Band Tales - Garysmusic.com

My first experience as a band member was with Tulane Blacktop. We were a kind of polka, country, top 40 dance band. At my first gig with them, I stared at the floor the entire evening. I was absolutely terrified to look up. The first time I tried to sing with the band, the guitar player (Don) looked at me and said: "You sing like a fag".

One of our gigs was at an Elks club. My band mates warned me about their opening ceremony and the little speech the Great Elk gives. One line in particular was their favorite. "The great heart of elkdom swells and

throbs...". Later that night, as I stood in front of about 100 people, all staring directly at the stage (There was an elks head on the wall behind us) I tried desperately to remain somber as I listened to the speech. The more I tried the worse things got. Soon I started making little snorting sounds and was pinching myself. I glanced over at Don who was in a similar condition. When the Great Elk got to the "...great heart of elkdom..." line and we both just lost it. Fortunately the Elks had a good sense of humor and were not offended.

The members of the group were Duncan (Lead Vocals and Guitar), Terry (Drums), Don (Guitar) and myself. We may not have been the best band in Kansas, but we had a lot of fun. It was a great experience for me. Click below to hear a song from Tulane Blacktop.

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One of my first gigs with the band was at a bar called Captain's Quarters. They were having a battle of the bands and we were the second or third act. The guys in the band were always keen to impress the crowd so Rusty devised a little pyrotechnic show. He placed on each end of the stage a soup can, which was nailed to a board and wired to a switch. He then filled each can about half way with gunpowder, yes gunpowder. During the song "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC, he lit the powder with his switch, which was connected to God knows what kind of electrical current, and two gigantic, pure white columns of fire rose to the ceiling and spread out like a mushroom cloud. I couldn't believe the place didn't catch on fire. I couldn't believe I didn't catch on fire. At least the audience loved it. We didn't win the battle but we probably should have been arrested.

At another gig J.D. made a trough the width of the stage out of aluminum foil. Before "Highway to Hell" he filled it with lighter fluid. During the big break that comes near the end of the song, he lit the fluid with a lighter. Unfortunately he hadn't put in enough fluid and it had pooled in the low parts of the foil trough. Instead of a rush of fire going across the stage, he got a little "camp stove" flame at one end. Not to be defeated, he simply walked along the trough with his lighter and lit the other little pockets of fluid. It was a pretty funny sight.

One time I broke a string during the set and I didn't have a replacement. I grabbed a pair of locking pliers (Vice Grips) and locked them on to the end of the string where the ball had broken. Then I re-threaded the string. It worked great although it looked odd having a pair of vice grips hanging off the end of my bass for the rest of the night.

We used to play a song by Loverboy called "Turn Me Loose". One verse in the song called for J.D. to sing a very high note. He had trouble hitting it so when we got to that verse Rusty would sing the high note while J.D. lip synched. They had it down pat and no one knew that J.D. wasn't singing the note. (J.D)...gonna pack my bags and...(Rusty)...flyyyyyyy my way...(J.D.)...or no way at all. One night Rusty had a frog in his throat and when he got to the part, his line came out sounding like Louie Armstrong, and poor J.D. was lip synching for all he was worth! I'll never forget the look he gave Rusty. Here is a clip of how it was supposed to sound.

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UPDATE: I recently got an email from Rusty. He and Dee are playing together again in a band called "Second Nature", based in Wichita/Hutchinson.

I had a great time in Showdown. I left it because I was growing tired of playing cover songs. Along came an opportunity to join another band that did all original music and I went for it.

1. They played all original material.
2. Chris was the keyboard player.
3. Pete was an awesome drummer.

This was the first time Chris and I played together in a band, (not counting high school pep band, I played tuba, Chris played bass drum) even though we spent many hours talking about and playing our own music. It was a thrill to play with two excellent musicians like Chris and Pete. Carlisle wrote, sang and played guitar on the songs. He was a very good songwriter and worked hard at his craft. He also did everything he could to promote the band in the Salina area. However, it became obvious after a while that Salina wasn't ready for Carlisle and the Solar Bow. The low point was when we played a concert in the parking lot of a Denny's on a Sunday morning. We stood facing the windows as the diners ate their Grand Slam breakfasts. We disbanded shortly after that. Click below to hear a song from our first gig.

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After the demise of Carlisle's band, Pete hooked up with a group that was just forming. He asked me if I would like to play bass with them and I agreed to. This band eventually became The Senate. These guys actually had a manager and financial backing. Gregg, who was in his early twenties and had a lot of money to burn, decided that he wanted to sink some cash into something that had the potential to make a lot of money in a short time...so he put together a rock band and became our manager. I don't know what he was thinking, but what the hell, we all have hobbies! Gregg rented a house for us to rehearse in (and for the guitar player to live in), bought a state of the art PA and light show, sunk I-don't-know-how-much money into promotion materials, and pretty much bought us anything we wanted. So there we were, a band on our way to stardom. The fly in the ointment was...we sucked.

Oh, we were good players. Pete was as awesome as ever. Ray, the guitarist, was very good too. The big problem was that none of us could sing very well. The original singer (Jeff) split before I joined. Gregg placed ads in national trade papers looking for a singer. We got a few responses and finally decided to try out a guy from Seattle who had a "Steve Perry" kind of voice. He flew from Seattle to Salina(!) at our expense to audition. From the sound of his voice we expected a traditional rock-n-roller type, but out of the airplane popped this little frumpy guy. We did the audition and he sounded pretty good. He was a little odd though. He thought we should include a line of cocaine in each of our promo packs when we send them to the agencies. He also kept wanting to show us naked pictures of his wife. He ended up staying with the band because, let's face it, we were desperate for a singer and this guy did not want to go back to Seattle. It's amazing what we would put up with just to have a singer who can hit some high notes.

We learned a couple sets of music and did a gig at a bar in Alliance, Nebraska as "Detonator". This was one scary gig. The patrons were all railroad workers, or seemed like it, and they sat in their chairs and just stared at us. After each song there would be complete silence...and the staring. I was glad to get out of there. Maybe they stared in disbelief at our lead singer, who looked and acted like he should have a martini in his hand. It didn't take us long to realize that this guy was not working out. There were also some personality conflicts between him and other members of the band. It reached a point where he would not come out of his hotel room at one of our gigs because he thought he would get beat up. We packed him and his nudie pictures off to Seattle.

Later, we found another singer named Todd. Todd was a nice guy who could sing the high notes, which, as you know, is what matters the most. He didn't have a lot of experience, but to his credit he learned all the songs and sang them reasonably well. His voice, though good, just didn't have the power and "quality" that we were looking for. About this time, Jeff, the original lead singer drifted back into the band. Although he was kind of a f**k-up, we let him back in because he had a good voice, which we needed. We changed our name to "The Senate" and went out on the road with three instrumentalists and two lead singers.

It should have been obvious to us by now that this band was headed nowhere fast. Ray and Jeff probably realized that they couldn't suck the teet of the cash cow forever, and they started taking more advantage of their situation while they could. This quickly led to the death of the Senate. Their crowning achievement occurred when we were playing a gig at the Pomp Room in Sioux Falls, SD. We were to be paid $1500 for the gig and the club manager was supposed to give the money to Pete. Somehow Ray and Jeff talked the manager into giving them the money and they blew most of it on drugs. I was paid $15.00 for the gig.

Amazon - This band was led by the husband and wife team of Brett and Susan. I originally joined Amazon as a guitar/keyboard player. I'm not sure how this happened because I'm a dyed-in-the-wool bass player. What's more, I had never played guitar or keyboards in a band. I ended up playing bass for them after all because they couldn't find another bass player in Salina. So out on the road we went with Brett on guitar, Susan on keys and lead vocals, me on bass, Rick (whom I had gone to high school with) on drums and Roger as sound man. After a couple months on the road we ran into a bass player who was interested in joining us. Her name was Janice. So Janice took the bass chair and I returned to guitar and keys. Janice was very impressive; six feet tall, long black hair, an Ibanez Black Eagle bass, killer voice, solid playing ability and tight black leather outfits. She was also a very cool person. Not only that, she came with her own sound man, Dave.

Dave was a nice, quiet guy with the heart of a lion. Here is an example of what I mean. We were playing a week long gig in Enid, Oklahoma. Rick, who was rather opinionated about how he liked his drums amplified, used to set up his own microphones the way he preferred them. Dave knew that he wasn't getting a good sound from the drums because of Rick's mic placement. During a set one night, Dave went on stage and began adjusting Rick's mics. Naturally Rick wasn't very happy about this and he started yelling at Dave. Dave just kept on making adjustments until Rick started throwing drumsticks at him. Keep in mind that we were still playing through all this. I just stared in disbelief. The last thing I saw before the end of the set was Dave giving Rick the finger and Rick cursing Dave for all he was worth. As soon as the set was over, Rick walked over to Dave at the soundboard and punched him in the nose. That was Rick's last performance with the band. We found a temporary replacement for the rest of the week and eventually snared a new drummer named Bear.

Bear was a great guy and a very good drummer. He quickly became sort of the father figure in the band. He was a very cool person. I still miss him. I believe he lives in Alaska now.

Playing rhythm guitar and keys in a rock band can get pretty boring after a while, musically speaking. I started bugging Brett to let me tackle some of the guitar solos. He was only too happy to oblige. So I started doing some of the easier solos and slowly branched out into honest-to-goodness improvisation. Here is a clip of a few of my solos. The first song was dedicated to "Mr. Carlisle" who had fired us the week before from a high paying gig at a Holiday Inn. We found ourselves in Craig, Colorado, playing in some dive. That's Bear on vocals.

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This song features Susan on vocals. I'm playing keys and butchering the guitar solo late in the song.

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