A birthday wish
It was a Monday night, October 28, 1996. We had no van or trailer, although a couple of the guys had rather large vehicles, so we just met out at the bus barn and loaded stuff into cars until we had fit everything.
The experiment had started about ten months earlier, shortly after Captain and Truckdrivin' Omar had announced their intent to move back to South Dakota. The Captain, my two brothers, Johnny the Clock and me. We had a meeting up in Dell Rapids at the Smith residence, which included discussing possible instrumentations and possible songs. At the time we were under the assumption we would add a female singer, since we assumed none of us could sing lead. We also thought we would add a saxophone, maybe even two of them. We left the Smith residence that night and Captain proceeded to copy off some mix tapes of a bunch of songs to learn, things like "I Got The Feeling" by James Brown and "Crosstown Traffic" by Jimi Hendrix. In January we had two or three shaky rehearsals and then sort of let the thing pass for a few months. Johnny and I were already playing full-time in Hot Rod Chevy Kevy, and we didn't know when the time would present itself where we could follow up on this first set of practices.
In the summer we thought we would give it a more persistent shot. We rehearsed about 15 days in June, basically every single day when Johnny and I were not on the road with Rod. We would typically rehearse from about ten in the morning to one in the afternoon, and then Captain would have to go to work for a two-o-clock shift. A few of these early rehearsals were recorded, which excited us greatly at the time. On another occasion John Bertsch, a saxophonist who was interning with Rod that summer as part of his music merchandising major at SDSU, sat in and played along with some of our new tunes, songs like "Soon" and "Decimal Places." It was around that time that we thought we should ask if JB wanted to be in our band.
I remember in early August, we finally had a get together with some horns. As we had learned songs and written songs, the need for a female singer faded away, mostly since we couldn't convince any one to be in our band with us. Our Plan B was to have a horn section, and we were also inviting Ronnie (the 'Sha), the bass player for Hot Rod Chevy Kevy whose youthful spirit and willingness to play percussion fit in nicely. Over the past year and change, I had been doing a bunch of horn arranging for Rod's band, and we had done a lot of gigs with horn players. When we played in Sioux Falls, it tended to be a mix of players I knew from Augie, friends of mine like Rich Hastings, or younger players who I was referred to by friends of mine, like Ryan Hofer. My brother Jon had been playing trombone at these gigs, too, and, of course, JB was already playing with Rod's band all the time. Anyway, we invited Rich, Ryan, and JB, to the rehearsal, and because I thought it would be fun to have a second trumpet to round out the horn section, we invited Joel Sonnichsen, my brother Jon's then-roommate at college. Joel was a singing star in the Augie choir, but he hadn't been playing the trumpet much anymore. However, we was funny and got along great with everybody, which we considered more important than actually being all that familiar with the instrument which he was being asked to play.
In fact, in the early days, none of us except for Johnny the Clock really had much idea what we were doing. Captain was relatively new to the guitar, Jon was a relative newbie to playing rock keyboards, and most of the horns' only gig experience was in horn band gigs with Rod over the previous year. The fact that we chose compatibility and potential over actual experience was one of the best decisions we ever made.
The early August was a mess, but it was fun to hear the beginnings of how these songs would sound, and I did a bunch more horn charts for the four-piece section. As we got into the fall, we started practicing more intensely and working out the likely setlist for our first show. Now all we needed was a place to do the gig. Since we were all outsiders to the Sioux Falls original music scene, we didn't really know anybody well enough at the Pomp Room to get a show there, and besides, there was another band playing on the Monday night we were looking at: a new disco revival band called the Glory Holes, also playing their first show. Chris Yost and I talked about sharing the show, but the owners at the Pomp Room were skeptical of so much work on a Monday night. The soundchecks would have been a nightmare, for sure. So we checked in at probably the last chance spot, Phil's Pub. And Skip said, sure. We could play there for the door money on Monday, October 28.
We made 88 dollars at the door. TJ Lewis made it a point to be our first paying customer, and he arrived ludicrously early to stake that claim. The first song we ever played in front of people was "Tough Mama" by Bob Dylan. During "Mack Truck," a song that had been submitted by brother Jon, we blew several fuses, since we had plugged in the power amps to the same circuit that had all the video lottery machines. It wasn't until the second Phil's gig (a week later) that we figured out which places to plug everything in so that nothing would blow up.
After that, we played hundreds of gigs, some boring, some definitely not boring, and we picked up a bunch of interesting stories. Right now, I'm sitting here in Nashville, Tennessee, in Johnny and Jeanne's living room, reflecting on our humble beginnings, and I wouldn't trade any of it.
Happy Birthday, fellas.
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