A Brief History
Toxic Narcotic formed out of Boston, MA in the summer of 1989 as a three piece with Bill Damon on bass and vocals, Will Sullivan on guitar and vocals, and Kevin Barnello on drums. This line up released several records and toured the USA several times in the early nineties. In 1996 Kevin left the band to pursue other musical interests. Long time roadie and close friend, Sam Jodrey took over on the skins. Around the same time Bill took over lead vocals and passed on the bass duties to our close friend Joe Rizzi. Joe was a very talented musician and was living on our couch at the time. This line up only lasted for a year or so but we achieved a lot in that period of time unfortunately no recordings exist of that line up. For some reason the last few records were recorded when we were looking for a new bass player. That’s why Bill ends up playing bass on most of the records. In the summer of 1997 Joe Rizzi moved to Seattle and long time friend Ben Upton joined Toxic Narcotic as our bass player. Ben is a very talented musician and is proficient with several instruments including bagpipes and accordion. Ben and Will began playing a lot of Irish session music and soon enough it was incorporated with Toxic Narcotic. This lineup toured steadily until 2000 when Ben decided he needed to move on! Eventually the current line-up was reached with Seager Tennis on Bass. This is musically the tightest line-up to date for Toxic Narcotic and we have no intention of stopping anytime soon! Sorry!
