While Donna has long been inspired by many folk
music legends, my folk music history really has only two
significant facets. One is The Kingston Trio –
partly because my oldest sister and her husband had the
first stereo I’d ever heard, and a “stereophonic”
Kingston Trio album. The music sounded happy (even if
Tom Dooley was about to hang, Charley was stuck forever
on the MTA, and I had only the vaguest notion of what
Scotch and Soda was). Who could resist those
harmonies?
The other folk music facet, during the hootenanny days,
was a folk quartet at my high school that recruited me
to sing with them. They were seniors, I was a freshman,
so after they graduated, the quartet quietly vanished.
(Hootenannies were on their way out too.) But that’s
where my love of harmony and ballads began, with Warren
Cook, Don Stapleton and Jerry Jones.
But my real love was rock and roll. One of my sisters’
boyfriends had turned me on to Little Richard when I was
still in grade school. And a really cool girl in my
fifth grade class (name gone in the mist, alas)
introduced me to Jerry Lee Lewis and Bill Haley. Then I
heard an older kid (a 6th grader?) play stand-up bass at
a school assembly. Bass. I was hooked! At the same time
my mom worked in a toy store, which adjoined a music
store where I discovered Paul Revere and the Raiders.
Not the stuff everybody knows, but the early
instrumental stuff like Beatnik Sticks. We had sock hops
at lunch time every day in Jr. High, and a rock and roll
show every night on KOOS radio. I’d listen to be the
first caller and win 45s. I had a stack of them. That
was all in Coos Bay.
I never actually heard a rock and roll band play a live
show until after I moved to the Portland area. It
started with a live show by PR&R. Then I began to
discover lots of great Northwest Rock and Roll bands,
and went to see them whenever I could. There were “big”
bands from the Seattle area, like the Fabulous Wailers
and later the Sonics. And there were Oregon bands - Mr.
Lucky and the Gamblers, The Redcoats, Moxie and many
others. Whenever I could I’d head out to a “teenage
nightclubs” like The Headless Horseman and the Tork Club
to hear these bands and watch from as close as I could
get. Standing right by the stage is where I first
developed a lifelong love of the Hammond organ/Leslie
speaker combination – a sound that can’t be duplicated
anywhere. Most of these bands are on the Pacific
Northwest Bands website (www.pnwbands.com).
So while Donna was following the escapades of The
Beatles, I was chasing Northwest hard rock. There lots
of garage bands around, and it wasn’t long before I
picked up a bass and started playing in one myself. For
a chuckle, you can see that band playing at a “teen
fair” on that website
(www.pnwbands.com/theebetterthings.html ). And though I
play a different style of music now, I still love that
old rock and roll – my roots are firmly planted there.
Somewhere along the way, Bob Dylan entered my
consciousness. Then Donovan, Gordon Lightfoot and Shawn
Phillips. I had loved poetry for as long as I could
read, so I found myself drawn to great lyrics.
(Somewhere in there, probably around the time of Rubber
Soul, I was also drawn to The Beatles, as Donna had been
for so long.) And there were great acoustic guitarists
like Leo Kottke and John Fahey. So I had parallel track
of musical interest that didn’t require drums and a wall
of Sunn amps.
Fast forward to 1987. I went to the first Portland Blues
Festival that summer, and there I took note of a
interesting gal in the audience. Later that evening,
continuing the Blues Festival, I went to a local club to
hear Seattle’s David Brewer Blues Band as I knew David
Brewer through a friend. And there in the audience was
that same interesting gal. I struck up a conversation
when I saw her talking with Brewer’s bass player – I
knew him so it was a perfect opening. As you may have
guessed, that was Donna. We began to see each other, and
it wasn’t long before she got out her old Martin and
played me some songs. She started with Donovan’s Catch
the Wind and Colours (and frankly, she had me right
there). Then she played a song I’d never heard, called
The Woman and The Man. “Great song,” I said, “who wrote
that?” She replied, “I did.” I knew in that moment that
I’d found the real thing and had better pay attention.
We were married six weeks later.
I started singing with her, then playing some bass, then
some Dobro, and the rest, as they say, is history – some
still in the making.
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