The Steincast

A Brief History

Small Fry Stu was the name of the band I was in during my college days at Mizzou. We described ourselves as "acoustic happiness" — David Grothoff and me on 2 acoustic guitars, vocals, and Fender Acoustasonic amps. Occasionally, Kelly Burns (then Moore) would join us on violin and vocals, as well as Joe Cosas, now of Middle Rhythm Session fame, on bass and keys.

We mostly performed at Bambino's Italian Cafe, in painfully long, 3–hour marathon shows with a 15–minute tasty food break in the middle. Our most unique concert was a Valentine's Day show at Forum 8 Theatre, where we "opened" for a feature-length midnight film. In fact, we even have a video performance from that show of "My Little Buttercup," out of the hilarious movie, ¡Three Amigos!

The Demo

In 2001, we released a 6-track demo. It was a lot of fun to put together, but when I compare it to my 2007 solo release, I'm floored by the differences in songwriting and production. My friend Ryan Watkins recorded drums on it, and Sara Huelsing (then Talley) did the artwork. I think the cover is actually "Stu." We never released any other "formal" recordings, but have dozens of leftover, home-baked recordings. Here they are, for your listening "enjoyment." Warning: well, all I can say is that these were written 5–7 years ago.

Bills (2:46)
Cheap (2:53)
Help Yourself (2:32)
Perfect Day (3:02)
Front Porch (3:34)
Let's Cut a Deal (2:14)

The Legacy Continues

Well, that was 4 or 5 years ago. I thought the legacy that it was had certainly been forgotten by everyone. That is, until a few months ago, when I noticed that Steindom received a hit from the keywords "Small Fry Stu." I couldn't believe it, but after diving into the analytics, realized that the visit came from Virginia. I don't know anyone from Virginia that could possibly know about Small Fry Stu. When I told this to my former colleague, this was his reaction:

"I find it hilarious that a Virginian tried to find Small Fry Stu. My first reaction is to think that they have way too much free time, and need to develop a healthy hobby. But then I think that that's probably too judgmental, so I start pondering the odds of typing in 'Small Fry Stu' by mistake, or in order to search for something other than our band. Actually, I ran the numbers, and if only 4,052,555,153,018,976,267 blind monkeys were to pound at keyboards, statistically one would be sure to hit the right combination of letters (assuming the monkeys are limited to 13-character phrases, counting only letters and spaces as legitimate characters, and ignoring capitalization). This may sound improbable given the limited number of monkeys on earth. But if you consider how many monkey-like creatures are probably living on other planets all throughout the galaxy, this becomes a much more likely theory than that an intelligent being actually intended to search for us."

He's probably right. I doubt we left any lasting impression, unless it was associated with a bad experience with Italian food.

After doing a search of my own, I came up our old artist page on CoMoMusic.com. It looks like somebody wants to keep the legacy alive.

Date: December 03, 2007

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