Mary Williams: Vocals Andy Fortier: Electric Bass, Lyrics Matt Hennen: Drums
Mr. Roboto was active from March 1999 until October 2000.
Recorded December 1999, mixed in January of 2000, re-mastered in December of 2005.
Ahhh Mr. Roboto... Well it all began when I moved to Laramie, Wyoming with Mary (former wife), leaving behind my comfortable college town of Ellensburg, Washington. I had left behind my first, and interestingly enough, longest enduring band The Super Nachos. I had been writing a lot more solo-type of material on bass and had completed a few home recorded tapes for the masses (friends and family - that is) and I was increasingly getting to the point where I wanted to play that kind of music in front of people. After playing in a few short-lived bands shortly after moving to Laramie, I ran an ad and met a fine drummer named Matt Hennen who had also recently moved to Laramie from St. Paul, Minnesota to attend graduate school. Everything clicked into place musically and soon enough we had enough songs to start playing shows. At that time, I had written the vocals as well and I was doing the singing - which had always been difficult for me, but with this kind of music it was especially so. Also, when you have just bass and drums to begin with and then add my lower pitched voice... well, it all just sounds so...low. So, after a while with this line up, Matt suggested that Mary join us for fun. Mary had been in choir in high school and I knew she had a great voice, but ironically we had never really played together, apart from some guitar and bass or drums experimenting. Anyways, she did great and added a whole new dimension to the music. I was very eager to let her take over the vocal role of the band, apart from a Nomeansno cover that we did on occasion (The Tower). From this point we kept on keeping on, played shows, completed the recordings on this webpage, and wrote more songs. Eventually, both Mary and Matt completed school and it was time for everyone to go their separate ways, so Mr. Roboto ended by default.
As far as the music goes, it has a lot of dynamics going on (in terms of loud/soft and mellow/hard, etc) and it is fairly melodic, but it has more space and more of a down-tempo feel. I would say this was still a period where I was writing much more emotionally and my lust for expressing technique in my music, though everlasting, had not quite taken over my desire to make a song feel good. Also, the lyrics really meant a lot to me at the time and I had a lot of frustration built up, so inherently the music meant much more to me and it was really a means of dealing with life's not so great circumstances.
