COEUR d'ALENE - With a common passion for music and fast forward the clock 10 years the Coeur d'Alene-based punk rock group Scatterbox is ready to return to the stage.

Scott Rozell, Tom and Ryan White, Justin Smith and Mark Cogburn comprise the band today. Rozell plays the drums, Tom is the vocalist, Ryan plays bass and Justin and Mark each play the guitar. The band formed in 2000 and has produced six albums to date and in conjunction with its 10-year reunion, is in the pre-production stage of a seventh album, which the band said should be released later this year.

When the name of the band was being created Rozell said the name was something that everyone settled on and it just seemed to work. He said after about a week of trying to come up with a name, Dan Stamper, the band's original guitarist, said something in a sentence that had nothing to do with anything that was band related.

"When we heard the word "Scatterbox," we all kind of stopped and looked at each other and said "hey!," Rozell said. "From there, it was locked in as our name."

The band today lives a fine line between their music and personal endeavors but finds the time to balance both.

Both Tom and Ryan White graduated from Coeur d'Alene High School. Tom, a 1997 grad, works in the auto body industry for a rare classic car restoration company. He is married with a daughter and has served in the Marines. Ryan, a grad from 2000, is married and has a son and works for a national beverage distribution corporation as a training and operations expert.

Cogburn graduated from high school in 1999 in Los Angeles and works in contractor sales for a local company. He is married. Rozell graduated from CHS in 2000 and is completing a degree in psychology from NIC. Today he owns Blackhouse Records, an independent record company, which Scatterbox is promoted at, and he is a supervisor for the third largest cellular telephone company in the U.S. He has a daughter on the way. Smith is a Post Falls High graduate of 1999 and is the head of marketing and promotions for Blackhouse Records. Smith is married.

"We've seen a lot and we've withstood the test of time," Rozell said. We've seen the good and the bad, but in the end it has been a lot of fun."

Ten years of memories have overlapped and become part of the collective history of Scatterbox. The band said they have many recollections of past concerts, pranks on band members and the joys of just being together on stage and traveling. From a $400 brown van bought to no showers for days at a time, the band has paid their dues all for the love of creating music. One early experience while on tour may cause most people to stop in their pursuit of following a passion, but not these guys.

"Sometimes to promote it's really difficult to talk the band up in a big way to get the chance to prove ourselves since we were just starting out as a band," Rozell said with a smile. "It's been tough for a band from Idaho to get established and the music had to get out, so we had to spend a lot of time polishing our preskits when we were a young band."

During its first nationwide tour the band was scheduled to perform at an indoor skate park in Reno, Nev., which could seat a few hundred people.

When the band arrived they said there was no public address system and no advertising done by the park to help promote the event. On the tour, Scatterbox was joined by the Sadie Hawkins Rejects band based out of Seattle.

Rozell said they were relying on guarantees from the park's ownership for money to help them move on to the next city but with this situation, annoyance was felt by all band members. He added that Ryan slammed a door after walking out during arguments over money and being lied to, and the owner of the park, which they described as a meth addict, pulled a gun and followed the band out.

"Ryan walked out of the building and we were telling the other band members to be cool," Rozell said. The next thing we knew the owner of the park had a gun in sight."

No one was hurt in the ordeal, but talk about a hair-raising experience for a group of young men who just wanted to perform music.

In their touring through the years, Scatterbox has been to Portland, Las Vegas and as far east as Chicago, and while traveling comes with the territory of any musician the band members said they saw it as just another opportunity to embrace each other's company.

"Our trips I saw as time away from life's daily routines and going away on vacation with my friends," Scott said.

Scott, Tom and Ryan, the remaining original members since the beginning, lit up as they agreed on one particular song that happens to be most rewarding for them to play.

"When we play "Crop Duster" live, it rolls into rhythm and it's fast and complicated," Rozell said. "It's takes great effort to get the right movements."

"When you perform there are certain songs after a while that you sometimes get tired of performing," Tom said. "Crop Duster" is not one of those."

When the band first started they said they'd meet at Scott's sister's house (Scott lived in her basement) and use her living room for practices since she worked night shifts in Spokane. They practiced five days a week between five to nine hours a session. Sometimes the neighbors complained about the noise so police occasionally would be called to check things out.

Rozell said police would check in and let them know about the noise, but they were never fined for noise disturbances. To solve this problem, Ryan bought sound-deadening fiberboard to cut down the noise for the neighbors. He said Ryan worked at Home Depot at the time and so he was able to use his employee discounts to buy those materials.

The band's purpose in forming was the genre of punk music that influenced them to pursue an interest to play.

"When we started we followed the traditional pattern of punk but found our own style that fits us," Tom said. "I think most bands fail because they are wanting to chase a dream and so they will get together with three or four bands and make demos that in the end may sound good but for all the wrong reasons."

Scatterbox has seen members come and go through the years, but Smith's addition as guitarist and lyric writer has brought a renowned sense of energy to the band.

"Justin's writing is the best I've had to work with in a long time, it's reinvigorated me," Tom said."

"The writing and the energy has led for all of us to step up our game," Ryan said.

Justin said he's played guitar and bass in previous bands before including Linus and Call Me Renegade, but said Scatterbox just feels different to him.

"I set a goal for myself that if I did not find happiness in a band by the age of 30 then I would quit," I'm 29 now, and I feel like I have completed a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Scatterbox's took a hiatus in 2009 to focus on personal matters not related to music. Today, relationships, parenthood and jobs are daily demands, which may take time away from their music, but the band members agreed this is a balance that works for them.

"There is no way I could handle the full time life of a band from performing to marketing and traveling," Tom said. "I never thought of this as a career path."

Tom's life most recently changed in the past two years as he got married and became a father for the first time, but he said just like the other members of the band he feels the brotherhood they share as a group, which helped them find their way back to their music roots.

"I'm with four other friends in a band and that's better than any recognition I could ever dream of," Tom said. "We are a brotherhood and we have fun together while making music."

The band said they agreed that when the time came to return to the group they were unsure how much the time away would affect their rhythm.

"For the first month I was really worried about how I'd perform after being away from the group for so long," Scott said. Ryan echoed Scott's sentiments and said that while everyone felt rusty at first, the muscle memory you develop by playing music for so long eventually comes back.

The band has produced and written 72 original songs since 2000 and the seventh album, which debuts later this year, will have 15 songs.

The newest album is going through the process of lyric writing. Details regarding songs, the title of the album and recording locations are yet to be determined.

Rozell said Smith's cat, Fatty, will have a song named after her in the album being released this year.

Scatterbox will perform a 10-year reunion concert on Friday, May 27 at 8 p.m. at the Silver Fox, formerly known as the D'Mouse Trap. The Sliver Fox is at 628 W. Appleway Ave. in Coeur d'Alene. Tickets are $5 at the door. Doors will open at 8 p.m. and the music will start around 9 p.m.

Rozell and White said that this event will be exciting and they plan to have some surprises for fans in attendance.

"We've gotten the thumbs up on special guests who plan to attend, except for one who is still in the air," Rozell said.

A second event was planned for Saturday, May 28, at the A Club in Spokane, but due to logistical reasons the event was canceled, but the band said they expect to have a concert at the Club sometime in August.

For fans interested in buying Scatterbox's previous albums, digital downloads are available on Blackhouse Records Web site for $1 through the month of May only.

For information on Scatterbox, including photos visit Blackhouse Records at http://www.blackhouserecordsinc.com or MySpace http://www.myspace.com/scatterbox.

To check out music clips of Scatterbox, visit YouTube at http://www.YouTube.com and search by typing in Scatterbox.