Rex Garfield | Vocals
Ste Rasch | Guitar
Kristian Kristensen | Vocals, Guitar
Reno Rasmussen | Bass
Michael Brandt | Drums
Green Pitch features the ethereal yet sweetly strong vocals of Rex (that’s a girl, that Rex) Garfield and the guitar intertwinings of partner Ste Rasch. The music evokes sounds of old school Ice Cubes and the melodic tunesmithing of a Sam Beam or a Sufjan. Their record, Ace of Hearts, came out overseas last year but will be making its US splash here on Funzalo Records in 2007.
This is the story of Rex & Ste – who became Green Pitch.
Rex Garfield writes: I was born in Paris on December 24th, 1979. My mother and father had just moved there from Denmark with my three older siblings, because my father had been offered a job there as a preacher. A year after I was born he died suddenly, and my mother brought the family back to Denmark to raise us.
Since I was a child I’ve been fond of words and have spent much time writing. When I was 17, I picked up my father’s old Spanish guitar and started writing songs, but kept these to myself.
In 1998, Ste moved from a small Danish island to Copenhagen, where we met, spending our last year of high school in the same class. He played guitar with the rock band The River Phoenix, which I joined for awhile as a backup singer. Ste and I became close friends and started composing songs together, and recording our music on a four track in the “Rivers’” rehearsing room.
I was very confident and strong willed as a child, but that disappeared when I first started singing. I remember working in the rehearsing room alone, uneasy because someone might hear me. I’d wait for the bands in the other rehearsing rooms to start playing, so my voice would go unnoticed. I dreamed of performing, and often went with Ste to clubs where they had an open mic night. To Ste’s frustration, I always chickened out.
We moved in together after we graduated high school. A year later, in the summer of 2000, we went to Amsterdam with two friends. We’d been there for a couple days when we met some Norwegians who lived in an apartment on the top floor of the building. They invited us to come up for drinks, so we went.
There was a ladder in the apartment leading to the roof, and we went up there to enjoy the view. Going back down I slipped and fell. Unfortunately I landed on the bottom of the stone staircase leading to the floor below. This accident made a mess of me, the worst of which was the total damage of my spinal chord. The accident left me paralyzed from the waist down. I was hospitalized for three weeks before I was stable enough to be put on a plane back home.
Immediately I regained the will that I’d been lacking for so long. My mother told me later of statements that I made through a haze of morphine, statements that showed a sheer determination towards a life within the realm of music.
After having an operation in Denmark, I was placed in a rehab center far away from Copenhagen. I stayed there for 10 months. During that time, I started writing, once again composing songs on my father’s guitar that had been put away since Ste and I started collaborating. There was also a piano in a spare room on the floor where the laundry was done. It was away from the other patients. Here I found peace.
When I was discharged in the spring of 2001, Ste and I moved back in together in a new apartment. That summer, we went to New York, where we kissed for the first time late one night. We have been together ever since.
Back in Copenhagen, we quickly established a home recording studio. We collected the best of our old four track recordings and released an album called “The Outlet Pass.” This ensured us airplay on a Danish radio show that plays indie music. Soon we obtained a booking agency and in 2002 we reunited with Kristian Kristensen, singer of The River Phoenix, and started playing live at different venues in Copenhagen. I will never forget the rush that I felt the first time I heard the audience applaud, while Ste carried me off of the stage.
Kristian also started working with us at our home recording studio, along with drummer Michael Brandt (The River Phoenix) and multi-instrumentalist Moogie Johnson (Munck/Johnson). These recordings amounted to the album “Ace of Hearts” – soon to be available digitally and in stores March 6, 2007, on Funzalo Records.