User Profile

Name: Drew McConnell
Age: 29
Sexuality: Bisexual
Job: Ethics teacher

Brief history
Drew was born in Ireland, spent much of his childhood in Spain, and has lived in London for the past eight years, and this multi-national background shaped much of who he is today. Being from a well to do, supportive family, he attended public school as a child then went on to complete a bass degree at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance. Almost immediately out of school, he joined Peter Doherty's Libertines-spinoff band, Babyshambles, and has been there since. Over the years, he's also been involved in a number of other bands including Elviss, Phoenix Drive, Helsinki, and lately Mongrel, but next to Helsinki, his solo project, Babyshambles always remained closest to his heart... which was probably why it was so very hard for him to leave.
They'd always been a rather shambolic band and it had been very hard for him and the others to deal with the tabloid circus that surrounded Peter, but there was a shared sense of purpose, a love for the music they were creating that held them together. Sure, Peter failed them as often as not in the early days, but as he'd gotten cleaner, those missed performances grew less and less frequent, and Drew really believed everything was on the up.
Then the call came - despite all the headway they'd made, Peter was going back to prison. Drew and the others threw themselves into their various side projects and Drew found himself getting more and more involved in the day to day organisation of Love Music Hate Racism and the workings of his two current side projects, Helsinki and Mongrel, but Peter's incarceration was a cloud hanging over him. If this could happen when Peter was finally making a real effort to stay clean, what might happen in the future if he gave up again? Still, he and the others remained loyal, waiting out Peter's shortened sentence and holding celebratory gigs when he was released, and for a while, it seemed like things really were getting better. They were playing some of the best shows of their career despite as few practices as ever and their last album while not a very impressive seller was at least much better received critically than their first effort, and it really looked like Babyshambles were finally getting serious and starting to live up to their potential.
Until Peter started missing gigs again.
At first, it was a solo show here, a little night there, all the absences seemingly easily explained away and soon not even the band knew which stories of stalled trains and lying booking agents were true, but slowly it became clearer and clearer that Peter was falling back into his old habits again. The most frustrating part for his bandmates was that this time, he didn't seem to have even the excuse of his drug habit to hide behind - he was missing gigs and disappointing fans just because he didn't feel like getting up in time for a plane or catching a cab across town. The final straw that broke the camel's back was when he, Adam, and Mik were forced to stand up at Frequency and tell an anxious crowd that Peter wasn't there, that he'd missed his flight again. Drew looked out over the disappointed faces and decided he'd had enough of Peter's jerking everyone around. He would always be there for his mate, but he wasn't going to let him continue hurting the rest of the band and their fans that way. He called Peter and explained all this to him, sticking firmly to his decision despite the other's pleading but promising, as always, that once Peter got his act together and left this childish behaviour behind, Drew would be the first to welcome him back with open arms.
After he rung off with Peter, he dialled Carl and explained to their mutual friend what had happened. Carl suggested he come over for a drink - he wasn't strictly supposed to have any what with the recent surgery and all, but he could be there for Drew and listen in a way no one who hadn't been there could, and Drew took him up on the offer. Many drinks and the whole story later saw Carl suggesting that perhaps what Drew needed was to get away from everything for a bit. He'd heard rumour of a school over in America which was hiring musicians for all sorts of positions and he suggested Drew look into it. After all, Hawaii was practically on the other side of the world and surely a school had to be calmer than this...




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