Stop The Car

STOP THE CAR was formed in 1984 in Evansville, Indiana. Over the next five years, their music (dark, goth-tinged rock and roll influenced by artists like The Cure, Black Sabbath, Siouxsie and the Banshees, X, Lords of the New Church, and The Clash) and their theatrical, high-energy live performances enjoyed considerable success on the local level, drawing large crowds to their shows at the Ross and Alhambra Theatres. During this period, STC released two self-financed cassette-only albums, 1985's "Blue Creatures" and 1988's "Secret Desire". In 1989, the band set off to Nashville, Tennessee in search of a larger audience , where they played shows with bands like Mr. Crowe's Garden (The Black Crowes), Rock City Angels, Chagall Guevara, Anastasia Screamed, and The Grinning Plowman. In 1991, personal conflicts and professional frustrations took their toll, resulting in the band's demise. Fast forward six years to Cincinnati, Ohio, where, as fate would have it, the four core band members had all moved, albeit at different times and for different reasons. A phone call between Mark and Kevin resulted in the idea of a one-off reunion gig. The show, performed in August 1997 at the Sho-Bar in Evansville, was a rousing success, reuniting the band with a couple of hundred old friends and convincing the band to stay together and give STC another shot. The show also provided the capital to begin the recording of a new, eponymously-titled album featuring re-recordings of classic STC material that the band felt had never been properly recorded or released. "Stop the Car" was released on CD in 1998. Halloween 1999 saw the release of a brand-new CD of all-new songs, "Crash", as well as limited-edition CD re-releases of earlier albums and previously unreleased material. Stop the Car disbanded once again in early 2000, although the band has reunited on four different occasions (2005, 2006, 2007, and 2019) to play shows in their old Evansville stomping grounds, and in 2012, the band recorded two songs ("Smile and Fake It" and "Screaming Dykes") for Piñata Productions' short film, "One Day Summer". Since 2008, Mark and Melissa have performed together in Magnolia Mountain, an acclaimed Roots/Americana band based in Cincinnati with four albums to their credit. After performing for a time with the successful Renaissance-era music band Teribus, Kevin has devoted his time chiefly to songwriting, recording, and online collaborations with musicians from all over the world. Vincent continues to play, write, and record music, most recently with Cincinnati hard rock band LOVECRUSH88.