[v1.0 -- September 2000-Spring 2002]
Lowfive emerged from the cocoon that is "a semester away at college", which the punk trio No Conform (Gabe Lane, Charles Long, and Matthew Deprez) entered in the fall of 2000. Reuniting after the months apart, the members' individual musical tastes had grown to the point where they started over again from the ground up. With all three members transferring to the same college - a private school in rural New Brunswick, Canada, the band started writing material with a melodic, less spastic, rock sound, influenced early on by (good) Weezer and Texas ska/rock combo The Impossibles.

Recording their first demo in the spring of 2001, the band took to the road, as is the only option in northern Maine. Playing mostly across the border, the band built a small following in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The band continued to mature, and by the end of the summer, material for their debut album was starting to emerge. That fall was spent finetuning several songs, and writing several new pieces as the band attended school, and played some local shows and band battles in the area. Returning home for the winter months, the band, along with myself (their manager and soundtech at the time), set up camp in Gabe's basement to lay down the majority of what would become "The Paths That Lead You Home" - a studio project evolving the band's sound from 3-piece power pop to a full-band progressive rock album, complete with layered guitars, acoustic guitars, and piano. Several songs were essentially constructed in the project studio as a joint production between Gabe and myself. Following a month's work, the band once again parted ways, as Gabe returned to the midwest. This put the band on another beneficial hiatus, as each member evolved as a musician, and Gabe prepped new material for the upcoming summer. I holed up in Boston once again with the raw tracks and a vision of things to come. continue...