~ The Early Days ~
To this day, many
people ask me, “so just how did you end up out on the road?” That’s an interesting story in and of itself;
so improbable that I never saw it coming.
There are days when I now sit at a conference table taking meetings for
my employer and I find myself pining for those days on the road. Someone once said that it’s easy to look
backward and connect the dots, but you can never connect the dots going
forward. I would not have predicted that
I would spend time in the music business, nor could I have then predicted that
I would now spend time in my current occupation. My youth was a pretty unassuming time of life
in a small town at the edge of nothing in particular. I never had stars in my eyes, nor was I even
involved in music, other than the early trombone lessons, which I hated. I was not a musician, never really could
play, and hated the discipline of practice – after all, there was a great, vast
world outdoors that was just going to waste while I sat and did oompah lessons.
I went through an
early phase of life where I wanted to be a forester, and another phase where I
just didn’t know what I wanted to do. At
an early age, I began to show an interest in electronics, then in sound. My pastor taught me to mix and, at age 13, I
began mixing sound. As high school
progressed and my oldest brother went off to become an engineer, I became
convinced that I wanted to do nothing except being an engineer. I had a love of all things electrical and
when the first precursor to the PC came along, I was completely taken with the
creative aspects of programming as well.
I studied hard in college, spending my first two years at a liberal arts
school but soaking up all the math and science that they had to offer. After two years, I transferred to a
well-known engineering school and discovered that, while I usually enjoyed the
subjects, I really didn’t want to spend my life with other engineers. It just seemed that there must be more to
life than punching numbers, optimizing the head of a pin, and keeping a
complete focus on optimizing things that seemed perfectly acceptable already. “What to do”, I thought … I really had no
other plan for anything that I would like better, so I decided to finish my engineering
degree and see what would happen after that.
I pressed on with it, even interviewing for engineering jobs during my
senior year; I turned down each and every one of those jobs and still had no
plan for the future.
Spring Break came
along that senior year and I headed off to Richmond, VA
to visit my oldest brother. On Sunday,
we picked a church out of the yellow pages and visited for the morning. Partway through the service, a bunch of
long-haired dudes filed in and sat down on the pew beside me. I was pretty shy and didn’t really strike up
conversations too easily in those days, so I was a bit taken aback when the guy
next to me introduced himself at the end of the service. “Heyah, ahm Wahyne”, he drawled. I introduced myself and we got into
conversation. It turned out that the
dudes were a band out of Atlanta and were there to play for a youth service at
the church that night. Wayne explained
that they were late that morning as they were in their hotel room, praying that
God would send them a sound man since they were about to leave on tour opening
for Joe English (former drummer for Paul McCartney & Wings). I was silent for a moment, then told Wayne that
I had mixed sound for years (local acts and church, then working shows and
managing the sound systems for the College Union Board). He said “Wow, dude. Whatcher doin’ now?” I explained that I was about to graduate from
college with a degree in electrical engineering. “Wowee, man!
You went to college? And
engineers … can you, like, fix stuff?”
“Yup”, I replied. After a time of
more conversation, Wayne
introduced me to the rest of the band, who were way too cool to be bothered
with a clean-cut geeky-looking guy, but they encouraged me to come out to the
show that night and see what I thought.
I did so, and eventually ended up, after exchanges of phone numbers,
with an invitation to go to Florida
with them to audition for a job. Two
weeks before graduation saw me on the beach of Panama City,
FL, trying to study for my linear algebra exam, but really more interested in
hanging out with my strange, new friends.
They were unlike anyone that I had met in my life, and to me it was a
whole new culture. To cut the story a
bit shorter, I ended up on the road with Sacred Fire, doing my first gig in
Waco Texas, opening for Joe English on the night that my classmates were all walking
across the graduation platform. I got my
degree, but never did take those engineering jobs.
Life with Sacred Fire
was tough; not so much physically as I was used to hard work, but I was
originally the “odd man out” in many more ways that I had anticipated. I had never lived on my own, had never had a full-time
job, knew no one in Atlanta (except the band), and just plain experienced culture
shock at having been dropped into the deep south with a bunch of crazy dudes. They had absolutely no concept of college or
the rest of the world from whence I had come.
My humor didn’t mesh with theirs as I had grown up with no television,
and just didn’t get most of their references to popular figures, themes or even
their quick-wittedness. I was an
outsider, short-haired college kid, with nothing in common with them. Wayne
became a great friend to me and a supporter in whom I was able to confide. He was kind, sympathetic, and helped me to
survive those early days.
There was a whole
culture of food that I didn’t even know existed. My mom was a “health food healthy” and we
never ate out except once a year, when we were on vacation and would have the
one restaurant meal that week. I barely
even knew what a McDonalds served, and could definitely not have named the
endless litany of fast food restaurants.
Couple that with the fact that I didn’t even have two dimes to rub
together, had no car, no home and no possessions and I was one lonely, left-out
guy. Wayne taught me the essentials of eating on a
budget. For example, do you put sugar,
or butter, salt & pepper on your grits (what is a grit, anyway)? I was very thankful that my good friend,
Tina, had sent me a huge box of home-made granola, else I might have starved in
those days. Wayne taught me important things in life,
like the concept of finding a good “all you can eat joint” and eating a huge
meal at least once a week. I can’t
recall the name of the place we used to go in that Atlanta suburb, but they lost so much money
every time I showed up. To this day, I’m
still thankful for Wayne,
my bud!
When the initial Joe
English tour ended, I had no place to live in Atlanta, and about the time that
we were winging our way back to Atlanta, I began wondering how that would all
work out. I eventually expressed those
concerns and got some blank looks from the guys – they hadn’t much thought about
it, and while most of them lived in one apartment together, it was already so
crowded, not only with them, but with wives and kids, that there was no room
for me. The guitar player had his own
place and was also married. I was
eventually invited to live in the back of their equipment truck in the parking
lot of the apartment. I gratefully
accepted and while they headed off to the apartment for the night, I pulled up
the back door of the truck and climbed in.
It was big enough for me, and I did get a sterno stove to cook on; it
was a bit hot in Atlanta
that June, but I got used to it. Most of
my meals were purchased from the local “quick rip” gas station, where I could
also use the rest room and give myself a quick bath (in the sink). Wayne
came to me one day and said, “dude, you just can’t do this anymore!” He invited me to move in to the floor of his
room in the apartment. Wayne to the rescue again!
The band were a nice
bunch of guys – they were very supportive of me, but I never did understand
some of the things they did, like spending the day watching MTV. I just didn’t click with that life in many
ways. I longed for the serene outdoors
with hills, mountains and a long trail to hike or a tent to sleep in. It was so bizarre for me to end up as I did; a
complete misfit in this world of sound, lights, trucks and the music biz. I worked hard on the road and pulled my load
like a team of mules. I didn’t always know
which way pull load in those early days, so it was a good thing that not one of
us in the band was making a cent. We
simply used the proceeds to pay for the PA, the truck and our myriads of travel
expenses. There was never any money left
over after we got back from a gig, but it just didn’t occur to me to care in
those days. I was young, free, and I
didn’t have to open a book. Life was
good! Money? Well that did begin to be a bit of a
problem. Eventually I figured out that
there was this thing called rent. And
that it was due every month. And that
one really did need a car in old Hotlanta – it was a convenience that was tough
to do without. Wayne again rescued me in this regard. He was kind enough to help me sign up with
“Personnel Pool” when we were off the road.
Skills? Well, they just didn’t
seem to believe me when I said I could design computers and other systems. There weren’t very many calls for that type
of temp work. Instead, Wayne and I would
head over to “the pool” and await our names being called for some crummy piece
of work or another. It was a notch down
for me to go from a college degree and a middle-class home to being the guy
that someone would call when, for instance, they had a yard full of poison ivy
that needed pulling by hand.
Okay, I guess I never
quite got a call for poison ivy removal, but Wayne and I did get some pretty
interesting gigs. I recall being sent
out as a delivery man for a furniture rental company. They paired me up with a 300-pound worker
that would put the entire couch on his back, tell me to grab the cushions and
get the door while he just eased right up the stairs by himself. I was determined that I would work hard
though and never let his size and strength put me to shame.
Other interesting
jobs were found for us: we worked at recharging Carrera oil shocks (we would be
covered with oil from head to foot by the end of the day), restocking parts in
the Kubota warehouse, cleaning out burned houses, carting & dumping
thousands of pounds of dried ingredients for DariTech to mix up dried dessert
& frozen ice cream mixes, landscaping, and a host of other jobs that I have
since forgotten. Everywhere we went, our
hard work made us sought after. Usually
the employers would ask to get us back.
Sometimes they tried to recruit us and were often astounded to hear that
we just didn’t want their job since we were on an unpredictable schedule with
the band and couldn’t accept full-time employment. Wayne faithfully offered me the rides to
work, helped me to learn how to cash my check at whatever store would do so for
us (usually they took a percentage of the check as payment though!)
Money didn’t go very
far in those days. I barely made enough
to keep the hunger pangs away. Despite
that, I realized that I would have to find a car. A Honda, Wayne had taught me, was highly to be prized. I bought the tired old 1974 Honda Civic from
the drummer. He wasn’t using it anyway,
since the engine had blown and was sitting half in the back seat, and half in a
local machine shop where he had lacked the money to pay for the repairs. I bought it for $150, “as-is”. Another phase of my education began then:
auto mechanics. The guys were all very
good with the wrench and taught me much about working on my little Honda. I was so excited on the day when I finally
got that baby to crank up and run! I
drove it around the block with great glee, and then pulled back into the
parking lot, somewhat disappointed at the strange sounds it made. When I pulled up at the curb, one of the guys
pointed out that there was a large amount of wet stuff coming out from under my
car. Oil, as it turned out. I had made a pretty bad mistake: I had drained
out the transmission fluid, and added another 3.7 qts of oil to the engine. No wonder that little dip stick was so
wet! I was soon to discover that I had
put in so much oil that I had blown the head gasket from my newly-rebuilt
engine. Oh well, back to the
wrench. Working on that little car was
quite the job. At least I now had
something to keep me outdoors (and I was out there pretty much every day that
it wasn’t raining). I can still recall
one of those days when I was working on the exhaust manifold. On that model, the tail pipe joins the
manifold just behind the small radiator in front of the engine. I was working on trying to get it tightened
up enough to not make such racket (for the twentieth time), when my hand
slipped off the wrench (this was one-of-N times that day alone). Upon bashing my knuckles on the back side of
the radiator fins, I howled in pain and picked up that socket wrench and neatly
bashed out the head lights in the car.
Boy did that feel good! Oh well,
now I had headlights to buy too. Back to
the Personnel Pool for another gig.
The summer dragged on
that year, through many the temp job, the heat of gigs played all around the
country, and the crowded life in the old apartment. The band turned over some staff as the
drummer and keyboardist quit, going back “home” to North Carolina. We replaced them and struggled on, recording
a nice demo tape, and doing our best to make it. We took a gig as the opening act and back-up
band for Leslie Phillips (A.K.A. Sam Phillips now). My mixing matured as my hair grew longer
too. Must have been the longer hair that
helped my mixes sound more rock-n-roll.
The apartment always seemed small and I always felt like a fifth
wheel. One day I learned that my friends
from Mylon LeFevre and
Broken Heart (Kenny, Stan and Scott) had room in their apartment. If I recall correctly, they had a room
available for me to rent and I took my trusty mattress and set up on the floor,
calling it “home” for a while. I was
again an outsider, with no real connection to their scene, and rarely just hung
out with them. This was partly due to
the fact that I am not sure I can ever recall coming home to that apartment without
the living room having less than twenty strangers in it.
By this time, my
college loans were coming due and I was scared to death of not knowing how I
would repay them. I had managed to
reconnect with an old friend that was building houses in Texas. Upon contacting him, he invited me to come
and live with him and his wife and go to work with his outfit, building and
remodeling. More learning to be
had! I soon learned to be quite
proficient with having fights with the nail guns whilest skipping along the
trusses of half-built roofs. We were a
crazy bunch, but my friend, Paul, once again saved my bacon. I would never have made it in those days
without him and Donna asking me in to stay at their place. Thanks, Paul!
About the time that I
had begun to think of the road as a fading memory, I got a phone call. While working with Sacred Fire, I had met up
with Gary, who had been the sound engineer for Sacred Fire, but had gone one in
to become the production manager for Kerry Livgren’s new band, AD. AD was formed just after Kansas came apart
and consisted of Kerry, Dave Hope (the former Kansas bassist) as well as two of
the “auxiliary musicians” from Kansas (Warren Ham, and Mike Gleason), plus a
fine studio drummer, Dennis Holt. They
were by far my favorite band ever, with every bit as much talent to play live
as they had in the studio. I had admired
Kansas for
years and always found meaning, beauty and a sense of awe in Kerry’s majestic compositions.
As my friend, Gary was explaining their
touring situation, I gradually realized that I was about to be invited to go on
the road again … with AD this time. My
head spun with the news, I could barely contain myself as Gary
explained that I would need to be in Atlanta
the next morning. I was incredulous, but
said my goodbyes to Paul and Donna and packed my trusty mattress onto the roof
of my Honda Civic and headed off down I20 to boogie across the midsouth as fast
as I could go. I drove all night, broke
down in Alabama (alternator belt), had
adventure, no food, barely enough gas, and a long, sleepy drive into Atlanta. I arrived late at the recording studio where
I was to meet the band. Gary was ticked
off with me, but there were no such things as cell phones back then and I had
no money to make a long-distance call anyway.
When I first met the
band, my hands and voice where shaky and I was just about as excited as a little
kid who had met Santa Claus on the way to his bathroom. It was unbelievable that I, a short-haired
college kid would end up meeting these guys – even more unbelievable that they
knew of me and wanted me to come on the tour.
I was to become Kerry and Dave’s “guitar and keyboard tech”. Kerry discovered quickly that, while I had an
EE degree, could fix & design stuff, I still needed to be taught how to
tune his guitar. Not an auspicious
beginning for the new guitar tech, but … I made up for it with very hard
work. And, lots of truck driving, and …
lots of nights with no sleep, and … many the other sacrifice. For the first time on the road, I was paid to
do this gig: $50/night for a 12- or 14-hour work day and the privilege of
either driving the truck through the next night, or sleeping sitting up in the
front bench seat of the rig. Do the math
– it wasn’t a lucrative life! Per-diem
on the road was a new concept for me with this act. I think I was paid $10/day for food, etc – I
was delighted to discover that this happened every day on the road, with or
without a gig. I felt rich!
The year was 1985,
and they had just released their Art of the State album. The album didn’t do terribly well in the
States, but they did get a few number one hits in Puerto
Rico, of all places. We
would later head down there, but that’s the subject for another story. I rode the AD wave throughout that spring and
summer of ’85, but became increasingly concerned when I realized that there was
no real schedule of tour dates for the fall.
Eventually I think I asked Kerry about this and learned that the band
wasn’t quite sure what their direction would be. I found work with a cabinet maker named
Dieter Fust and spent time working in his shop most of the days when I wasn’t
touring.
Working for Dieter
was also a great education; I remain a woodworker to this day, but back then, I
was merely an unskilled laborer in Dieter’s shop. Dieter had been the sound man for Smokey Robinson and the Miracles,
so it seemed like there was always someone from the road stopping by. We often were commissioned to work on road
cases, speaker cabinets, etc. I recall
building a nice little birch-laminate effects rack for Kerry’s studio during
those days.
This period of time
saw a gradual rise in my status in life: when starting with the band, I spent
the first night on the floor of my friend, Wayne’s apartment (he had since
married). I rapidly sought my own address:
a post-office box in Marietta, GA. For
the living part, I found a home in a keyboard stand case in the back of a
rehearsal studio in downtown Atlanta. I
would dump out Kerry’s keyboard stands when we came off the road and lie down
in the box, which was 6’4” long and had two inches of thick foam rubber on all
sides of the case (a padded cell, basically).
I just had to be careful not to let the lid of the case lock when I got
in, but I had become fairly adept at this routine, as I had been using the case
for a bed on the road as well. While
going down the road from city to city, if I was not on driving duty, I would
get into the back of the truck and have someone else close me in. It wasn’t the most ideal situation (no
bathroom, no food or drink, and no way to communicate with the driver or
passenger), but when you are in that much sleep deprivation, it’s a very
welcome thing!
By Thanksgiving time,
I was getting pretty desperate for work and knew that it was time to make
another change. I had moved on from
being a guitar tech to becoming AD’s lighting director (more learnings), but
eventually became a pretty good LD. I
ended up with several prospects for work at that time, including DeGarmo & Key, plus
several others prospects (Mylon Lefevre, Michael W. Smith, and Amy Grant). The AD crew made somewhat of a “wholesale”
move over to D&K – Gary
went as the sound man / production manager, and I went as the lighting director
(LD), and my good college friend, Jim, whom we had recruited to take my place
as the guitar tech, all went together.
We moved to Memphis,
where I took up residence in D&K’s “rehearsal house” on Morrison St. Considering all that I had gone through in
the past year and a half, this was a complete gift to me. I was now making double my AD wages, out on a
six-month long tour (100 dates), and living in a house, not an equipment truck
or a road case! I remember sitting on
the front steps of that house on Morrison Street and just crying with joy after
moving in. It was overwhelming to be so
well taken care of.
I recall the first of
my D&K dates: Pittsburg,
PA. Somehow, I was unable to make the start of
the tour with Gary and Jim, so I was flown from Memphis
to Pittsburg
and took a cab to the theater. I arrived
as an unknown, having never met the band or the other crew members. I was up on the trusses pulling focus before
the band even knew I was there.
Unfortunately, I had forgotten my handy crescent wrench in Memphis – the
wrench with my nice little wrist strap to keep it from falling. I was partway through with the focus when the
band got into the sound check. I
continued on my job, focusing and tightening down the cans with the
wrench. About the time I was directly
over Eddie’s keyboards, my wrench got loose from me and went clattering down,
kersmack! Right on top of Eddie’s keys. He stopped playing (as did the whole band),
hauled back, squinted up at the truss, turned to someone on stage and said
“What’s his name?”, then proceeded to try hard not to laugh while yelling at
me. Again, not an auspicious beginning
to a gig; I had a proper introduction after the show, in the first truck stop
out of town.
