This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (November 2012) This article's lead section may not adequately summarize key points of its contents. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. (November 2012) Monovox was an American rock band. Early history edit: Beginning in 1992, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin high school classmates Matthew Schaeffer, Matthew Kramer, Cliff Hammer, and Tony Krug (a.k.a. Anthony Shaw, now Aimee) began writing and performing songs together. Under the moniker J.J. War, the band wrote and performed original songs. In 1994 after graduating high school, Schaeffer moved to Madison, Wisconsin to study Piano Performance and Composition at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, under Professor Carrol Chilton. Kramer, the drummer, moved to Milwaukee to study film while Hammer and Krug remained in Fond du Lac. The band members all moved to Madison the following year, living together and writing songs. In 1997, they traveled to Chicago to perform in the city's annual BeatleFest. The resulting publicity brought the band to the attention of Chicago record producer Joey "The Don" Donatello, who developed the band and was responsible for their first album, Burlap and Broadcast, released in 1997. The band then relocated to Chicago to gain wider exposure in the local club scene. Big break and subsequent parting edit: In 2000, Monovox earned a $250,000 recording contract through the internet record label GarageBand.com. The highest user-rated song out of thousands of recordings submitted to the Garageband.com website, "First Time", (which was penned by Schaeffer and later lyricized by Shaw), was soon re-recorded in Sausalito, California, with Jerry Harrison as producer. This song, along with twelve additional tracks that the band would record, would become the group's first and only full length album as Monovox. Garageband dissolved with the dot-com bust of 2001, and the self-titled album was not released until much later, under the band's own "Ask A Chimp" label. In the years that followed, Schaeffer continued writing, touring, and recording songs with the band until March 2004, when Schaeffer and fellow Monovox guitarist Paulie Heenan (who had joined the group in 2001) announced that they were leaving the band to move to Manhattan, so that they might pursue music careers there. Kramer remained in Madison, working at DNA Studios as a producer. Hammer now performs with several Madison-area bands, and Shaw has occasionally and acoustically performed solo in Madison. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a BA during the spring of 2004, Shaw, (after years of suffering from Gender Identity Disorder), began the process of transitioning from male to female. She now writes, records, and lives as Aimee. Death edit: Paulie Heenan died on November 9, 2012 in Madison, Wisconsin, at the age of 30. He was shot by police during an altercation.

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