Rubicon Cross

Rubicon Cross, released on 19 May 2014 by INgrooves, is the band's only album. It started in Madrid in 2003. Watching an unknown British band called Pride open for FireHouse, C.J. Snare went up to their guitarist Chris Green and asked whether he might be interested in playing on a solo record he had been thinking about. It took eleven years from there. The name came from Green's side too: his father in England used to say "you've crossed the Rubicon now," an expression Snare had never heard — Caesar taking his army across the river, the line past which there is no going back. They flipped it around, Snare said, so it would not be so obvious. Green brought the band with him: Simon Farmery on bass, Jeff Lerman on guitar, Robert Behnke on drums. It was cut at Black Dog Studios in Atlanta and Snare Bear Studios in Milwaukee, and mixed and mastered by Rick Beato. Snare deliberately sang lower here, and kept the harmonies lower than FireHouse's. His own description is the fastest one: it is not FireHouse, but if FireHouse drank a whole case of Rockstar or Red Bull and did a load of steroids, you might get something like this. The heavy "Bleed With Me" was chosen as the first single precisely to prevent anyone confusing the two. Snare called the project a baby band. Everyone else in it was a newcomer, he said, and he was the only oddball — it was like starting over. And then he added that he had the same excitement he'd had making the first FireHouse record. He was diagnosed with stage IV colorectal cancer in September 2020 and died on 5 April 2024, aged 64. This album stands as the only record of the thing he made in order to start again.