The story of the Embers began, typically enough, in a college dorm room. Yes, it’s the age-old story of two freshmen with acoustic guitars jamming together and penning bad poetry in a room that has the vague aromatic blend of dirty laundry and ramen noodle seasoning packets.

Way back in 1993, Ryan Anderson and Adam Palmer met (seriously) while waiting in line to register for their first semester at Oral Roberts University and immediately hit it off. A few jam sessions later they decided college was for suckers and that they wanted to do music for a living. “We’re putting a band together,” they’d say around campus, and other students would temporarily join in the fun in a variety of musical capacities, from bass player to drummer to singer to person-with-good-CD-collection.

During this personnel mayhem, the biggest and most swiftly-revolving door was that of the “lead singer” position. However, high school student Michelle Rutherford shut that door permanently in April 1995 when she joined the madness at the tender age of 16. Adam moved over to bass guitar after asking for one for Christmas, and the trio was set.

Then named “winnowing poets” (yes, the lower case ‘w’ and ‘p’ was on purpose – they were artists, don’t you know), the band began a whirlwind tour of Michelle’s parents’ family room, performing there at least twice a week for the next year or so. Once their craft had been honed (and they’d picked up drummer James McAlister), they began performing around their native Tulsa, often playing only for tips or just for the fun of it.

Oh yeah – during this time, Adam and Michelle fell in love and got married.

Things were on the rise for the band by late 1998. They had a cool minivan for touring, some new T-shirts they’d just printed, some new demo tapes, and a whole lot of stickers rattling around a metal lockbox. They were seeing much of the road in the Midwest, playing shows and eating at Boston Market whenever possible.

Also, Michelle was pregnant.

It soon became apparent with the impending arrival of the Palmer tot that the band was in for a lengthy hiatus. James was beginning to focus on school, Ryan was beginning to focus on finding a career, and Adam and Michelle were focusing on that wacky childbirth stuff. So Ryan and James amicably went their own way (seriously – they’re all still friends) and Adam and Michelle settled in to their 900-square-foot house to have the baby (Emma Laurel), born May 12, 1999.

About a year later, Adam and Michelle decided to crank the Embers back up, this time just the two of ‘em. They wrote some new tunes and played some coffee shops in the Tulsa area until they found out they were going to have baby #2, thus beginning hiatus #2.

Baby #2 (Noah Adam) was born August 31, 2001. The Palmer duo was still writing songs, and hit the road again in the fall of 2002, this time armed with a compact disc all their own, a good-sounding guitar with an actual pickup, and their very own PA system. The minivan was different, too, but surprisingly the same model and year as the previous one.

Hiatus #3 began in May 2003 while Michelle was pregnant with baby #3 (Dorothy Jane), who wound up being born November 1, 2003.

Shortly after the arrival of Miss Dot, as she’s affectionately known, The Embers went back into the studio and recorded their latest batch of tunes.

And that’s the end of this part of the story. You can learn more by visiting the latest and reading all the Embers news you’d ever want to know.