Ben Mendelewicz and Matthew Cutler meet, and become friends. Their first musical project together is a ska band (name unknown) where Matt plays trombone, and Ben plays drums during middle school. They aren't the only two members, but the identities of the others remain unknown. its also unknown how long the band existed for. (my estimate is about 2 years at most, based on nothing but guessing)
Matt noted that his trombone sounded very flat when talking about it. (and Ben corroborated this!) Ben said he had a giant niel peart sized kit.
Ben has recordings of the band playing, but i doubt they will ever be surfaced ) :
source 1
source 2
Ben and Matt enter highschool. while in highschool, the two discover the band Yip-Yip. Yip-Yip becomes a major influence of the duo, and the two would see Yip-Yip live an unknown amount of times, even asking the members (Brian Esser and Jason Temple) to sign merch. they would befriend Yip-Yip, more notably Brian Esser. you'll hear more about him later. (also, he helped me with some of the info on this site and with writing the macula dog wikipedia page. thank you Brian!)
around the same time, Ben and Matt join their second band: Monsters.
source 1
Ben and Matt, alongside their friend Ross Whetsone, form a band called Monsters, by 2007 at the latest. their first release seems to be a pair of demos released in 2007. they are lost, but these are the names:
their next release is a demo EP called the "Furry EP" or the "Furry Demo", with two songs that im assuming are more evolved versions of the previous demos. again, the music itself is lost, but the tracklist seems to go as follows:
Ben starts to write songs under the name Tumbleweave. its hard to say what all Tumbleweave stuff was made around this time, as the only proper evidence for Tumbleweave's existence this early is the creation of last.fm page. Tumbleweave wouldnt have any music released (to my knowledge) until the next year.
Ben writes the songs initially as soundtracks for comics he was making,