From ages nine through eighteen I studied classical and standards on the piano and was self-taught on the guitar. .
During high school I recorded and released a single of a pop/country song I had written and arranged myself. It received some local airplay and jukebox distribution.
I also had begun to play (Rhodes piano, electric and acoustic guitar, lead and backing vocals) professionally in a local folk, rock, country band. Influenced heavily by Ten Years After, The Band, Commander Cody, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Ry Cooder, Leon Russell, and Graham Parsons This lasted 2 years.
Also during this time I studied practical music theory privately with a Youngstown University professor (Orlando Vitello) who was also a professional musician and arranger. This was for 6 months.
. I worked with Orlando again during the time that I played a B3 style organ with a show/nightclub group. He was the musical director of our promotion and management company. I played bass with my left hand and comp/solo with my right hand. We toured throughout the northeastern US. I was part of a rhythm section that backed 4 vocalists doing pop songs (Jimmy Webb, Burt Bacharach, etc). We also played a dance set consisting of blues, pop, and jazz. Influences were Dave Brubeck, Wes Montgomery, Jimmy Smith, Bill Evans, Vince Guaraldi, This lasted about 8 months.
I was introduced by a friend to a funk, blues, rock band that at one time was eight piece. (Drums, bass, guitar, B3 organ, Rhodes piano, tenor sax, trumpet, and lead vocalist.) Song list included Tower of Power, Average White Band, Doobie Brothers, Brian Auger, Johnny Winter, Jeff Beck, and Stevie Wonder. 2 years.
I did quite a bit of session work and recording at Peppermint Productions. I also worked as a session engineer and studio musician at Marjon Recording Both were state of the art 24 track studios. I worked and recorded with artists performing country, blues, gospel, polka, ethnic, rock, pop, commercials, TV spots, and more that I have probably forgotten about. studio. He also taught me how to set up, record, and do maintenance/calibration on a state of the art 24 track studio. He didn’t like engineering the loud rock music so he had me do it and he did the polka/ethn became a member of a country band (The Silver Spurs) that was the studio band from time to time. It was a great experience and a rare opportunity to learn so much and have such a good time doing it.
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Working at a 24 track studio really gave me the bug to record more so I purchased a Teac 4 track reel to reel tape deck and a small mix console. It was a big boost to my music writing and by listening to my recorded songs I learned to be more objective and critical in a constructive way.
At about that time I got a call from Jim Kendzor who was the lead singer of a local group Blue Ash. They had been very big locally for years and had recorded and released one album on Polydor records. He said they had a new record deal and were beginning rehearsals. They also wanted to add a keyboard player and wondered if I was interested. Are you crazy? Of course I was interested!
So once again I said my goodbyes and made my way onward to new group of friends and musicians. Blue Ash was my first experience with a true rock band. They were avid fans of the Byrds, Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Who. They were enthusiastic, outgoing, fun, and downright insane at times. They were definitely my kind of people. Here I was being encouraged to freely write keyboard parts for original material that was going to be on a national release! It looked like I was going to get a shot at a financially successful music career that I would love doing. Yeah, well what we all were unaware of was that our record company "Playboy Records - was doomed! As the album “Look at You Now” was released, the financial plug was pulled on the record company, and we went spinning down the drain like bugs in a bathtub. That’s the music business.
We kept trying to keep things going for a while but eventually we all went back to making a living and paying the bills with day jobs.
Several years went by without any real opportunities locally or otherwise. I had tried living in Los Angeles for 6 months pushing original material of my own and some Blue Ash tapes without any luck. Things were changing in the music business too. The days of the A&R departments was over and it was getting harder to make contacts over the phone or otherwise.
A year or so later I was back home and checking out the new “toys” at a local music store. Live equipment, especially keyboards was starting to get very interesting. I was checking out the Yamaha, CP-80, portable baby grand piano. The salesman working the floor was about my age and asked if I played and I said yes so he said “Try it out”. So I played. He had to wait on some customers so he said to make myself at home, that he’d be right back, and closed me in the keyboard room so I wouldn’t leave. The salesman was Brian McCall and I had no idea that we would end up working together in a full time money making band for the next 15 years.
I guess this was one of the first steps made toward forming The Fabulous Flashbacks. We actually had no intentions whatsoever of being a copy band let alone an oldies copy band. The reason everyone got involved at the beginning was to write and record original material with the goal of securing a record company contract. It started out with 6 people from 5 different bands forming a studio band. After two people left the four of us found ourselves working low paying jobs on different schedules and having a hard time getting everyone or anyone together to record. We rented a studio that was available to us 24/7 but we weren’t getting much accomplished. The idea came up that we could make more money playing oldies (60’s) in clubs than we were making at our jobs plus we would have more time and be on the same work schedule.
The rest is history. We still spent a lot of time recording and writing but we also had a bigger demand than we could’ve ever imagined for The Fabulous Flashbacks. The unexpected demand meant we could pack clubs and get paid a lot of money. We had money to spend on equipment which meant I could buy the new (at that time) multi-voice and sample playing keyboards. We were able to learn songs and duplicate everything live. We already had the vocal capabilities and the talent to play the stuff all I had to do was put all the orchestra, horn section, sound effect elements into the show.
It was a lot more difficult than I make it sound. There was a lot of reading poorly written owner’s manuals and a lot of programming. But it was well worth it. We worked hard and became very polished at what we did during those years. The most amazing thing is that after all that time and everything we went through (it wasn’t all daisy’s and springtime) we’re still friends and play music together from time to time.
During the time that I played with the Flashbacks I had the good fortune to have some of my original music licensed for commercials. The two most prominent were for Avanti Car Corporation and The George Bush Sr. presidential campaign (not “W”).
I’m still writing, recording, and releasing music with the intent of getting some material licensed to TV and film. I also have a website (a work in progress) as an information and communication hub. I’m working full time and doing all this other stuff too so it gets hectic but I’m not complaining. Playing and writing music always makes me feel like I’m on top of the world ……and I am!
To be continued…………..
Gear
Samplitude V8 - Yellow Tools Independence - Native Instruments Komplete 3 - Kurzweil MIDI Board - Roland XP50 -
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