MEMOIR WITH TWIN GUITAR LEADS

The Life and Times of The James-Younger Band

Part 2 - Further On Down The Road

             

              We had gone from the confidence of having supportive fans at The Clubhouse to the crash and burn at Brennan’s.  Now back in Kingston, I started with a simple low stress gig – a fund raiser for UCCC, our local community college, (it wasn’t SUNYUlster yet), at the Rosendale Rec Center on Rt.32.  That performance was marked by Kevin driving the steel rod of his bass drum pedal right through the drum head just as we were about to start.  Did he have a replacement head?   What do you think?   Several frantic calls later, a local drum instructor opened his home studio for us and sold Kevin a new drum head.  The round trip to the town of Ulster and the time it took to repair the drum pushed our start time back to nearly 11:00 p.m.  We didn’t make many friends that night.  Good thing the Rec Center kept their baseball bats locked up.

              I wanted to find another bar where we could have an extended engagement to build a local following.  The Checkered Flag was a popular nightspot in a now forgotten plaza on Ulster Avenue.  When I was growing up that plaza had been anchored by Bob Steele’s Auction House.  Later on there would be J.D.Stokes, The Bread Board, a Chinese Restaurant and the area’s first multiplex.  The Checkered Flag was tucked around back.

              I went to see Augie Colao, who was the owner of The Checkered Flag and he agreed to book us for the Halloween weekend.  Our arrangement was to be paid a small guaranteed amount, and then, if we exceeded a hundred people through the door, we would get additional money.  The first night went fine.  The band sounded tight, and it was gratifying to see so many friends and family in the audience.  At the end of the night, I spoke to Augie, who seemed very pleased with the turnout. 

              “So,” I said, “we hit the hundred mark” with what I hoped suggested a fact and not a question.  

              He slowly shook his head and calmly explained, “Hey, you did great, but not a hundred people.  I only had one waitress on…blah blah…she couldn’t have handled a hundred…blah blah…she would have needed help...blah blah.”

              I was frozen in disbelief.   Something wasn’t right.   I thought there were at least a hundred people, but he was so sure.   I returned to the guys in the band and told them what Augie had said.  They expressed their disbelief too, with somewhat stronger words than I had, but I said, “Let’s see what happens tomorrow night.”   We also discussed what we should wear for the next show, a Halloween party.  It was a no-brainer.   “We’re The James-Younger Band.  We’ll go as cowboys.”

              We arrived at The Checkered Flag the next night about 7:30 PM.  The band was in full western attire: cowboy hats, bandanas, vests. 

              Then Kevin arrived. 

              He was a vision in green…including the tights…which went perfectly with the rest of his costume as…Robin Hood!  It wouldn’t be the last time Kevin missed the memo.  In spite of that, we had another good night.  The turnout wasn’t as large as Friday’s, but it was pretty decent.   Before the third set, I went over to see Augie. 

              “Looks like a good night,” I said, again half asking.

              “You did good”, he said.

              “But not as good as last night?”  I continued, “last night we had a lot more people.”  

              Augie nodded in agreement, and before he could reassure me that he was satisfied with our turnout, I added, “Yeah, that’s what I thought too.”

              Then I pointed to my friend John Thompson who was working the door.  “See the guy over at the door?   He’s been taking count.   We have another set to play, and we’ve counted ninety-four people so far.  I figure we should easily get another six people in the next hour (or hour-and-a-half to two hours, as James-Younger sets could often run).   But we both agree that last night we had a lot more people. So…it looks like we did earn that extra money?”

              Augie stared.

              I wasn’t trying to be an asshole, and I was clearly the new kid on the block, but if that was our deal then I believed that was our deal.  We weren’t talking thousands of dollars here, and he had obviously made money on the band.   It never occurred to me that he would flat-out renege on our agreement.

              I was wrong. 

              When the gig ended, Augie’s excuses began.  “The people weren’t drinking liquor…blah blah…they were drinking soda...blah blah...most of them were just my regulars…blah blah…”  I shrugged.  

              We packed up and left.

              The band got together the following Monday and discussed what had happened with Augie. I said we shouldn’t play for him again.  I just didn’t trust him.  Guy said we shouldn’t drop one gig until we had another to replace it.   He suggested we should talk to Zenon at The Evergreen Inn.

              The Evergreen Inn was on Albany Ave, just down the road from The Checkered Flag.   I had only been there once before, and that was years before Zenon owned it, but that bar held some really big Technicolor memories for me.   The event in question was a bachelor party arranged by Mike Briglia, a good friend who now owns Michael’s Candy.   As entertainment for the party, Mike had arranged for a stripper, a locally infamous young lady whose first name rhymed with her reputation, as in “(…) the Harlot”. 

              I was witness as she laid out (okay, unfortunate word choice there) her plans for the evening’s festivities.  She was to remove only a few articles of clothing during each of her three sets, unveiling all at the climactic end of the night.  George Peppard’s A-Team character always said, “I love it when a plan comes together.”  Alas, this plan was history by the end of the first set when she was totally naked AND “entertaining” one of the guests on stage!  Her second set continued naked, this time with two guests on stage.

              After that, the party moved upstairs to one of the rooms, with a long line of drunk and rowdy guests stretching down the stairs, waiting their turn.   I’ve always hated lines, and, frankly, there wasn’t enough liquor in the entire bar to make that line worth standing in.

              I was trying to keep those images in check when we first met with Zenon.   I told him I wanted a place we could play on a regular basis as we had in Coxsackie, and he was more than receptive to The James-Younger Band moving in as a semi “house” band.            

              Once we had the Evergreen gig safely booked, it was time to go back to see Augie Colao. Now, Augie was a big guy! He owned a construction company and thoroughly looked the part. I took my brother Rick with me, you know, for moral support.  We stopped by the bar on the Tuesday after that Halloween weekend gig.  I told Augie we felt we’d been cheated.  He ran through the “…people hadn’t been drinking that night” excuse again.  I told him “Look, we were so anxious for a place to play, that if you had said you wanted a hundred people who drank liquor, or a hundred who drank just scotch, we would have still said yes. But you just can’t change what you expect from us after we make the deal.”

              Once again, Augie stared.  Then he said, very slowly, “You know, this means you’ll never play in my club again?” 

              I took a deep breath and replied, “Augie, I knew that before I walked in here tonight.”

              I ran into Augie a number of times after that Tuesday night “discussion” and he was always very friendly; he once bought me a drink at Tony’s Pizzeria. And one of our James-Younger bumper stickers was still stuck to the inside of the front door to his place when it closed.  I like to think he respected that we held our ground.  Yeah. Let’s go with that.

              We were off to The Evergreen!

              We had lots of fun playing there.  For a while it was our home base, and it was like throwing a regular party almost every weekend. We would see all our old friends and make a lot of new ones.  Of course, some were better friends than others.  I was working the door one night when this guy tried to push past me without paying by saying, “It’s okay. I’m good friends with Jimmy Younger.”  

              “Really?” said I.  He nodded, smug in his insider status.

              “Sorry,” I said. “Jimmy’s not playing tonight. That’ll be three bucks.”  He begrudgingly paid.

              It was at The Evergreen that I would watch in awe as Mike wired up the band.  Besides being a great bass player, Mike McDonough was a master at cobbling equipment together - audio cables, electric wires, lamp cords, garden hose, anything and everything to get our sound to work.  And it usually did.

              It’s also where I first noticed a psychological phenomenon unique to musicians.  I’ve named it “The Expectation of Spontaneous Healing”.  Amp buzzing?  Channel on the board dying?  Mic cable shorting out?  No worries!  Nine times out of ten, at the end of the night it all got packed away. Then at the next gig I would hear, “Mmm... didn’t it do this last time?”  Yep, can’t figure why the damn thing didn’t heal itself.

              We were comfortable at The Evergreen (which was later renamed Zenon’s) - perhaps sometimes too comfortable.  I got a call one morning that our band equipment had been knocked over and damaged when a brawl broke out after we had finished playing the night before.  I was outraged.  We didn’t leave until after 4:00 A.M.  How could such a thing happen?  Then I learned that among those fighting were my lead singers, Mike and Guy, who had stayed for just one more night cap and had ended up in the thick of it. Home sweet home.

              With James-Younger working steadily, having fun and making some money, I immersed myself into promoting the band.  We already had a great poster, bumper stickers, and a press kit with bios, set lists and photos.  I ordered hats and bandanas, shirts and baseball jackets, all featuring Joe Happeny’s iconic James-Younger logo. (Unfortunately, I never got to order the James-Younger watches that Guy wanted.)  I put together a slick promotional video tape (you remember VHS!), and I would bring a portable VCR and TV to sell the band to club owners.  Now, remember, all this was the year before MTV which would be called Music Television way back then.  We sent out James-Younger Christmas cards, and that December on Albany Avenue, I rented a holiday billboard directly across from Zenon’s: “Catch the James Younger Band. Have a Happy Holiday”.  

              Looking back, 1981 was a huge year for music in the Hudson Valley.  Johnny Average and The Ulstafarians played The Surrey in Rosendale, Canyon and Onyx rocked Capricorn’s 2 in Fishkill, The Flirtations and Big Featchers packed the Rhinebeck Tavern.  Big Edsel, Paul Luke Band, Andy Gootch, Steeplechase, Annie, Northern Star - lots of good bands, lots of places to play.

              The James-Younger Band was playing every weekend. 

              We started 1981 playing everything from holiday parties to Marist College to Coleman High School’s Junior Prom.  Long John’s in uptown Kingston booked us to play Wednesday, Friday and Saturday at least once a month.  We saw a lot of our regulars there, but uptown had other bars too so there were more new faces as well.  It’s sometimes hard to remember all the people and bar traffic that frequented uptown Kingston.  

              Wednesday was a particularly busy night, and I fondly remember my Wednesday night “walking” tours with Wendell Scherer and John Thompson.  We thought of it as our civic duty to celebrate the historic uptown Kingston every Wednesday night.  We’d usually start the night at The Barnside, which was next to the Court House on Wall Street.  There was a time that The Barnside featured live music, but I guess they gave it up for wall-to-wall drinkers.  Not that I have anything against imbibing.  My friends and I had a particular fondness for their “Alabama Slammers” which we ordered in small pitchers. The thought of it still hurts my head...and teeth.  

              From The Barnside we would work our way to North Front Street and Artie’s Bar, then to The Handlebar. Sometimes there were side trips to Frog Alley and The Vineyard on Fair Street. We parked our car at the start of the night and didn’t get back into it until we were going out to breakfast.  And the bars were full of all sorts of people.  Wendell would hold court and recite haikus, while John and I drank and lusted “in our hearts” after the women exhibiting various degrees of intoxication. Sadly, the women more often seem to lust after Scherer and his Japanese verse.               

              Now The James-Younger Band was one of the choices for Wednesday night uptown entertainment and we packed Long Johns three nights a week all summer.

              One of the band’s strangest experiences was at the Rhinebeck Tavern.  Every time we played there we had a pretty good crowd.  Every time we played there we had nothing but complaints from the owner about our volume. I knew we were loud.  We all knew we were loud.  In fact, the only time I could successfully get the band to turn down was before we actually started. 

              At sound check I’d get everything beautifully balanced, the vocal mics perfectly mixed, the guitar levels all even. Three songs later, I’d be cranking the vocals to get them up and over the instruments. By the fourth song, we were vibrating glasses in the bar, the bar across the street!  

              So the owner at the Rhinebeck Tavern would keep coming up to me and screaming that we had to turn down.  Hey, I sympathized, but there was simply nothing I could do. 

              When the night was finally over, and I was expecting to be told don’t ever come back, he stunned me by saying “So, you want to book another night?” Apparently, he’d made enough money to put up with the sound level.  Or so I thought.  Next time, same thing.  “Turn down! It’s too loud!”  He started confronting Guy while he was playing once he realized I only controlled the vocals through the board.  The crowd was having a good time but the owner was going out of his mind. We finished up, he paid us and then he booked us for another night, which started the whole turn-down-I-want-to-hire-you cycle all over again.

              We finally stopped playing there; it was just too weird.

              We ended 1981 at The Chance in Poughkeepsie.  This was a dream gig.  Earlier that year in May, we had been the opening act for Papa John Creech.  Then in November, we had opened for Levon Helm.  On December 30, we finally had our own night.  There it was... our James-Younger logo on The Chance’s “Delightful December” calendar, sharing the page (and month) with Paul Butterfield, Leslie West, John Hammond and David Bromberg.  

  

              In 1982, we continued our run with a second night at The Chance on January 5^th, less than a week after our first.  In the month that followed we played at Joyous Lake, the Surrey, Capricorn’s 2, and a number of other popular music venues.  I never thought we’d take off so quickly, and I was really proud of the band, and that I had so much to do with our success. 


Next: Part 3 - Flirtin' With Disaster