Greg Diablo, Musician/Activist

This is from a 2003 “Rise and Fight” CD EP that a band I was in at the time, the eSKPees, produced with the help of our rhythm guitarist Michael Rains’ home recording studio. Rich Paddock plays bass and vocals, Lydia-Beth Leimbach played piano, Robin Toye played drums, and Micheal sat this one out and engineered the recording.

About the band name: When the Street Karaoke Project (or SKP) broke up in 1999, we eventually reformed with a new drummer because our previous drummer didn’t want to do political content. Lydia-Beth was Rich’s girlfriend at the time, and Michael had previously played with me in the original version of Street Karaoke (when it really was on the street) in 1993-5. So we called ourselves “the eSKPees” because we still did the live karaoke as part of our ongoing “project” to bring art to the people, but we added our own content which was reflected on this CD.

Of course, this is still a cover, but we wanted to record “Wonderful World” since it had always been a feature tune for Rich in the SKP band and was quite popular locally here in Olympia. After all the first five rocking songs on the rather raucous Rise and Fight EP, this one glides in to soothe your ears, and I had a lot of fun inserting the ballad-style guitar licks against Lydia-Beth’s meditative piano.