For the record

Two years before a violent car wreck snuffed out the band’s career—and nearly ended Brandon Young’s life—Jacques Lasseigne had been circulating regular e-mail updates among family and friends to promote The Terms, the Baton Rouge-based rock band that included his son, Scott, on drums. “Anything to increase their fan base,” Lasseigne says, sounding like the band’s biggest fan.

Though The Terms caught some local backlash from young LSU fans for recording a theme song and music video for the university, the band had weathered the criticism to sustain cross-country tours, make Billboard’s Heatseekers chart at No. 11 with Small Town Computer Crash and perform on national TV.

When tragedy struck, Lasseigne’s e-mails became necessary in ways tour info and TV schedules can’t. His role changed from an unofficial publicist to official caretaker and historian of The Terms story, and the e-mail chain he had begun years before became a rallying post for recovery.

It was 6 p.m. that Sept. 30, 2006, on a clear sundown evening in Shreveport when Lasseigne got a call from his son, who was frantic and two hours away in Monroe. The band had been in an accident, and he and his wife, Anne, needed to come quickly.

Distracted by a cell phone call, the 18-year-old driver of a Ford Escort had run a stop sign and slammed into percussionist Blake Oliver’s Toyota 4Runner, which had been carrying guitarist Clyde Hargrove and bassist Brandon Young to a gig at Sixth Street Bar. Drummer Scott Lasseigne and singer Ben Labat were a few minutes behind in another vehicle. Riding shotgun Hargrove was ejected through the windshield before the SUV flipped over on top of his body, fracturing his pelvis. As bad as Hargrove’s condition looked, Young’s was far worse. While a crowd of bystanders tended to Hargrove pinned under the car, a former cop named Gary Brooks dragged Young’s lifeless body from the back seat and began CPR. After seven minutes Young coughed slightly and was taken to nearby St. Francis Medical Center. Though he sustained three neck fractures and his right ear was almost completely ripped off, doctors were more concerned that his brain showed severe bruising. The jolt of the collision had literally rattled the organ against the interior walls of his skull. Young was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, tracheal stenosis, and third cranial nerve palsy. Hargrove and Oliver were released within a week, but Young would spend more than two months in an intensive care unit.

“I have a lasting image of Brandon’s facial expression when we pulled him out of the vehicle,” Scott Lasseigne says. “I have a child now, and I cringe thinking about how I would feel if I got a call that my son was in an accident like that.”

With the band still reeling, Labat gave an open-hearted interview to The Reveille. “I don’t want to play any more Terms songs until the five members of The Terms will be back on the stage,” he says.

In the following days Jacques Lasseigne’s band e-mails became “Brandon Updates” and his inbox flooded with words of encouragement and prayers. Hundreds of new people signed up for Lasseigne’s e-mail list as the longtime Louisiana Department of Labor regional manager kept every family member, friend and fan updated on Young’s progress. From his rehab at Methodist Rehabilitation Center in Jackson, Miss., to his return home, to his enrollment at LSU-Shreveport, Lasseigne wrote about it all.

“More and more people started telling me they liked the way I wrote, and that this is a story that needs telling,” Jacques Lasseigne says. “After getting e-mail after e-mail saying that, I decided to put together some thoughts.” Last August Lasseigne began work on E-mail Connections, a manuscript that is part band biography, part scrapbook. He hopes to have it published later this year.

He began by archiving all of his “Brandon Updates” and as many articles, reviews, interviews and band photos he could find. To fill in the gaps he has written the history of The Terms and interviewed the members for fresh quotes and stories.

“We hope fans read it, but hopefully it will reach a larger audience of people that can realize how far a person can come back from a devastating injury,” Lasseigne says.

Young certainly has progressed. He was unconscious for two weeks. Now he is studying chemistry and toughing it out through a grueling schedule of physical, occupational and speech therapies. With his left eye stationary, Young still experiences some double vision and says he has difficulty running. The effects of brain damage persist, which gives Lasseigne’s book the unique, practical purpose of helping trigger Young’s mountain of lost memories. The 24-year-old bassist recalls scant details from his recovery, much less the good times he had with the band a few years back. Watching old videos of The Terms is almost like watching another band altogether. “I try to work on my memory by getting the guys from the band and my family to remind me of past experiences,” Young says. “But not much is coming back at all it seems.”

Jacques Lasseigne keeps up with Young like he were his own son, and he sees his book-in-progress as one way to hold together the friendships formed by one of the more popular rock bands Baton Rouge had seen in recent years.

“All the guys had to work through their emotions since they were so close and did everything together before the accident,” Lasseigne says. “Then, wham, they were separated and did not have that connection.”

Oliver now lives in Austin, where he can’t help but imagine getting broadsided again at random intersections. Leaning his head back rubs his sixth and seventh vertebra together in a wave of pain. “That’s not a pleasant feeling,” he says. With Hargrove and Labat pursuing music, and Young and Lasseigne in their hometown of Shreveport, Oliver has moved from under the shadow of The Terms the most out of the five. He calls Young a walking miracle and says the band’s legacy is in good hands with Jacques Lasseigne. “He’s able to see the potential for good in any situation,” Oliver says.

As for Young, his recovery is bolstered by Lasseigne’s dedication to tell his story and by the daily support he gets at home from his mother Angela and father Jay. His challenges have been many, but his spirits remain high. Determined to retrieve pieces of the life he lost, Young spent the first half of 2007 relearning and writing the bass tablatures for all 21 Terms songs. Today he can play nearly every one from memory.

“It’s really horrible that I was having the best year of my entire life, and I can only remember very small bits and pieces of it,” Young says. “The stories I hear are still deliciously amazing, though. I think that Jacques is brilliantly awesome for this job at hand.”