CRACK + SOBRIETY = SONG FODDER

Year Long Disaster guitarist Daniel Davies and bassist Rich Mullins met while buying a bottle of vodka at a Los Angeles grocery store and, for a while, their relationship went south from there. The new friends began drinking and smoking crack together, moved into a one-room apartment in Laurel Canyon and entered rehab, before finding themselves writing in a MusiCares Foundation halfway house. "You have to relearn everything when you get clean," Mullins says. "The reality is that by getting clean you are changing your whole personality." Eventually, Mullins and Davis figured out how to channel their troubled past into a series of blues-based compositions and formed the hard-rock outfit Year Long Disaster with Third Eye Blind drummer Brad Hargreaves. The trio quickly hit the road, entered the studio and released its self-titled debut this past fall. "There is this romantic notation that artists have to be messed up to write their best stuff," Mullins continues. "So now we are trying to tell these little stories from the perspectives we've seen over the years." www.yearlongdisaster.com