When I was fifteen, I left rock behind me to follow a path of blues guitar playing. When I was 16, I got a Tascam 424 on which I could record 4 tracks of instruments. I learned to play drums and bass. I could also halfway sing. I used to go watch a local band, Far South Movement with much jealousy around then. They were a young band who got lots of attention for playing blues and rock. I, being the gracious humble (yeah right) little bastard I was, wanted to go onstage and "cut heads" with their young guitarist. I thought their other guitarist was better... a fellow named Brian Hinton. I always complimented him on his playing and soon he recognized me at gigs. So did their drummer Eric. We were both big blues and classic rock fans, especially of Led Zeppelin.
I had been making recordings on my home studio for over two years when it started to look like I was going to form a band finally. Far South Movement drummer Eric Stroud and bassist Freddie Smith had lots of downtime in the winter of 1995. I was a 17 year old know-it-all and one of the things I knew was that Eric could play the drums. We had some banter in the music store I worked in and when Eric gave me his card (Far South Movement - Drums) I invited Eric and Freddie over to jam with Adam Browder and myself. Adam was another guitarist around my age from Birmingham, an hour away. It wouldn't really be practical for him to be in the band, but nice to jam with anyway. The next week Christmas came around and I got the guitar of my dreams; a Purple Aluminum Telecaster. I thought somebody else had bought it and taken it from the music store (i went to visit it every day) but i realized that it was none other than my parents who had bought it. Yes, I cried. I polished it and played it and polished it again. On December 27, 1995 I used that guitar for the first time to jam by myself with Eric and Freddie.
The first practice with the other Adam had been similar musically to Far South Movement. This time, I brought a few songs to learn. One song was a tune by Jimi Hendrix called "Drivin South". I explained the song to the guys and we went for it. I could feel this magic fill the room as we started to play it. We were a BAND. And suddenly I could play twice as good as normal. We were all very excited and glad that we had taped the practice. It was all instrumentals, of course since we had no singer.
We learned a 3 hour catalogue of old blues standards and rolling stones songs with the help of a friend who would sit in as a lead singer temporarily. His name was Matt Gilmore, also the lead singer of The Boogiemen. We were preparing for a gig at Club 1048 in Cloverdale (near downtown montgomery) when Eric handed a tape of us jamming to the guy at a club called Catdaddy's Ribs and Blues. He liked it. The tape was labeled "Drivin South" because that song was on there. That became our name with no objections or praise. So we got a gig at Catdaddy's and at 1048. Things went okay, but there was little difference between us and the Boogiemen. We sounded pretty much the same.
We got another gig at Catdaddy's for some Sunday night in early February with a gig the next Friday at 1048. I think the Boogiemen had a gig that sunday night and Matt couldn't do the gig. So I was there with all my little lyric sheets. I was dressed to the T and so were Eric and Freddie. As we began bashing out the opening to Drivin South, the only 3 people there left! As the night wore on and we were just 3 kids playing to the bartender, we finally got done with our set and were told that we could go if we wanted to... nobody else was there. We did get paid. How much, I don't remember. I drove home, out to the country and went to sleep around 3am, setting my alarm for 6am. I had school in the morning.
Mentally, I was bruised. My very first gig singing was accompanied by not having an audience. I should have taken it for what it was - a paid practice. All week, the three of us were worried about the 1048 gig being the same way. I wondered if singing was a good idea for me. Somebody had to do it. I may as well.
My girlfriend Ellen and I went over to Eric's apartment one night to visit. Eric pulled out his copy of Jimi Hendrix "Live at Monterey" in '67. For anybody who's never seen that, Jimi was amazing. Eric had to stop the tape a couple of times so that my heart would start beating normally again. I was completely electrified by what I'd seen. He did "Killing Floor" to start off with, and that moment changed Rock forever. Nobody had ever seen a guitarist do something like that before. I decided right then and there to do it.
That friday night at 1048, we set up and tuned up. As the place filled up, we hit the opening to Buddy Guy's "Let Me Love You Baby". I decided to immediately go wild on the guitar and the crowd at the club loved it. I got applause for my solo. From that moment on, I was bulletproof. I was as wild as I could think to be that night and it worked totally. When we did "Killing Floor", the atmosphere of the place and the vibe we were putting out made me feel like I was Jimi at Monterey. We even tried new songs, only to find that we could do no wrong. We didn't WANT to take breaks... we just wanted to jam some more. It didn't matter... i'd make up lyrics if I forgot them. I felt that I wanted to do this gig for the rest of my life. I was an invincible 17 year old with a guitar.
When the band asked me about originals (for they were now in it for the long haul), I wrote "Birmingham Song" and dug out the older blues song "She Left Me". Birmingham was actually kind of a cool Hendrix-style riff rocker. She Left Me sounded like a Buddy Guy slow blues. We gigged like crazy and prepared to record these songs so we could have a demo tape to give out and sell. The nearest good recording studio was Zero Return in Millbrook. This studio was made popular by a surf/science fiction band from Auburn called "Man...or Astroman?" do check their stuff out.
After some discussion with my older brother Patrick regarding the funding of the recording, he agreed to pay the $150 or so it would cost to do a breakneck session. We set a recording date of June 5th, 1996 and practiced Birmingham Song, She Left Me, and Drivin South. We recorded them on my home studio at a secluded cabin on our farm called MILLSTONE so that we could further prepare ourselves. It was sounding really good and we weren't that nervous when the time finally came. Okay, we were nervous but not as badly as if we hadn't recorded the songs beforehand.
We were a bit late to the studio because we were waiting around for Freddie so we could go eat. Freddie, of course showed up with a cheeseburger the size of Prattville. So we didn't get to eat. It had just gotten REALLY hot, and loading up dad's Suburban was a sticky job. I brought all of my gear, all of Eric's gear and some of Freddie's. Unloading it at the studio was even worse. I couldn't believe I was really there. By the way, the Studio is in a 100-year old house that looks like its abandoned. It has vines growing all over it, and about 12 cats sitting on the porch. One would never know that a huge, expensive studio sits within. But it did and it does to this day. Jim Marrer, legendary owner of Zero Return recorded us very old school. We had to turn the Air Conditioning off while we were recording, which made it all that hotter. The recording felt good and we decided to keep what we'd done. Freddie left and Eric stayed to watch me do vocal and guitar overdubs. I did one more guitar on Birmingham Song and then I sang on all the songs. By that point, I had a headache. It was worse because I hadn't eaten. And I had to sing. Every note I sang, it was like my brain was going to explode. I had to sing a line and then lean over and hold my head "to keep it from falling apart". It was finally over after a few minutes, and Jim supplied me with tea and Goody's headache powder. Jim mixed the songs quickly and we were done. All in all, the affair had taken about 6 hours. I paid Jim and got the tape, the DAT and a cassette of what we'd just done. Listening to it in dad's Suburban on the way back was an experience I'll never forget. It sounded to me like it was the greatest thing ever recorded.
We sent the DAT with some photos and liner notes to a place in California to make the tapes. The processing time was about a week and a half, so we'd get the tapes back in 2 weeks. We continued to gig in Montgomery. We even started pulling the crowd in from other clubs up and down the street. One night a guy with a REALLY bad, almost unintelligable stutter came in to see who stole his band's crowd. He liked us so much that he set up a gig for us in Mobile, Alabama down on the coast. Nothing ever came of it... the place changed ownership before we got to play there. We stayed in Montgomery, where we could steal people's crowds. After a month of waiting for tapes, I was getting worried. I was about to have to go off to College in Nashville.
We started scheduling a two-night stand (friday and saturday) at Catdaddy's as our final show for mid-August. We invited Adam Browder, Matt Gilmore, Brian Hinton and Rob King to sit in.
It, too was one of our better shows ever. By that point, we had an entire set of Jimi Hendrix songs including "Machine Gun" "Who Knows" "Killing Floor" "Drivin South" "Can You See Me?" and probably several others as well. Not to mention we had the original songs, Cream songs and of course the slew of songs from when we first started. Both nights were great and very memorable, sentimental evenings. "Machine Gun" on Saturday night was the last song we were supposed to ever have played. It showed. We poured every ounce of energy left into that song. Even though my fingers were red and raw from the night BEFORE, and my voice was tired and rough, I gave it that last bit of energy that I had. We made $300 a night, so we each got $200! That made the event that much sweeter! Soon after that, Catdaddy's was closed down. It shared a kitchen with Igor's Oyster bar and that kitchen got something like a 45 health rating. No wonder.
Finally, the week before I left the tapes arrived. I gave half to Eric and kept the other half. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I'd stayed and kept the band up. Little wonder that I reformed the band the following spring when I came home and tried to recapture the glory. Back to history