📄 Stan
Filed by L. Wren
Entry #006 — Taken from club flyers, afterparty footage, tour journals, and the wreckage left in his wake.
Stan was not supposed to be permanent.
He was supposed to be a fill-in, a hired hand, a temporary chord to hold us over during a weird stretch when things got quiet in all the wrong places.
But nothing with Stan ever stays temporary.
He came from a band that burned out before it broke through — Bad Roof.
You’ve probably heard of them. Or at least their frontman, Jace Hollow. If you’ve ever stood near the wall in Graveline Park, you’ve seen the name.
Stan carried that kind of shadow with him.
🎸 Role in Downvent
- Live guitarist during the second album tour (summer ‘94)
- Took over guitar duties from Dirk during a stretch where public playing wasn’t on the table
- Brought presence, distortion, and edge to Downvent’s live shows
- Did not play on the studio recording of the album — but it didn’t seem to matter to the fans
- Stayed through the label era, for better and for worse
💭 Personal Notes
Stan never asked to join the band. He just started showing up — rehearsals, soundchecks, hotel lobbies.
He had stories Dirk couldn’t stop listening to, gear we couldn’t afford, and a kind of broken charisma that felt more like foreshadowing than charm.
Dylan was still around when Stan came in. It made things tense, but somehow it worked — for a while.
Stan brought a kind of velocity we weren’t ready for.
He wasn’t the reason things fell apart. But he wasn’t not the reason either.
There’s a kind of gravity to Stan. He pulls things in — attention, trouble, people — and doesn’t always know what to do with them after.
🕯️ Notes on Legacy
Some fans say the band got tighter when he joined. Some say it lost its heart.
Stan himself once said:
“Bands don’t get better. They just get louder and more expensive.”
He might’ve been right. That doesn’t mean I forgive him.
“If the song hurts, play it mean. If it doesn’t hurt, you’re lying.”
— Stan, backstage, bottle in hand, tuning down mid-sentence