to a small Abenaki village (what is now the village of Lochmere,N.H.) at the very beginning of the river, at the edge of a lake. The scouts thought this was a lovely spot, plenty of rocks for claiming, and it seemed to be the end of the river. Besides, they were tired and anxious to get back to the colony, so they decided to ask these villagers if there was much of anything worth claiming beyond this lake. Well, up until this point, these villagers hadn't seen many tourists and didn't much like the look of these ones, so they pointed across the lake and with a big smile said ,"Winnipesaukee!" The scouts liked the sound of that. It sounded bigger and more impressive than "Winnisquam", and the Abenakis sure seemed excited for them to go there. They could figure out how to spell it later.

So the scouts got back into their canoes and paddled across the lake, which narrowed into a channel and led them to an even bigger lake. And across that lake was another channel leading to yet another lake. They crossed the lake and found the next channel. At the end of that channel they encountered a tribe of Indians who had built a series of wooden fences in the water, across the mouth of the channel. These fences were called "Weirs" and they were used to trap fish. On the other side of these fences was the biggest lake yet, filled with small islands.

At last they had reached the great Winnipesaukee. They looked around, and there at the mouth of the channel, just to the left of the fences on the edge of the lake, was a lovely, long, sandy beach... with a big rock right at the end! They knew they need go no further. They looked at the rock, then looked at the Indians. The Indians looked at the tourists, then looked at the rock. And before the Indians could say "Pemmijawassett" those tourists jumped out of their canoes and started hammering their names on that rock, and thus claimed all the land between that rock and the rock they started at back in Plymouth. And "Weirs Beach" has been a popular tourist destination ever since.

Over the years, more and more refugees arrived. The colonists had sent corn and maple syrup and dead animal skins back to Europe. The maple syrup never quite caught on, but they sure liked the corn! So the refugees flowed out of England looking for religious freedom and more corn. They were followed by the French, who liked the dead animal skins. The French built their own colony to the north, a big fortress city they named Quebec. At first they thought the cliffs their city was built on were made of diamonds, but it turned out to be quartz. They decided to stay anyway, even though it was pretty cold most of the time. They could get plenty of dead animal skins there, and it was a good place from which to launch attacks on the English, which they liked nearly as much as dead animal skins.

The English had gotten very busy building towns and mills along the rivers. They were growing lots of corn and pumpkins, and churning out the maple syrup, claiming more rocks as they went. The Abenakis and other tribes managed to live between the English and the French fairly peacefully most of the time, but unfortunately, had not yet come across the concept of immigration laws, and so got pushed further and further away from their rivers and lakes and native lands.

One day the French were sitting on their pile of quartz, wrapped in dead animal skins, freezing their butts off,and thought how much better it would be to claim all that land the Englishmen had further south, where it was warmer. So they decided it would be a good idea to launch their big attack at last. They asked the Abenakis and some other tribes to help them get rid of those English once and for all. The Abenakis thought that was a pretty good idea, so some of them decided to help the French.

So they got together and attacked a bunch of the English and drove them out. The Abenakis liked that, but weren't too happy that the French were going to stay there instead. So the English said they'd get rid of the French if the Indians helped. The Abenakis thought that was a pretty good idea, so some of them decided to help the English.

They went back and forth like this for a long time. Some of the Abenakis got sick of the whole mess and moved to Minnesota (which they hadn't told the English or the French about, and had over 10,000 lakes!) Some of the Abenakis stayed, content to go with the flow and see what would happen, and some thought that as long as they helped each side keep fighting they'd eventually kill each other off completely and the Indians could go back to fishing in peace.

But as it turned out, the English ended up forcing all the French back up to Quebec and making them stay put. Then they turned on those Abenakis and started giving them a lot of trouble for being so sneaky. So a bunch of those Abenakis decided they'd had enough and moved closer to Quebec, to a town called St. Francis. They were sick of the English, and at least they could keep the French off their backs by trading them more dead animal skins.

After a few years, the English decided they were also sick of the English, so they wrote to King George and told him that they were changing their name to Americans and anyone who still wanted to be English had to go back to England and all the land they had claimed for him now belonged to them. Well, King George didn't like that very much and so they had a big fight about it . In the end, the Americans won and got to keep all that land, and called it the United States of America.

Then the Americans really got busy. They discovered they had "American Ingenuity" and "Yankee Work Ethic" and "Manifest Destiny" and started expanding further and further west, pushing the Indians back as they went. By this time people from all over Europe were coming to America, moving up the rivers and out into the empty lands, building more mills, more factories, farms and businesses. All of these cultures began to blend together over time. Up in St. Francis an Abenaki girl married a Frenchman named St. Cyr, who came from the family of the Marquis de St. Cyr, who built the famous St. Cyr military academy on his land in the town which bears his name, in France. They had children, who married and had children etc... all along mixing and remixing French and Abenaki bloodlines with other bloodlines, other cultures.

By the mid-19th century the region along the Merrimack river became the Industrial center of the nation. All the way up to Lake Winnipesaukee, the river was dotted with mills and factories which produced textiles of all sorts that were then shipped back down the river to the Atlantic ports. And so, from the Merrimack flowed goods that were then shipped all over the world.

All this Industry meant plenty of jobs working in the textile mills. So some of those French / Indians up in St. Francis and Quebec ( who by this time had pretty much run out of dead animal skins) decided it would be a good idea to move down to America, where it was warmer, and work in the mills. One of these French / Indian immegrants was a girl named St.Cyr ( the great grand-daughter of the Marquis and his Abenaki wife). She married another French / Indian named Montembeault, and together they joined the steady stream of immegrants flowing into the New England mill towns just after the turn of the century. Eventually they settled in the town of Tilton, New Hampshire, where the Pemmijewassett and Winnisquam rivers converge to form the mighty Merrimack, and where ( unbeknownst to them at the time) some of their ancestors had started from a few hundred years earlier. And so, like many generations of their family before them,they made their home among the lakes and went to work on the river, making things that would go down the river, into the ocean and out over the world.

One of the things the Montembeaults were good at making was children, and by the time they were done they had made eleven of them. One of them married a girl who was also born in Tilton. Her family, named Stanton, had come from Nova Scotia and were of English / Scots/ Irish descent. Nova Scotia is an Island off the coast of Maine that the Scottish refugees landed on while looking for the New World. It was cold, rocky and life was hard there. It reminded them so much of home that they claimed it, named it New Scotland and decided to stay.

The Stantons had come to Tilton to work in the mills also. They were also good at making children, nearly as good as the Montembeaults, and managed to make nine of them. And it was the second to last of the Stanton children that married the second to last of the Montembeault children. They moved to that little Abenaki village where Lake Winnisquam ends and the Winnisquam river begins, where the first tourists got the first directions to Weirs Beach.

In the 1960s another family moved to the village of Lochmere from the Province of Quebec, named Fleischhacker.

Frequently, Mr. Fleischhacker had to make business trips to a very big mill in Laconia,N.H. He would take the train from Sherbrooke all the way to Laconia, which was a very long trip. Near the end of the journey, the train crossed the Winnisquam river, in the village of Lochmere. From there to Laconia was a very short trip. So one day, as the train rolled into Lochmere, Mr. Fleischhacker got off. He thought it was a lovely spot, so he decided to have a look around and walked all over the village. He liked it so much he decided it would be a good idea to stay, and besides, it was much closer to Laconia. So he found a house and some land and the Fleischhacker family became part of the community with their textile business. He and his wife also decided it would be a good idea to take advantage of the area's other big industry, tourism, and bought a little resort on Lake Winnisquam which they named the Anchorage. It had many little cottages for summer tourists to rent and a restaurant with live music and dancing.

The Fleischhackers and Montembeaults were both active members of the Lochmere Community Association, which was a sort of village governing body where members of the community could decide on good ideas for the village. They organized things like the local Montessori school (kindergarten), fourth of July fireworks displays and bean-hole bean suppers. One of the good ideas they had was to start a community beach where the local children could get swimming lessons. It was at swimming lessons that the two youngest Fleischhacker children, twin brothers named Peter and Roland, met the second youngest of the Montembeault children, a boy named Rick, when they were all about three years old.

Peter, Roland and Rick became friends and playmates. Every summer they would have swimming lessons together and would spend the days playing at the beach. As they got older and no longer needed swimming lessons, they started joining the older kids in a Lochmere summer ritual, jumping off the railroad tressle into the Winnisquam river. Although they lived in the same village, the three boys attended different schools. Rick went to the local public school, like his brothers and sisters and parents had done. Peter and Roland went to private school, like all known troublemakers do. But every summer they would inevitably meet on the tressle and renew their friendship.

The 1980s got off to a rough start in N.H. It was the beginning of the Reagan era, the economy was going into a recession, the local textile industry, once flourishing, was in decline and tourism was low. On top of that, Peter and Roland seemed to be getting into more and more mischief. So in 1982, when the boys were 14 years old, the Fleischhackers moved to Tasmania.

The three boys didn't see each other again until 1985, when the Fleischhackers came back to Lochmere for the Christmas holiday season. The twins had brought along a friend from Tasmania named Simon Peacock. One night, Rick was visiting a friend from school when Peter, Roland and Simon showed up. It was a big surprise for the three boys. They got to talking and having fun and soon discovered that they all shared a common interest in music. They could all play instruments and liked alot of the same bands. Rick had his saxaphone with him and suggested they all take a walk to the Arch to have a jam. Simon suggested they bring some beer.

The Arch is a monument on top of a big hill, 150 feet above the river, in the center of Tilton. It's 55 feet high and 40 feet wide, made of Concord granite and between its columns stands a big, Scottish granite pedestal with a Numidian Lion on top. At night it's illuminated by four old, cast iron lamps and can be seen towering above Main Street from the whole town. Rick had discovered that there was a great reverb effect in between the columns of the Arch and was eager for the others to hear it. Simon had discovered that sitting on top of the lion was a great place to drink beer and was eager for the others to try it.

And so, on that cold December night, in the snow and freezing wind, underneath the Tilton Arch and the stars, the boys sat on the Lion's back, drinking beer and listening to the reverb of Rick's saxaphone.

After New Year '85 ( and a legendary party at the Fleischhackers' house ) Peter, Roland and Simon returned to Tasmania. It was 1986 and the boys were all just finishing high school. Roland started University and he and Peter played in several bands, gaining valuable experience and expanding upon their musical education ( for fun and profit! ) Back in America, Rick went to Boston University to study acting. All the Fine Arts students lived together in the same dormitory, and it wasn't long until Rick found other musicians to jam with. It was at this time that Rick began writing songs in earnest and began performing them publicly, at the numerous open mics and coffee houses around the University and Boston/Cambridge area, for the first time.

In 1987 Peter left Tasmania and spent the next two years travelling between America, Europe,S.E. Asia and Australia. Roland also did a fair bit of travelling, visiting S.E. Asia from time to time and returning to Tasmania to work and play music. By 1989 Peter decided to move back to Lochmere and stay for a while. Roland decided to move to Sydney, Aus. but came to Lochmere in the Summer of '89 to get married to a girl he grew up with in Tasmania. She and her family were from Thailand and had moved to Tasmania around the same time as the Fleischhackers. Then he and his new wife went travelling through S.E Asia again, eventually returning to Australia.

Rick continued his studies at B.U. and in 1988 started a band with a fellow B.U. student and songwriter named Andy Simon. They wrote songs and played together for two years in Boston until 1990, when Andy decided to move to Los Angeles following graduation. Rick went to Vail, Colorado for the winter to ski, hibernate,work and figure out what to do next.

In March of 1991 Rick returned to N.H. and quickly found Peter. Peter had just started playng bass in a 3- piece band and they were looking for another guitar player, so Rick asked if he could try out and he joined the group a week later. They recieved a solid education in Classic Rock, Blues, old R&B/Soul and Folk from one of America's " Roots Music Masters", Robert "Hurricane Bob" Hardin and drummer Tom Tinkler.

In Tasmania, Roland was in a band which also played old R&B, Soul and Motown. Incidently, this band also featured Simon Peacock on saxophone,who had learned to play after trying Rick's saxophone for the first time that night at the Tilton Arch in 1985.

After the summer and Autumn of 1991 Rick decided to move to Los Angeles and resume his collaboration with Andy Simon. So he said goodbye to the group, but told Peter that they would play together again and promised that if he got something good goin in L.A. he'd send for him. And with that, he packed his life into his '76 International Scout and drove off into the sunset.

Peter continued playing with Bob and Tom and in the Autumn of 1992 enrolled at the University of New Hampshire and spent the next two years studying Physics and Engineering.

Roland got fed up with the professional music business in 1992 and decided to quit. He started working for a telemarketing company that had promotions operating throughout Australia and S.E.Asia. This job would allow him to continue travelling while earning a good income.

Rick, upon his arrival in L.A., immediately resumed his partnership with Andy. At first they perfomed as an acoustic duo, making the rounds in L.A's vast coffee-house circuit, and performing at every open-mic they could find, always playing their original songs. After about a year they formed a full band and started playing their originals in the bars and nightclubs with the other local original bands ( usually four or five bands would play each night, everyone getting 45 min. - 1 hour, all hoping to impress the other bands and pass their demo on to some elusive "Industry Person" who might be in the audience.)

Rick and Andy were also busy doing a lot of recording at that time. They'd had their first recording experience back in 1988 at a studio in Boston, where they recorded five of their original songs with a studio band. Soon after, they both got 4-track recorders and began recording at home, experimenting with different recording techniques and using the machine as a songwriting tool. By '93 Andy had a job in recording studio in L.A. His boss encouraged him to use the facility on his own time, to better familliarize himself with the equipment. Andy and Rick used this opportunity to record their band in a proffessional studio, hoping to get the tapes into the hands of the elusive "Industry Person".

Their first session yeilded a seven song demo which Rick sent to a childhood friend in N.H. named Todd Burnham, with instructions to get the tape to Peter. In the spring of '94 Rick got a phone call from Peter saying he was on his way. 1994 saw both Peter and Roland making moves. Peter deciding to move to L.A. to join Rick's band, and Roland ( who had become a father in 1993) deciding to move his family to Bangkok, Thailand. Once in Bangkok, Roland soon heard about a jam session held every Saturday and Sunday at a small bar called Reuang Peung ( The Bee-Hive) located inside the Chatuchak Weekend Market. He was itching to play again, so he decided to check it out.

Reuang Peung is an artists community. In addition to the weekly jam sessions, they display paintings, photos and sculptures by Thai and international artists as well as the occassional performance art piece or poetry readings. ( You'll find reference to it in your Lonely Planet guide). On any given weekend you can find musicians from all over the world jamming with local musicians, playing everything from Thai folk songs to Blues to experimental noise, in an atmosphere of uninhibited free expression and artistic abondon.

It was here that Roland first met and played with a drummer named Mitr. Supharit "Mitr" Witchitwatee was born in Nakhorn Si Thammarat, Southern Thailand in 1965. He had learned to play drums with his hands in the south of Thailand and later to play Rock and speak English by listening to Western Rock & Roll records and by playing with foreigners in Bangkok and popular tourist destinations like Samui Island and Phuket. Roland was amazed by the passion of Mitr's drumming and his sensitivity to the music itself ( and equally impressed by the fact that he was self-taught and had never even owned his own drum set.) In his mind, Roland began tossing around the idea of starting a band with Mitr sometime in the future, should an opportunity arise. One year later, in 1995, opportunity came knocking.

In 1995 Roland had to leave the Kingdom of Thailand in order to renew his visa and re-enter the Kingdom. This tradition is called a "visa run" and is enacted every few months by thousands of foreigners in an endless ritual that is something like salmon swimming to their breeding grounds. So Roland decided to make his visa run to Viet Nam, and bought a ticket to Ho Chi Mihn City. While in the immigration line to go to V.N. Roland began to chat with another man in line. The stranger asked Roland what he was going to do while in V.N., Roland thought about it and decided that he was going to check out the music scene and investigate the possibilities of bringing a foreign band to play. Then the stranger asked Roland what the name of his band was, he answered with the first thought that came to him, "Flow".

In Ho Chi Minh City, Roland met a Vietnamese pop star named Carol. She took him to some V.N. pop concerts and introduced him to " the music scene". One of the places she brought him was a club called Apocalypse Now. The owner of the club, Zip, is a true believer in Rock&Roll and agreed with Roland's vision of putting on a Rock show with a good western band. He offered his help in realizing the vision, whenever Roland was ready.

Back in Los Angeles, Peter had been playing in Rick and Andy's band since his arrival in the spring of '94. They spent two years performing electric and acoustic shows, collabotating on projects with other local artists, writing, and recording. They made another demo in '95-'96, seven new songs, which Peter sent to his brother Roland in Bangkok. Peter told Roland that the thing he loved about the songs was how they flowed. There was even a song called "Flow". Andy Kept a bag of Runes, which are little flat stones with Celtic symbols on them, sort of like Tarot cards. Peter told Roland that for weeks he kept pulling the rune for "Flow" out of the bag, and that the word "Flow" kept appearing in random places. Dr. Carl Jung called this "Synchronicity". Theres books on it.

Sometime in 1996, Roland met a man at Reuang Peung named Stephan. Stephan was an Austrian who lived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He was building his own TV station there, which was going to feature Cambodias first Entertainment Channel. Roland told Stephan his vision of bringing a western Rock band to V.N. to play a concert, and Stephan suggested he include Cambodia, since they never get the opportunity to see live Rock&Roll, and he needed things to put on his entertainment channel. This was all the convincing Roland needed. He had the drummer, now he just needed a bass player and a singer, and he'd have his band.

On Christmas of 1996, he called his brother Peter. He explained the opportunity, and asked if he might be interested in playing the bass on this venture. As it so happened, Peter's band was on "haitus" at the moment, while everyone worked on projects with other people. So he'd think it over. Andy had plenty of projects to keep him busy. Rick had just finished a recording project with some friends and had ( for the first time) absolutely no commitments at all. So he thought about it (for about a minute,) and then asked if he could come too.

Peter emailed to Roland and told him that he decided to come and that he was bringing a singer with him......... Rick, who wanted to be the singer in the band. Finally, all the peices had flowed together. Roland contacted Zip in V.N and Stephan in Cambodia and told them to begin proceeding with "the plan". In March/April 1997 Peter and Rick arrived in Bangkok. Roland brought them to Reuang Peung for the jam session, and to meet Mitr.

And There Was Flow

Thats the whole story, more or less the truth as we see it ( with a few liberties taken, but little exaggeration), of where Flow comes from and how they came to be. Of course, the Flow story does not end at their first meeting at Reuang Peung. But thats another story....