Smoke of Fire - Little Bohemia (from the Album "This Sinking Ship")

Smoke or Fire started off as a Boston band named Jericho. In the spring of 2000, I was briefly dating this straight-edge girl and she took me to a Piebald show at Bill's Bar. I wasn't into Piebald, but Jericho and Hot Rod Circuit were 2 of the other bands on the bill and it was the first time I saw or heard either band. Fell in love with both. Jericho was (and I guess still is, since they moved back...) my favorite band in Boston.

By 2003, my band (Sometimes She Burns) had played a few shows with Jericho. I booked them to play this club in Somerville, the Pond I believe it was called. We added their friends in Boxingwater, and Salacious Crumb who we had done many shows with. The promoter added some shitty cow-punk band as well. I made them play first and they were not happy with me.

All in all, only about 40 people showed up to the show. The promoter was not happy. We didn't care. We ended up getting shitfaced with the Jericho and Boxingwater guys...mostly AFTER we played...by the time they both went on, they were hammered. Jericho were the last band to play and were so sloppy, but so awesome. I yelled in my drunken stupor "PLAY LITTLE BOHEMIA" at them. Joe, the singer, looked at me slightly confused, and eventually the band played it for me.

After the show, we had some more drinks with Joe and he asked me "Where did you ever hear Little Bohemia?". It wasn't on their album, and I had never heard them play this song live. I told him "there's a live MP3 of it on your website". He looked at me confused and said "Really?". And we laughed.

I really fell in love with that song though. Just a sweet song about drinking with your friends and listening to rock tunes. It's simply perfect.

I was very, very happy when they finally included a studio version of the song on last year's Fat Wreck Chords release "This Sinking Ship".

download "Little Bohemia"