History
The roots of Cousin Fungus traces back to the summer of 1993. Thomas, Christian and Henry Stanziale were joined by their hometown friends Gary Menkes and Billy Zwerlein and formed the Phish cover band Stash. Their first show was on June 2nd, 1993 at the Port Washington Lacrosse Alumni Game at Bar Beach in Port Washington. Weekly shows known as “Stash Wednesdays” at Bobby’s on the Boulevard in Port Washington occurred throughout the summer.
Gary decided to move to Key West, and his final show was Thanksgiving Eve 1993 (a show dubbed “Stashgiving”). Dennis Belline played one set on the keyboards, and Gary played the other set. Dennis was officially a member of Stash by Christmas time of 1993.
1994 and 1995 saw the band spread throughout the Northeast, playing venues such as The Wetlands in New York City to continually growing crowds.
Stash ventured into new territory when they played their first original song (Rejhi) at Prime Cuts in Rockville Center on October 15th, 1996. They continued integrating originals into their setlists throughout the rest of 1996.
On April 12th, 1997 Stash was playing to a packed-house at Chuck’s which is in Syracuse, NY. Much to their surprise, Jon Fishman (who is from the area) was in-house and sat in with the band for part of the second set. He sat in for Wilson, N.I.C.U., Slave to the Traffic Light, Rocky Top, Funky Bitch and Love So Sad.
A key turning point occurred during the summer of 1997. Stash was playing every Wednesday night at New York Ave in Huntington, NY. As the summer progressed, Stash began to play mostly original music with only a few Phish songs here and there. Helping with this task was Dave “Gummy” Gershfeld, who contributed poetry that the band used in a handful of their songs. It was at one of the Wednesday night shows when Shaun Mangan first saw the band and began to contribute his poems to original band compositions. To this day, Shaun still contributes his poetry and has been known to put on one hell of a light show…
The fall of 1997 saw the band switch their weekly Huntington gig to Thursday nights. In October of 1997, Stash changed their name to “St. Ash” due to the fact they played little to no Phish songs at all anymore. In March of 1998 Singer/Rhythm guitarist Billy Zwerlein left Stash, and the band re-christened itself Cousin Fungus (after that particular song, which is now known as Low Tide High) in May of 1998.
Cousin Fungus regrouped with Dennis taking over lead vocals, and they recorded their debut CD “Thoughts of a Moth” in April/May of ‘98. Thoughts of a Moth was released that September, and the band spread out through the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic to support it.
The band’s fanbase grew over the next couple of years as they continued to support the album. Fungus played a couple of raging sets in between Phish’s marathon 1999 millennium concert in Big Cypress, Florida.
Plans were under way for the band to go back into the studio in late 2000-early 2001 when Dennis Belline decided he was leaving the band to pursue other interests. The future of the band was uncertain, but not for long.
After a couple of 3-piece shows in April and May of 2001, Mike Sanchez joined Cousin Fungus on guitar and vocals on June 9th, 2001. Cousin Fungus then went on to record “Share the Air” in May/June of 2002, which was released in December of 2002.
On August 29th, 2003 Cousin Fungus welcomed the addition of keyboardist Mike Sydor. After 2 1/2 years in the band, guitarist/singer Mike Sanchez played his last show with the band on October 16th, leaving the band once again as a 4-piece. This incarnation of Cousin Fungus played its last show on December 23rd 2004.
During the summer of 2005 the original line-up got back together and played a show much to the delight of the band’s die-hard fans. Cousin Fungus is still alive and will play special announced shows!!!!!!
