I am sitting here enjoying the new speakers Santa brought me. I am listening to my old band, Skyscraper. And that brings me to thoughts of this upcoming year. For it is this year when Skyscraper will celebrate our fortieth anniversary.
Yes, it was forty years ago today, that we taught this band to play. And since any statute of limitations has long run out, I'll tell the story of how we formed this band.
I began playing and writing music with Jeff in 1972. So by 75, we had a wealth of original songs we'd written, some good and some otherwise. But we decided we'd gone as far as we could as a duo, and now needed a band. So in springtime of 1975 we set out to find one.
We'd just arrived back to Springfield, Missouri from the Phoenix area of Arizona. And Jeff lucked into finding a vacant house that was being purchased by the college, and the owner allowed us to live there while it was in escrow. And that was a very good thing, as we had very little if any money.
So it was that I talked to an old friend, who'd been playing around the area for a few years. I'd first met Steve around summer of 72. He had just arrived back to town from a little place called Vietnam. Now Steve is a trip. He comes from one of the most musical families I've ever encountered. He had a brother with a very nice voice who went on to play with a very successful local band. And a whole slew of sisters with angel voices. Some of my best memories are of playing Beatles tunes with Steve's brother and sisteres. So luckily, Steve wasn't playing with anyone at the time, so we had our lead guitarist.
And another friend, who became our band manager, knew a drummer from Memphis, Tennessee named Dan. Danny was very talented, playing harmonica, drums and adding harmony vocals. And so the great jam session was organized. I celebrated by purchasing four hits of mescaline, and on the day of the jam, we took them.
We played for fourteen hours. My fingers were bleeding. All our fingers were bleeding, but no one cared. This felt so good, and so right. Was it the drug talking, well it turns out it wasn't.
After recovering, a few days later, we realized we had three hours of original material. And it was pretty tight already. Apparently, the drug hadn't harmed our musical skills. So Injun John began to book us in clubs. And he organized a recording session. Those songs can be found at my soundcloud page listed by my bio. We cut several songs in one day, which in those days wasn't all that rare. They aren't polished, as they were only meant for demo purposes. But they aren't all that bad either.
So we did the recording, and very soon found ourselves as opening act for The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. This was my dream come true. I'd listened to their Uncle Charlie album since it was released in 1970, and knew it forwards and back. So we were playing an open air venue, and spent the largest part of the day there. You may not realize that playing a concert is a long workday for a band. There are sound checks, then more sound checks. So you put your instrument in your hand in the morning, and don't remove it until late that night. But that being said, it is not really like working.
I spent a good amount of the afternoon jamming with the Dirt Band. I had asked Jimmy Ibbotson to write down the lyrics for Diggy Liggy Lo, which I could never really get from the record. He did, and naturally we played the song. Jimmie Faddon joined in on harmonica. And around the side of this old farm truck came John McEuen picking his banjo. And I got to play lead singer for the band. It was so easy, because I already knew all their songs.
But it was much more than a wonderful time. It was a justification, much like graduating from college. Playing with that band, and in front of all those thousands of people, qualified all those years of practice and work I'd done. And it let me know that you could achieve a dream.
Now, I'd been playing in public for nearly ten years by then, though I was only 22. And an audience was certainly nothing new to me. But this one was special and I'll never forget that crowd. Though it wasn't really the crowd, nor amazingly enough my favorite band. It was justification, pure and simple. I had spent my life, short though it was at that point, wondering what it would be like to play for thousands. Well, I found out. And there is nothing else like that feeling, when the waves of applause come back at you from those faceless bodies out there. You can see the first few rows of folks, but after that the lighting prevents seeing features. But the noise travels very well, and it is awesome when directed your way. Overpowering is a good adjective here. Again, applause was nothing new either, but I'd never before experienced it with such force. When you are in the crowd, you hear it of course. But on the stage, it seems to funnel toward you. So why do the Stones continue to tour, well there's your answer. You simply never experience such a thing except in those circumstances, so you keep yourself there.
Well, things didn't work out for Skyscraper, as it is for almost all bands. It is a very rare thing to keep any band together for long. Jeff and I continued to use the name, but Steve and Danny were gone and not replaced, and we went back to playing as a duo. But since 1975, I never again questioned my own musical ability. I constantly tried to improve of course, but I had been rewarded, and now had the only degree in music I had ever sought.
And now I've held that degree for forty years. Wow, it is difficult to put that into perspective. That time has flown by. I know all old folks love to talk about how time goes so fast, but that is just because it is true.
Life is like a long playing vinyl record. When you begin with the first song, it takes the record a long time to make one revolution. But each succeeding song goes a bit faster and faster around the turntable, and when you reach the last few songs, it is spinning around that spindle like a top, faster always. So when you look backwards from the needle, it seems a long way. But when you look where you are going, it looks like a short journey indeed. So my songs are spinning pretty fast as my fingers slow down. But any time I wish, I can mentally set the needle back forty years, and feel young again. And I do. Peace in the coming year. rw
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