Every band has a document of their dissolution. For the Mojo Wire, that document is You're On Your Own.

When rock bands destroy themselves on record, it's usually a group effort. The Beatles bickered like babies on Let It Be. The Eagles slouched into the sunset on The Long Run. The Police drove each other crazy making Synchronicity. Some musical self-immolations, however, are the result of one band member's driven, monomaniacal fixation on Finishing The Project At Any Cost. Elvis Costello did it to the Attractions on Blood And Chocolate, and David Lowery did it to Camper Van Beethoven on Key Lime Pie. On a much smaller and, probably justifiably ignored scale, Keir DuBois did it to The Mojo Wire during the making of You're On Your Own, a slab of vintage indie-rock that would prove to be their final album.

With the benefit of hindsight the results were absolutely predictable, but in the summer of 2000 this didn't occur to the band when they began recording sessions for new material that had piled up during a year of Mojo Wire inactivity. Adam, Joe, Keir, and Bryn had curtailed collective music-making for the sake of jobs and school, though Bryn and Keir filled this gap with a fall '99 E.P. release called Dive from their instrumental side duo Low Tide, as well as Bryn's own all-instrumental surf album My Second Shipwreck in April '00. You're On Your Own began as a real stab at a new album, but soon devolved into an ongoing, directionless morass that was focused, at various points during 2000/2001, on new songs, live material, and remakes of older songs. Interference from the outside world slowed progress, but interest in the project among band members faded in and out too, and what was finally released (on the back of six slapdash shows that the band managed to collect themselves for) resembled more of an out-takes compilation than an actual album.

All of this was nevertheless belied by the strength of the new Mojo music. The chaotic amalgamation of blunt force that propelled the Adam/Joe/Keir/Bryn lineup translated well to tape, and with proper effort might have indeed yielded the band's best release. Everyone was writing: Adam and Bryn delved deeper into the acoustic surf-noir of Seaside Hamlet Skids, churning out songs like "Happy Birthday", "Breathe", "Blue Lantern Cove" (all by Adam), "The Sandman", "You Let Me Fall" (both by Bryn), and an untitled Adam song Keir eventually (and unofficially) dubbed "Too Much To Think". The frontman also tossed off another surf instrumental that Keir combined with his own set of narcissistic-messianic lyrics, resulting in "Water Into Wine". Keir applied some obsessive-compulsive lyrics over a blistering, guitar-dominated tune of Joe's, and ended up with the pile-driving "You're On Your Own" title track. Keir also turned in his own "One Last Hallelujah" and "Heart On A Platter" in the initial rush, and later added "Fatal Flaws" and "The Peak Of My Career" to the new pool of material. The songs were there, but actually recording them properly never seemed to be in the cards.

With great songs arriving thick and fast, Keir scrambled to get it all recorded (first on tape, then- finally- in digital format) as well as simultaneously attempting to hustle gigs for the newly-rejuvenated band. Despite the other three band members sharing an I.V. apartment, no one seemed to be in the same place at the same time very often. Keir quickly found himself under heavy self-imposed pressure to produce some sort of disc even as he was ineptly trying to gate-crash a seemingly clique-y and exclusionary local Santa Barbara scene that- mostly passively but sometimes actively- couldn't care less about the Mojo Wire. The band had to put on their own shows, and that usually meant buying two kegs and destroying the backyard of 6710 Sabado Tarde with a party. Most of these shows were taped too- a Mojo Wire first.

Their recorded efforts trickled out in the form of various demos and other errata. Joe, Keir, and Bryn's first sessions appeared in October 2000 as a single/EP for "Heart On A Platter", backed with "Water Into Wine" and "One Last Hallelujah". The takes were crude but powerful, with Keir shouting his way through Bryn's bashing drums and Joe's harsh guitar. Keen to improve upon the shambolic amateurism of Seaside, Keir and Bryn tried to make a gig demo by re-recording, among other old songs, "Run From Me", "Pisces Lullabye", "I Fly Free", "How Far Away", and "The Shivering Sand", though actually completing only the latter two. Adam dropped in to lay some vocal tracks on "Shivering Sand" and "Water Into Wine", but a heavy school and work schedule combined with apathy in the face of the increasingly frenzied pace of the DuBois brothers' recording habits often kept the erstwhile frontman out of the loop. The band even played two shows as a power trio without Adam, and though Keir's vocals didn't help much, a dynamite take of "You're On Your Own" was captured this way, as was a workmanlike pass at "Fatal Flaws".

This propensity for raw power didn't bode well for the more subtle songs written by Bryn and Adam. More band apathy seemed to scuttle Bryn's chances of entering "The Sandman" and "You Let Me Fall" into the Mojo canon (though they rightly later graced the first Honey White release), and the same went double for all of Adam's songs, except for a gorgeous Adam-only take of "Blue Lantern Cove" and the token goofy instrumental "Stuck On Chapter Nine". Joe and Keir didn't get everything either, though; a toned-down, semi-acoustic "You're On Your Own" went nowhere, as did an echo-bass driven "Peak Of My Career". The initial excitement everyone felt for each others' tunes soon dissipated into the time-worn territorial passive-aggressive behavior of disintegrating rock bands. The downhill rush was sporadically halted by two great gigs in April 2001 and another, higher profile show in June (to date, the Mojos' last), but things weren't working and everyone knew it. Keir hated that no one seemed to put in as much effort as he did, Adam hated having his heartfelt lyrics scoffed at, Bryn hated that he couldn't push his songs on the band from behind the drum kit, and sometimes it appeared Joe hated to even be seen onstage with the other three.

Desperate to promote in spite of everything, Keir hurriedly compiled nine songs into You're On Your Own, pressed a handful of copies, and shoved them at anyone who got within arms-length of him at the June 3, 2001 show. The band played their set of six songs as part of a huge bill, got offstage, and stopped doing anything Mojo-related for the rest of the summer. Bryn briefly went back to Orange County to work. Adam put his nose to the grindstone too. Joe left for 2 months' work in New York. Keir, as always, tried to keep momentum going in any direction- this time, by both taking recording lessons and by booking rehearsal space in downtown Santa Barbara. Once again, though, little happened except for about five or so practice sessions in fall '01, with the whole band present at only two of those, and the Mojo Wire lapsed into a hiatus that became permanent when Keir and Bryn formed Honey White in early 2002.

It's not difficult to get an impression of chaotic implosion from the final Mojo Wire album- almost every one of the eleven songs (two were added to the 2003 re-mastered version) oozes a wildly lurching swagger, topped with lyrics that speak in the bitter vocabulary of revenge. Like all musical epitaphs, though, the hardest lesson that this record has to teach is that of how good it could have been if the band making it had found a way to ignore every selfish hang-up and simply work together. It's a lot to ask four smart, talented, twenty-something people to do, and this time, it was too much to ask.

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