Bass player Josh "Bear" Browning and guitarist Josh "Buck" Pearson comprised the initial lineup of Lift to Experience, along with a third friend who contributed his expertise on the drums. They met in Denton, TX, not far from the city of Dallas, while Browning was a college student at a local school. A year after forming, the group issued a self-titled EP of four tunes. Not long after, their drummer bailed out to join Mandarin, another Texas-based group, as a guitarist. To take his place, Browning and Pearson recruited Andy "The Boy" Young. The fact that their new recruit was not old enough to gain admittance to the bars and other nightspots where his bandmates liked to hang out earned the new drummer his nickname. Young, the lone non-Texan in the trio, hails from New Orleans, the son of a preacher and a piano player. Needing a change, he left his jazz studies to major in English in Denton, where he met Browning and Pearson about four weeks after his arrival. Like Young, Pearson is the son of a preacher. When he hit his teens, he took up the guitar. The first song he learned to play was "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by U2. His parents divorced when his dad's religious leanings took a new and unwelcome turn, and the elder Pearson started to believe that faith alone would provide enough support for him and his wife and their two children, and he stopped working. Pearson's mom went on to support her children as a single parent, frequently working several jobs to make up for the lack of child support. The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads, the trio's first album, was released in 2001 on the British Bella Union label. ~ Linda Seida