David Hodges is a legendary songwriter. He was 1/3rd of Evanescence, and departed just after he completed the debut album, which is why you don’t see him rocking the keyboard in the Bring Me To Life video. But look at the song credits—for any song on Fallen— and you see his name next to Amy Lee and Ben Moody.
Anyway… More on him later.
Trading Yesterday was the band he formed after he left Evanescence, and their album The Beauty & The Tragedy had a polished-yet-demo-like quality to it. It was a mellower sound, but very melodic and enjoyable.
It was also captivating for a small but devoted group of fans, so much so that it had a cult following, in the form of an online forum.
Back then, communities were basically different forums you subscribed to. This was the one I made friends from all over the world that I connected emotionally and musically, through David’s new and old songs. halfway2anywhere, Katie, lyradi, blackvulture, aalez, et. al. were always there; we bonded over music, and we talked about life and growing up.
I learned some of my other favourite bands from them. One of them taught me how to make my favourite cocktail shot. We geeked out over our signed CDs, we freaked out when the band pulled a copyright-related April Fools joke.
After fraying relationships with their label over the release of their second album More Than This, which had newer versions of roughly 3/4th of the songs on the old album and +/- a few other songs, the album was first leaked, and a few years later the band self-released it.
Shattered ended up being the closing song of the album. During the years it was leak-only, I had put the whole album on Box, and the statistics had shown that Shattered was the most popular song in the album—by a margin. People were taking the time to comment on it, even!
David himself was so proud of the song that, he started a Shattered Challenge after the album was released—pay $0.99 for the song, and if you don’t like it, he’d pay you back. A lot of people bought it, and as far as I know, no one asked for their money back.
More Than This was brilliant. But it never got the attention David wanted for it. So the band changed. The forum changed with it.
And one day, the community wasn’t there anymore.