Forgive Durden formed in 2003, with the original members including Thomas Dutton, Jesse Bauer, Matt Yang, and Andy Mannino. They self released an EP in fall of 2004, which was titled When You're Alone, You're Not Alone. In December of 2004, Yang left the band, and Thomas Hunter, a.k.a. “Big T”, joined the band in his place. Their name was most likely inspired by the movie Fight Club, specifically the character Tyler Durden.
Dutton and Mannino first met in high school. Then when Dutton began attending the University of Washington, he met Bauer who had been a friend of Hunter’s ever since second grade. After recording their EP, the band convinced Hunter, who was attending college at USC, to join the band. In December of 2004, Hunter moved up to Seattle and the band began touring full time.
When You’re Alone, You’re Not Alone was recorded in three different sessions, and only took a total of two weeks to record. At the time of the recording, the band wasn’t represented by a label so they had to pay for the recording themselves, and it was produced by Casey Bates who is most well-known for his work with Gatsby's American Dream.
After recording their EP the band tried to tour as much as possible. Touring was made hard by the fact that they were trying to book their own shows, and that they didn’t have any label support to help with promotion. While they were on tour, their van broke down, and they were stranded in Salt Lake City, with no means of being able to get themselves or their gear back home. After about a week they were able to make their way home, having learned many different things from the experience, especially that it would be hard to try and make a living making music.
The pushed on however, working with Casey Bates again, and recorded two demo songs. The band gave a copy to Bobby Darling from Gatsbys American Dream who handed the demo off to a few of his friends at record label Fueled By Ramen. By fall of 2005, Forgive Durden knew that they would be signing with Fueled By Ramen, who immediately liked the sound of their demo songs.
In January of 2005, Forgive Durden began working on their first LP, which is to be released by Fueled By Ramen on May 9, 2006. Recording took place in October of 2005 and lasted about six to seven weeks. Two of the songs from the up coming major debut album, ‘’Wonderland’’, can be found on their myspace and purevolume pages.
Line-up Thomas Dutton: vocals, guitar Jesse Bauer: bass Thomas Hunter: guitar Andy Mannino: drums
