After Collins Gate disbanded, the two Jeffs and Joyce started the Vic Daniels Quartet, aiming at a simpler all-acoustic vibe which suited the style they were gravitating towards. Kent was determined to push things farther towards a Prog-Pop sensibilities and maybe a little unnaturally obsessed with Peter Gabriel at that moment in time.

Kent was determined to get an album out of this project as quickly as possible after so many ‘almost finished’ moments with Collins Gate. A bunch of the writing was done during and awful bout with the flu that had him pretty much bedridden for almost two weeks even though at this point there was nobody else on-board. These are all rough instrumental sketches, some of which turned into actual songs, some that never got beyond this phase.

Running ads in the local arts mag, he was eventually joined by what started out as a rather odd rotating door of personnel. In the end though, this new entity consisted of Kent on guitars and synth programming, Connie Hymer on vocals, Duglus Alun on bass and Jeff Koehnke on drums. Trying to come up with a band name, he had been listening a lot to the Cure’s ‘best-of’ album “Staring at the Sea”, and that name kept coming back at him. He suggested it to the band and everyone dug it, so it stuck.

They only ended up playing a few gigs, schedules were in constant conflict, and rehearsal space was limited to Kent’s garage, which was less than ideal. Still, they forged ahead and began recording, and in the fall of 2001 “Small Moves” was released. There are some gems on this album, but it was definitely a little over ambitious and some things were allowed to slide in the mix that probably should have been fixed, but the band was generally pleased with their DIY effort.

After the album was released, a few more gigs were had, but not much traction was made, Dug moved north and the band kind of fizzled. Kent had been talking with a friend, Matt Brauer about maybe joining the band, and that turned slowly into a new incarnation of Staring at the Sea, this time with Lauren Palmier Peters on vocals, Jason Peters on keys, Chuck Morgan on kit and Linda Cress on percussion.

They knocked out a handful of killer little tunes, really refining the ‘prog-pop’ vibe they were going for. In many ways, it was a little too late, as almost everyone in the band found themselves in the midst of some variety of life taking control and they never even finished the first album, but did manage to record a couple of the tunes.