This bio is an ever changing work in progress. Not that the history changes…but what is remembered and what is important seems to change like an auto focus camera on a bumpy road.
I’d like to restart with a list of bands and the friends who were in them. Playing music live and in person is immediate and constant and the reason we all play in the first place. There is nothing more fun than being in the middle of a song with a band that is firing on all cylinders and my personal favorite, in perfect tune, too.
THE BANDS
Mike’s Mob - 1965: Me, Bobby Taft, Bob Sims and Bob Dougherty on drums.
The Happy Medium – 1965-1970: Me, Bobby Taft, Bob Sims, Ditto Lorenzo
Good Wood - 1970: Me, Bob Sims, John Betz, Joe Conrey and Larry Spurrier
Good Wood 1970-1971: Me, Joe Conrey, Larry Spurrier, Peter Rightmeyer (Peter Morgan)
Good Wood – 1971: Me, Joe Conrey, Larry Spurrier, Stosh King, Bobby Monach, John Flood
Waterstreet – 1971-1972: Me, Stosh and Lori King, John Flood, Joe Conrey and Larry Spurrier.
The Rubber Band – 1973-1974: Me, John Flood, Steve Burke, Larry Spurrier.
Good Wood - 1974: Full time band. Me, John Betz, John Flood, Steve Burke, Larry Spurrier.
Billy Harner with Good Wood - 1975: Me, John Flood, Steve Burke, Larry Spurrier.
Good Wood - 1976: Me, Stosh and Lori King, Steve Burke and Larry Spurrier and Randy Thompson.
Good Wood – 1976-1977: Me, Stosh and Lori King, Danny Kelly, Larry Spurrier and Randy Thompson.
Sweet Life – 1980-1982: Jack Rickenbach, Tom Gregory, Larry Dotts, Nancy Stezzi and Me.
The Crab Pots – somewhere in the 90’s: Me, Tommy Barr, Bennie Smith, Ron Clarkeson, Steve Sheppard, ____________________
The Killer Wannabees – somewhere in the 90’s: Me Benny Smith, Tommy Barr, Ron Clarkeson and Chris Jones.
Michael Francis Hughes & Pop Fiction – 2009-present: Me, Danny Kelly, Rich Fissenger, Jamie Thompson.
Other musicians in and out of various rehearsals or potential bands or regular musical get-togethers. Dave Voshel and Rich Cox, __________bass? Wayne Herring. Chad Fisher and Henry Corporal. Rich Zaborski. Bill Carol.
Duo’s I have had the good fortune to spend gig nights with some talented and versatile partners.
Chris Jones: Guitar and Mandolin. Many gigs plus the World Café Live, Philly Rising Finals and follow-up ALL STAR SHOW. Chris made a trip to Nashville with me where we did several open Mic’s and The Bluebird Cafe Sunday Writers night. He also played Mandolin on my LIVE OUT LOUD CD.
Ron Clarkson: Harmonica. Many many restaurant and marina gigs as well as sittin’ in at the World Café Live. Ron also did several of the regular Nashville stops one year.
Jack Rickenbach: Guitar, Ukulele. Many gigs and much history in and out of music. Jack played Uke on the CD song, SO LONG.
Danny Kelly: Bass. We’ve done some cool duo gigs with guitar and bass and Danny was the driving and guiding force behind the whole CD process. Besides the tremendous bass playing, a big help in arrangements and second opinions.
Jamie Thompson: Guitar, electric and acoustic. Always a treat to play with Jamie. Note for note, chord for chord, Jamie is the man. He added great touches to the CD.
Billy Ricci: Guitar and every song ever written. Billy adds guitar and vocals as if we’d actually rehearsed.
Danny De Genarro: a few memorable duo gigs over the winter. Great on guitar and an even better voice.
Highlights, hmm. Let’s see. It all started when….
1967: Municipal Water Maintenance Man: cut by The Magic Mushrooms
1968: Luminous Turtle: co-write with Rick D’Agostino (almost released) cut by Shirron Hile and the Music Band on Philips Records.
1977: Tropical Island: two American Songwriter awards.
1989: Lie to Me Again: Billboard song contest award.
1984: Publishing deal with The RAINBOW COLLECTION
Amateur Night: recorded by Da Pliers, the Studio 4 band with Joe and Phil Nicolo and Dave Johnson around 1983. It was broadcast over WYSP in Philadelphia. Publisher Herb Gart heard it and signed me to a 3 year writing deal with The Rainbow Collection. Herb is the Publisher of Don McLean's American Pie among many others. (therainbow.com)
Hardly Worth The Heartache: was a song nearly recorded Kenny Roggers via Larry Butler.
Pretty In Pink and No Time: two songs on hold for the Molly Ringwold movie “Pretty in Pink”. Check the 1989 Songwriter’s Market Guide under the The Rainbow Collection and you’ll see it says I wrote the title song. I did, but unfortunately mine wasn’t recorded in time for the actual movie and soundtrack.
Ok, now back to the beginning and some background .First there was radio. I loved the radio and all those pop songs. Songs like The Everly Brothers, Brenda Lee, Elvis, Chuck Berry, and Ricky Nelson. Television was a great source of music, then, too. The Ozzie and Harriet Show always ended with their son Ricky Nelson singing a song on TV, to a pre-beatlemania audience of cheering girls. There were great variety shows. Mitch Miller’s Show did great tunes from the gay 90’s (that’s 1890, before gay was gay) and the 20’s and all the great Tin Pan Alley songs. I remember being taken to the circus. It didn’t make me want to run away, but the live band was great and left a real impression. I started playing trumpet in 3rd grade. From 1st to 6th grade I went to St. Michael the Archangel in Levittown, PA where I sang in the choir in 5th and 6th grade. I went to Benjamin Franklin Jr. High (before they were called middle schools) for 7th and 8th grade. It was during a trumpet lesson with band director Mr. Reed that the assassination of President Kennedy was announced. Music was already a big part of my life when the Beatles hit The Ed Sullivan show in 1964. After that it was all about guitar. A lot of the early Beatle press was about them writing so many of their own songs. I already had a strong appreciation for great songs. So along with learning the guitar I started to write. With every new chord came new songs.
While I was teaching myself guitar, my Beatle buddy Bobby Taft was playing little league baseball. He slid into second base one July day in 1965 and broke his leg. He was then confined to the carport of his house a few doors up from ours on Ravine Lane in Red Cedar Hill. (Levittown, PA) I kept him company all summer and we sang every Beatle song and learned to harmonize together. We turned and acoustic guitar into a bass and as I learned guitar Bob learned the bass. My Dad happened to be taking up guitar around the same time. He stopped and gave me his Kay guitar and Premier amp to play on. Dad also bought my first big amplifier, a Silvertone from Sears and an Astatic Mic from Radio Shack or whatever they were called back then. We worked on forming a band. My step brother, Tommy Hamilton, introduced us to his classmates Bill Thistle and Bob (Warren) Sims. Bill was playing guitar and Bob was taking lessons and had a nice Guild Starfire guitar. Bob and I hit it off and have been great friends ever since. Bob Sims, Bob Taft and I teamed up with Wayne herring for a while. Wayne had a snare drum and a high hat…it was almost like having a drummer. My Dad again came to the rescue. He worked with a guy who played organ at the King George Inn in Bristol, where I later played often myself. This guy had a son, Bob Dougherty who was drummer, with a complete kit. We all played the Cellar in The Levittown Shopping Center as MIKE’S MOB.
Then we met Ditto Lorenzo. I believe he knew the neighbors of Bob Sims. We would loudly practice on his carport and we all met and got together. Ditto was a real lesson taking drummer with Ludwig drums like Ringo’s and he had a license and a car. Look out world.
We became The Happy Medium: Bob Sims and Ditto Lorenzo, Bob Taft who is sadly no longer with us and me. That was a great time playing and learning and just being friends. Seemed like everyone had a band back then and we all dreamed of a Beatle life. Happy Medium had many "battle of the bands" victories, countless high school dances and parties and a performance on the Ed Hurst TV show. We had some of the best harmony any one could produce at the time and we were doing my original songs. Ditto’s dad got us matching Vox amplifiers and suits from South Street. I actually had a collarless Beatle suit once. Even if we didn’t sound a great as I remember, we sure looked good. My family moved in 1966 about an hour away to the other side of Philadelphia to Ridley Park, PA. We kept the band together and I began a life of commuting in the 10th grade. My sisters Kathy and Diane were friends with a young guy name Bobby Pompetti. He was being recorded in the studio by Sonny Casella. The band Sonny used for the sessions was the Kodels from Springfield PA which later briefly became Shirron Hile and the Music Band.
The release of their 1968 song (and my co-write) Luminous Turtle was cancelled when Sirhan Sirhan senselessly killed Robert Kennedy during his presidential campaign. The similarity of the killers name and the band were too uncomfortable for Philips Records. Yes, timing is not one of my gifts.
Meanwhile back to Sony Casella. He heard and liked my songs and took The Happy Medium into the famous Cameo Parkway recording studio in Philadelphia, too. We cut Two Sides to a Circle, I Was Your Friend and Municipal Water Maintenance Man. Unknown to me at the time, Sonny Casella was also working with a band from the University of Pennsylvania called The Magic Mushrooms. He cut my song, Municipal Water Maintenance Man with them. It was released on East Coast Records. One afternoon after school there was a blood curdling scream from upstairs let out by my sisters Kathy and Diane after they heard WFIL radio’s Joe Niagra announce and play my song on the radio. (AM back then) That was the first I knew of it and probably the last time I heard it. It was a real hoot though.
By then I we were living in Springfield DELCO, too. All my new friends were musicians with their own bands. From the same area was Rick Vito, Jeff HamiIton, Ted Moore, and Rick Valente. I never met him, but Todd Rundgren was in neighboring Upper Draby building Nazz. A high school friend married his sister. I hung out with Obie O’Brien and his buddy across the street, Hughie McDonald. Hughie was in the aforementioned Kodels. They were a great band. Rick D’Agostino was a truly talented guy with an amazing voice and stage presence. His brother Dennis an outstanding clock-like drummer. Dennis sadly died on Christmas 2009. Obie told me the news when I was finishing up work on my CD. Back to High School, Obie had a soul band called The Echelons. Obie O'Brien and Hugh McDonald managed to become quite famous and successful via Bon Jovi. Obie is Jon’s chief engineer and a talented writer/producer (most recently working with Soraia) Hughie is the touring bass player with Bon Jovi and actually played on Slippery When Wet and all the records since. Bon Jovi's first record was produced by Lance Quinn a friend and recording pal of Obie’s who had me sing backup on an April Wine record.
In 1980 Obie produced a 7 song project for me at Half-Track recording studio in Wayne, Pa. I met guitar and vocal wizard Steve Sheppard in those sessions and have been friends ever since. Rick Prince and Joe Gabe were the rest of the session band both great players and nice guys. That project was finished around Christmas time. One night I went to see another Levittown player and old friend, Jody Gambelluca, of Valentine and the "Rocky" movie fame. He was playing bass in New Hope, PA with Duke Williams and the Extremes. He had a baby faced kid playing amazing guitar in that band. We all went back to a house in Jersey and spent the night talking and listening to my just finished project (on cassette in those days) It got great reviews. It was all very flattering and exciting, more so a few years later when the baby faced guitar player turned up on MTV playing "Living on a Prayer". The baby faced one night fan was Richie Sambora.
Sorry, I got sidetracked with all the name dropping….as well as there are several branches to the story. Getting back to the band history:
After 5 wonder years the Happy Medium merged with the band August to become Good Wood in 1970. John Betz, Larry Spurrier, Joe Conrey, Bob (Warren) Sims and I again. Good Wood was a bigger better faster band with lots of great voices and harmony still the emphasis. Rehearsals were the most fun in that band. At one point we had the stage (and basketball court) of the old St. Mark School in Bristol, PA. The school had been condemned and was empty and waiting to be torn down. It was a great place to gather and have real rehearsals. Good Wood had two more songwriters, Joe and John, which made it more original than the usual cover band format of the day. We did our first real bar gigs at the Cross Country and Oasis, fights and all, and which seemed to happen a lot back then. Curiosity Shoppe with Billy Monach and Jody Gambelluca played the Cross Country, too. Jody would come see us and we’d all sing in the acoustically perfect tiled men’s room on the breaks.
That was some sweet harmony. John Betz left and Bob Sims got a gig in the Marine Corps. After surviving Paris Island, he landed a spot in the Marine Corps band in DC playing drums where he often played for President Nixon. With John and Bob gone Good Wood became a 4 piece band with the addition of Peter Rightmeyer. There were still 3 songwriters in the band and it became a little more folky but still very creative. A wannabee music manager (Architect) signed us up and we went into the Charly Naylor’s studio to record. We did 4 songs which made it as far as a 10” vinyl demo. We played a lot of college gigs. It was a studious band and we were all in college, too. Joe and Larry commuted home to play from Baltimore every week. When Peter left and our own personal manager/friend, the late John Perri, found a young amazing classical studying piano player, John Flood and brought him to rehearsal. John took to rock and roll and we took to John and our musical horizons broadened instantly. We added singers. Bobby Monach, the younger brother of the local music hero Billy Monach (Curiosity Shoppe) and Stosh King. The band became Waterstreet. After some changes Bobby left and Lori Rizzo (Mrs. Stosh King at the time, joined the band and the harmony was set and we were off and running. Waterstreet played up and down the frat house walk at the University of Pennsylvania a lot. It was great fun, great music, lots of beer and very energetic.
When Waterstreet came to an end, and I don’t recall why I was about to start my last year of college at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art. I took the year off from playing to concentrate on my portfolio and graduating.
I almost joined JoAnn and the Night People, a popular seashore band, at one point having passed the audition, but logistically the time wasn't right.
After graduating from Tyler I went to work for Elektra Records in New York as a Graphic Designer in the art department, thanks to an introduction from Peter Corriston who was the design wiz and mentor the year before me. I met Carly Simon on my first day. Linda Rondstadt came in once and was so lovely. As a resident New Yorker, I’d see and talk to Harry Chapin often. He was a very nice man. That was a great job. I was at Elektra/Asylum/Nonesuch at the end of the time covered in the book “Hotel California” by Barney Hoskins. I once delivered the artwork for approval to David Geffen and Bob Dylan in Philly. During his the Rolling Thunder Tour with the Band. I met them at the Sheraton. Very cool.
While at Elektra in New York, Hughie McDonald was rehearsing with Buzzy Linheart across the street, I’d walk over and hang out during my lunch listen to them. I met Bruce Foster and Steve Burgh there.
Meanwhile back in Bristol from where I was commuting to NY, Larry Spurrier, John Flood and I started rehearsing with bass player, Steve Burke. Steve was a Levittown guy we had competed against in several Battle of the Bands. We were the Rubber Band briefly as we bounced back into shape (sorry). Meanwhile I was talking to John Betz again who had moved to Salt Lake City. Elektra had merged with Asylum records and the office was leaving NY for LA. We were all thinking and talking about going full time with the band. John came back to Pennsylvania and in September of 1974 we went full time as Good Wood again.
The full time edition of Good Wood started off at the Grog Shop in Philly. The circle of gigs got bigger. To keep it growing we signed up with Philly’s notorious booking agent, Norman Joyce. There was a map on Norman’s wall that he threw a dart at to determine where we would work next (or so it seemed). We were not doing much original music at that time, trying to keep top-forty bar owners happy, though I was always writing songs.
Around that time in 1975, disco broke loose and live band gigs were giving way to dancing. John Betz left and Norman matched us up with The Human Percolator, Billy Harner. Billy had a couple regional hits in 1968 (Sally Sayin’ Something and Homicide Dresser) We did some minor touring with Billy north to Connecticut and south into the Carolina’s and to the beautiful Hotel Roanoke in Virginia. We did the two weeks prior to the 4th of July summer opening at the famous Atlantic City Steel Pier. While packing up before the big Steel Pier opening day featuring Al Martino, I discovered that the inside of the pier had collapsed. We stopped Billy’s big blue van before it would have toppled into the ocean and alerted the police. The rest of the night Atlantic City sounded like there was an air raid going on. The Nightly News reported that a sound truck had caused the damage. So untrue but no names (like ours) were mentioned so we didn’t get to own the pier.
In late 1975 we parted ways with Billy Harner. John Flood stayed with Billy for a while. Stosh and Lori from the Waterstreet days came back and we were on our own as Good Wood again. We added lead guitar guru, Randall Thompson (Randy) while I split my time on guitar and keyboards.
In July of 1976 John Flood was heading to Florida to play cocktail piano. He was great at jazzy old standards, I used to make him play songs like “But Not For Me” or “My Funny Valentine” for me at the end of gigs before we’d tear down. Unfortunately that summer our friend John Flood was killed in his car on a Florida off ramp. July 11, 1976. It was a sad time but the show went on.
The new Good Wood played the Satellite Lounge near Fort Dix in NewJersey a lot. We hold the record for most weeks in a year by one band. Each week was a long one. 7 nights with re-setting up from the half room to the whole room on the big stage for the weekend and back to the small room for Sunday. The weekends had big names, too. We played with Tommy James and the Shondells and the Tramps. The Fabulous Greaseband were new then but just as fabulous. They were road managed for many years by friend and Happy Medium drummer, Ditto Lorenzo. We played a lot of places. The Anchorage in Burlington, NJ often followed the Satellite gig, which would make for 13 nights in a row. By the end of 1977 I decided to get back into a day job and concentrate musically on writing and learning to play solo. Acoustic music was starting to be accepted and I wanted to be able to play my songs and learn to face a crowd alone. I played regularly at The King George Inn in Bristol, PA. It’s the oldest continuously run Inn in the country.
The local solo circuit had some great people. Joe Borgi and Leon Redell were a live inspiration of how cool acoustic guitars could be. I met John Plumley who played every Thursday at Muffins in Mt. Holly. He’d let me sit in every week and sing harmony and take a song or two. John had a trio with Linda McAdams and Dave Gardner.
Linda was a writer and did solo gigs, too. She recorded my song Lost Your Faith In Love, from the Obie sessions, on her CD, Born To Love This Way.
Linda had been making trips to Nashville and doing some work and co-writing there. It was Linda who convinced me that I really needed to go there. I believe it was in 1991 when I shared a ride with her for my first trip to Nashville. She was doing a writer night at Douglas Corner with the guy who wrote Allan Jackson’s first hit “Real World”. I met him and heard got to hear my song Lost Your Faith In Love performed on a stage in a club in Nashville on my very first trip there. Wow, I thought, this will be easy.
More to come...this is a very slow process. Thanks for reading.
Continued 12/22/10
Nashville is a bit of a blur, but I will try to sort out the high and low lights.
Around 1991 I started making weeklong trips to Nashville about twice a year. I would send letters with return postcard replies to publishers in advance in hopes of a meeting and a chance to pitch songs. I would also schedule and play all the writer nights. It was all very exciting and there was a great sense of community of wannabe writers and guys who were starting to get somewhere with songs on hold and getting first cuts. There were lots of almost stories of songs getting cut and then not making the album and some good stories with happy endings. Writers seemed to like me and my British invasion Beatle background. It was fun to stick out a little from the Alabama, Texas and Louisiana folks.
There was one writer’s night at the Boardwalk Café that was a weekly contest. The weekly winner went on to the final at the end of the month. This night happened to also be the last night of the month. I was picked as the winner of the week and got to go back up as a finalist for the month. I didn’t win the month, but got to spend time with the judges, One of which was Casey Kelley. Ah small world. Casey was a member of Atomic Rooster who was on the Elektra Label. When I was in New York I worked on Casey’s solo record 15 years before. Casey had just had or was about to have a big hit with Tanya tucker called “Soon”. The soundman and also a judge that night was a cool guy from Michigan named Tim Fuller. He had been in Nashville about 6 months with his wife Lynn. We became pretty good friends and for several years after when I went to Nashville they graciously shared their home with me. (I was happy to return the favor once while in Maryland when his band was doing a gig in Wilmington, DE)
Tim did sound for a writer’s night at the Days Inn on West End. I went one night and played to the 5 or 6 people there. One guy seemed to particularly attentive. When I finished he introduced himself as Eric Prestidge and was asking all about me and said my songs were the kind that become hits and wanted me to send him everything I had done. He had just produced the latest Kenny Rodgers record (who I had had some interest from before via Larry Butler, through Herb Gart and later on my own) I thought I had just found my very own Clive Davis. I sent Eric a lot of songs, too many, but he did ask. Typical of my timing….Eric had just begun going through a tough divorce and he was busy with that part of his real life which apparently left no time for my musical one.
The fantasy was fun at least and the encouragement was immeasurable. Nashville was full of little encouraging meetings and situations like that. Folks I’d meet at writer’s night would show up on music row the next day or we would bump into each other at the NSAI office on Music Row. That was my home away from home. Making calls, and schmoozing from a comfy place for visiting writers. My best Nashville connection came from owning the Homestead Tavern on the eastern shore of Maryland. I was putting my daughter Stacey on the school bus one morning. The car waiting behind the bus stopped to talk to me. Dick Rusk who was visiting a friend down the street in Tolchester, stopped to tell me that watching the scene reminded him fondly of his own daughter 20 years before. We met later in the tavern and got talking about music. Dick was a new product rep for Martin Guitars. We talked about music obviously and I had just come back from Nashville. He told me his best friend from High School was Senior VP of Writer Relations at BMI in Nashville he would make sure we got together. Dick introduced me to Harry Warner. After a few mailed tapes, Harry suggested I get my ass to Nashville. He listened and set up appointments for me with Tom Collins, big time independent publisher, Russ Zavitson, Sheddhouse, Millhouse, Bobby Cottle, Muy Buena (George Straights/ Irv Woolsey) and Lana Wood at Major Bob Music (Garth Brooks)
Those nice people would meet me every time I came to town and listen. A few songs were even pitched, especially by Lana Wood (now Lana Thrasher). I had some good ears and connections, but never had the right songs at the right time. I thought my experience with Pretty in Pink and Herb Gart was a sure sign I’d get in.
By this time I was an active member in the local MD chapter of NSAI. Leslie Benjamin was the coordinator and a good musical friend and supporter. She was spending a lot of time in Nashville and at one point moved there for a few years. She was taking writing classes with Jon Ims who wrote She’s In Love With The Boy the big break out hit for Trisha Yearwood. She set up a 2 hour session with Jon Ims for me. I thought that was my chance to become “one of the guys”. While my songs played…without him saying a word…I could hear and feel the things that needed work. Guess I wasn’t ready for Nashville primetime after all.
I left there thinking everything I’d ever written was crap. (if not exactly everything at least in terms of breaking through the Nashville barrier)
I went home and didn’t write a thing for nearly a year. The country tavern owning life of Kent County Maryland was not the source of inspiration it might have been. I was playing out as much as possible. I played a cool bayside deck bars and restaurants gigs. We had live music on weekends at our Homestead Tavern and I would sit in with the bands sometimes. Annapolis was one of my favorite places to play and I met John ______ there. There was a Chesapeake Appreciation Day event every year at Sandy Point State park at the base of the BAY BRIDGE going into Annapolis. He got me a spot in the Appreciation Day one year with my harmonica buddy Ron Clarkson. The following year I formed an original band for the occasion. The Crabpots. I sent invitations to Nashville and got a nice response from Martha Sharpe of Warner Brothers. She was one of the nice A&R folks who would listen to me. It poured rain through the entire day, but the show went on. Everybody sounded great. It was fun pretending to be a real band at a big event even if the crowd was small, frozen and soaking wet. Coming out of the non-writing year I signed up for an Artist Way class or group at The America’s Cup Café in Rock Hall. I was familiar with the book title from our NSAI monthly meetings. There was a cool gathering of artists and craftsman there like Rob Hudson, a world renowned knife maker, painters, writers etc. It got me writing again. I remember doing and hour and a half solo, original music show at the café when the class was over. I started going back to Nashville. Leslie from the NSAI and a new member, Jack Boucher and I drove to Nashville for the Bluebird Café audition. 13 hour ride to play a verse and a chorus. I passed the audition and started playing the Sunday Night Writer’s show. That was a reason to go back every 5 months or so. I would always see Harry Warner when I went. At one point he thought I really needed to hook up with a pro-writer. I had an appointment with Warner-Chappell’s Steve Smith. Dave Johnson from Studio 4 knew him and made the contact. He was friendly but not impressed with the tapes I brought. I played him something live more like what I was gathering he was looking for and he seemed to warm up. Then I asked him what he thought about Harry’s assessment, that I needed to co-write with a pro. He called out to his assistant who set up a co-write session with Chris Gantry. Chris was a good buddy and contemporary of Chris Kristofferson and writer of the Glenn Campbell hit, Dreams of the Everyday House Wife. That was a cool adventure. Not real productive, though we did work on a melody I brought in case we didn’t get rolling from scratch. I got to spend the day working on a song in a room with more gold records than I have ever seen in one place.