J.P. Michaels Rubicon History

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J P had just finished working with KAOS when he answered an add that was posted at East Coast Music Mall in Danbury Connecticut. The add was for a lead vocalist for a group based out of New York City. J P made the phone call and set up a meeting with Chuck Olson (Crenshaw) and his manager Robin Schwartz. The two hit it off right away. Chuck especially liked the "Steve Perry'ish" quality J P's voice. Robin was equally impressed J P's managerial and business knowledge about the music industry. They both proceeded to tell J P that "The add was old and the band didn't exist anymore", but they still wanted to try and get something going. Greg Eckler of "Rubicon" fame was working with Chuck on a new "Rubicon" project and they still where looking for new members. Greg said J PI "reminded him of Jack Blades" who was Rubicon's former bassist who went on to perform with the group Night Ranger. Chuck, Greg, and J P immediately started working together recording ideas and music without a band! It was just the three of them recording in a studio.

After exhausting musician options, Greg had enough of the mediocre auditions and gave Chuck and J P his blessing to continue with the "Rubicon" project and move it to Chuck's home state of Minnesota. There they found competent musicians to form the band while working at Prince's Paisleys Park studios as session players and engineers. One of which was a guitarist named Dave Christians recording commercial jingles. It turned out that he was no only an excellent guitar player, but he had the best voice Chuck and J P have heard in a long time. It was then decided to have a dual vocalist band with Dave carrying 2/3 of the lead vocals while J P spent time playing bass guitar and backing vocals as well as singing lead on the remainder 1/3 of the songs. This gave J P more time to spend producing music and collaborating with Chuck at the studio. After spending 2 years in MN. Rubicon headed out to California, but they did leave the drummer behind.

California turned out to be a good move for Rubicon. Not only was the weather great, (no more freezing, snowy winters) but Rubicon found their best drummer to date. His name was Jeff Murphy. Chris Simpson, a lead guitarist, also joined Rubicon and replaced Dave as lead guitarist. Between Chris and Randy Newhouse Rubicon had the guitar parts covered so Dave could concentrate strictly on his vocals. Rubicon then sought out a studio to properly record their music skills and bring Rubicon back while re-inventing itself as a progressive band.

Rubicon recorded 5 songs in California. Rubicon fell apart when the "sound" they where looking for couldn't be achieved with the members in play so Chuck and J P decided to let it go and everyone pursued other projects on their own.