We played hundreds of gigs and there's no way I'd remember everything, but I was at least sober on the gigs, so that helped with remembering. I might have a drink waiting on me right after I hit the last cymbal crash of the night but I never touched alcohol before or during a gig except maybe two or three times in three years, so I was able to remember details of the gigs and the craziness that occurred both before and after, at least for a couple of hours after.
I played sober for several reasons. For one thing my playing was sloppy enough without adding alcohol to the mix, but mainly I wanted to let the music be the buzz. A bonus I realized quickly was that it also allowed me to set an example for the kids we'd play for- that you could have a ton of fun without drinking alcohol. Anyway Greg reminded me of some things I can't believe I'd forgotten. One story involved the actual censoring of a band song. It pissed us off maybe a tiny bit at first but it ended up being hilarious and we were glad it happened.
Years before the band my friend Bruce turned me on to a song by Cab Calloway called "Reefer Man." Believe it or not it's from 1932 or so and the lyrics are amazing. Since the band was named Bud Greene, after a certain flower, it as a perfect tune to do. I'd get up front and sing it, along with a song called "I Ain't Drunk (I'm Just Drinkin')" by Albert Collins, while the percussionist (RIP, Matty) would play my drums. It was fun for me to get up and stretch my legs and those songs were crowd-pleasers for sure.
One of our friend's parents hired us to play a party. Problem was they were quite anti-drug (even though they were boozers) and their son told us they'd be really upset if we played Reefer Man. Reluctantly they asked us if we could leave the song out of our set list for the night, although it was perfectly okay to do the drinking song. Whatev...we decided to comply, but when I got up to sing "I Ain't Drunk" an idea came to me about how we might still get away with playing "Reefer Man," and I told the guys to go into it after we finished "I Ain't Drunk."
I thought back to when I was a senior in high school and had just tried grass for the first time. On Wednesdays we'd go to church for dinner and usually volleyball after. It was a big church and the room we used was the size of a gym plus a big stage and kitchen. It had lots of windows and it was three stories high. Most of the people in the church were the conservative, old-money types, and most of the kids didn't smoke pot, so our little gang came up with our own codes. If someone knocked the volleyball all the way up to the ceiling we'd yell "Roofer!" which of course was slang for "reefer, " and we'd all laugh. It occurred to me that I could change "Reefer Man" to "Roofer Man" and get away with singing it. The kids would know what it really was but the parents wouldn't gt pissed-off.
Greg told me that what was cool about it was that I made up new lyrics on the fly about roofing. I was rhyming words with "nailing" and "shingles" or whatever. Every time I'd come up with a line about roofing and sing "Funny roofer man" we'd all die laughing. I couldn't believe I'd forgotten that. I guess you had to be there but to us it was entertainment and a good example of winging it and making it work. I also couldn't believe I'd forgotten another story he told me.
For most bands who play various types of parties, having the cops called by a neighbor is just part of the deal sometimes, and we had our share. I do remember almost going to jail a few times, and since we all sang and didn't have a dedicated front man, usually the cops would do the next best thing and go after the drummer, since the drummer was usually perceived as the craziest, and sometimes that was true. Once or twice the whole band nearly got locked up and a couple more times it was just me. The reason we'd get in trouble is because usually we'd just wait until the cops split and we'd crank back up, if maybe a bit quieter. They didn't like that and if they had to come back and tell us to stop again they usually weren't in a very good mood.
We played an engagement party for a friend here in town. It was in an exclusive older neighborhood and they had a really nice pad. They were at the top of Red Mountain and they had the best view of the city you could get. We played in a huge sort of atrium/living room/greenhouse deal that was all glass. The cops came and told us to shut it down. Since I was reminded of the story I remembered that one of the cops was this huge black guy who was easily 6-4 and maybe 280 pounds or more and built like a tank. I only mention that because it plays a part in the story. They were cool about it and they left. True to form we waited a few minutes and then started back up.
The neighbor or neighbors called the cops again and they came back meaning business. They came in through a side door and came up behind us. I was counting off a tune and I literally had my arm raised up and on the way down to hit a cymbal crash to start the song when the monster cop came out of nowhere and grabbed my arm in mid-air, which startled the everloving piss out of me, and yelled "It's OVER!" Again I can't believe I'd forgotten that. For a split second I thought part of the glass ceiling had fallen on me or I'd run into some sort of invisible force field, since my arm was stopped mid-downstroke and held completely motionless, but I realized that the big cop had grabbed me. His arm compared to my skinny arm was like my arm compared to my drum stick. This time we decided to comply and call it a night. "Sorry, officer." Good times.
We also talked about something I definitely hadn't forgotten about, which was our band being mentioned in a best-selling book, but this time he told me the name of the author, and I looked up the book. It's called "On Fire" by Larry Brown. He's a retired firefighter from what was my favorite town of all to play- Oxford, Mississippi. We were involved in an incident that we didn't realize the magnitude of until we saw the front page of the newspaper the next morning.
There was a half-page photo of a fire truck spraying a massive water curtain over a gas-line fixture so it could be repaired without the danger of a spark setting off an explosion with the natural gas that was gushing and hissing out of the broken line. It seems the night before, a certain band had left the club across the street (Forrester's) in a drunken stupor to drive the three blocks back to the motel and had put the van, along with a big trailer and 1.5 tons of equipment behind it, in reverse and had plowed right over the gas meter, snapping the gas line and pinning it to the wall of a building. I'd love to read the book. It's about $19 bucks in hardcover on Amazon.
What was interesting (and dangerous) about that night was that O' had gotten out of the van to go back and investigate the rear of the van, since he knew he'd hit something. He was so wasted he didn't notice that the gas meter had been run over. What's incredible is that he thought the hissing sound was a leaking tire and decided to hop back in the van and hurry up and get to the motel and worry about it in the morning. He finished smoking a cig and he decided to thump it back in the direction of the "flat tire," which was really the sound of escaping gas. By the grace of God he didn't blow up the wall of the building, the van and everyone's balls. We were immortalized in literature.
Then Greg reminded me of something truly wild. We played in Richmond at a club in one of the oldest buildings in that part of the country. On a break Greg and I went to explore the building. We came to a brick wall at the back of the building and stopped and stared at it. We both sort of zoned-out and came to a few seconds later, with our mouths hanging open and looking at each other and shaking our heads. "What the fuck?" We both had the same experience and we knew it.
For a moment it was as if a portal had opened up in the wall and we were suddenly transported back in time to the Civil War,on a battlefield in the middle of a fight. No, we weren't on drugs but we both had the same experience. It was like we were there and it was clear as a bell. How do you explain that? We couldn't. Neither of us was a Civil War buff. In fact we both wished that the Civil War, or any war for that matter, had never happened. When we got back to the rest of the guys they could see that we were shaken. "Did y'all see a ghost?" "Well..." That was nuts. It reminded me of another incident involving phenomena involving another brick wall that I definitely hadn't forgotten and never will. Greg had forgotten this and it freaked him out to hear it again.
Every few months for our entire career we'd play a club in Sheffield, Alabama called Club 13 (or Club XIII if you prefer). It was near Muscle Shoals, home of the legendary Fame and Muscle Shoals Sound studios. David Hood is a bass player with hundreds of hit records to his credit and owner of MSS Studio. His son Pat (now Patterson), who now plays in a band called Drive By Tuckers, would come in and sit-in with us all the time. BTW there was other true Rock royalty there- the great Spooner Oldham used to come in and sit-in on keyboards. He's JJ Cale's keyboardist. JJ wrote the song "Cocaine" that Eric Clapton made famous. Small world.
One weekend when we were playing there Pat called us Saturday morning and said he was going to go to the studio (Muscle Shoal's Sound) and hang out with his dad and asked us if we wanted to join him. Of course we did. Legendary drummer Roger Hawkins was going to be there working on an edit or something but mainly they were just going to be hanging out. We were thrilled. We showed up and met David and Roger. They were as welcoming as they could be. We were in the presence of royalty but you'd never know it by the friendly way they treated us, like any friends of Pat's were plenty good enough.
We toured the studio with a definite sense of reverence. It was like we'd all been injected with some drug or something...it was probably the first and only time that the whole band was quiet and still all at once. We all slowed down. Artists of every genre from the 60s to the present day, who want that exclusive playing and vibe that some say exists only in the South, and particularly in Muscle Shoals, have recorded there, including the Stones, Aretha Franklin and Paul Simon, just off the top of my head. He told us a sad Paul Simon story that made me lose a lot of respect for him. It may have been the Graceland sessions actually, but whatever record it was Simon decided to just up and skip out on a $50,000 bill for recording the album, which was a bit of money back then. When David threatened to sue he basically said "Go ahead. My lawyers are better than yours." Asshole.
Anyway I was standing in front of a wall where most of the vocals were done and thinking about all the people who'd been standing right there, and it was like some energy wave hit me. It was dripping from the wall. It's only natural for a musician to get a vibe from that but this was so intense that it spooked me a bit. For a second I thought maybe I was about to have a seizure or something. It was a physical sensation. I know it sounds crazy, but then David Hood saw me staring blankly at the wall. He walked over and before I said a word he goes "You feel it, don't you?" "Yes" I replied.
He could tell that whatever "it" was it had hit me, and it gave me a sense of relief that I wasn't just imagining things or about to flop around on the ground or whatever. We talked about it for a minute and he told me that it was a real deal and that a few other people had felt it too. It was completely unexpected for them same as me. Actually there could be a "scientific" basis for it. According to the Laws of Physics, energy is conserved. In other words energy may be converted to another form such as heat, light, sound, etc. but it never goes away Who's to say that the wall wasn't acting like a battery and storing some form of energy that was formerly musical energy, and releasing it later in a different form, just like a normal battery. It may sound completely whack to some people and I get it, but David Hood confirmed it and he's the owner of the damn studio. I sure felt something that day, and it was truly heavy.
Whenever Greg hears something that really impresses him or freaks him out he just says "Wow" and that's what he said yesterday. I told him I'd been thinking about writing a book about our time in the band and if I did I wanted to get with O' and get together for coffee and get him to help me with some of the details. If I ever did try to organize all the crazy stories into book form it would be great to be able to get together with all four surviving members and compare stories. Greg thought it was a great idea and we decided it would be very cathartic, especially when writing what would be a sad, sad chapter about the breakup of the band, which I couldn't leave out.
That's one reason I haven't ever started writing it...that chapter would be incredibly painful to relive, and I'd really have to come up with a kickass final chapter or epilogue to bring the level back up to what would be the fun-as-shit vibe of the rest of the book. What was awesome was when I told Greg that I had a working title for the book that was based on some graffiti I'd seen on a bathroom wall, not only did he remember the actual graffiti but he remembered the town it was in. I never knew he was a fan of the same line of graffiti as I was.
While we were on the subject we discussed some other classic graffiti we'd seen and one thing I reminded him made him burst out laughing and I think it made the whole phone call worth it for him. Actually it was another line of graffiti that was next to some really bizarre graffiti on a dressing room wall somewhere. He remembered the first graffiti, as certainly did I, but he'd forgotten the one right next to it and remembering it made him howl with laughter. I guess I won't talk about the two graffitis since I'd probably have to put an explicit-content waning, but I want to. Maybe another time.
Greg really loved the idea of a book and he thought we should have several more convos to recall more incidents, and I agree. We both enjoyed having our memories jarred with forgotten band stories, and laughter is the best medicine. He even came up with a creative way that I could arrange the chapters- by state, and I think that's a great idea. Although I can clump things into early, middle and latter days, I'm not perfect with chronological order, so that might be a cool way to arrange the book. Another reason I haven't done it is that relatively few people know who we were and so who'd buy it, but the stories would be honest and hilarious and at times truly extraordinary.
I've told many of the Bud Greene stories in this and other blogs, and the ones I related here, while funny to us anyway, are just the beginning, and certainly the milder stories. I told Greg that we were very fortunate to have done the band when we did. The economy was still strong, it was pre-911, people supported good music and had the money to pay for it, there wasn't rampant streaming, uploading, downloading and stealing of music like there is today, the general outlook of the county was overall mostly-positive still, and for many other reasons. We really had amazing fans too, and all over the place. Every band will say their fans are the best but we met some remarkable people, and quite a few are my friends to this day. There may have been some romantic encounters for the band members but that's another story. Stories.
If we make it though the current pandemic we've just entered maybe it will be time to write the book. There's talk of a Bud Greene reunion, and the main reason it didn't happen this past holiday season is that Greg lives out West. Last November a bunch of us went to see a guy I've played in a couple of great bands with- Bert Cotton, when he was playing here in town. My friend James was there and he was in the band that more or less became Bud Greene- the Dollar-Seven Band, or $1.07. Fun fact: they were named after a price sticker on a loaf of bread, if that says anything about the era it was. There was only one original member from 1.07, O', but technically it was a continuation of the same band. There were a lot of Bud Greene fans there to see Bert play, and when word of a possible Bud Greene reunion got around there was really a buzz about it.
A bass player named Chris and I replaced James and the original bass player and drummer. We dropped the front-guy idea and we all split the singing duties, which was nice. A band that became two bands...and twice-named after quirky things- a price sticker on a loaf of bread, and pot. I've always loved ambiguous band names that don't automatically reveal your deal. For those keeping score and old enough to remember, The Bevnaps (a rotating cast of characters) begat $1.07 which begat Bud Greene.
Before I go I should probably tell a Chris story again. I've told it before but it illustrates life on the road, and how bands generally come up with things to amuse themselves and fight "Hurry up and wait" syndrome, as well as Chris' personality. He was a great bass player and he could really sing too. The last bass player didn't sing so Chris being a great vocalist was a bonus, and the reason we didn't get a front guy. He could really sing the shit out of several styles while keeping it ultra-steady on the bass, but overall he was a very mild-mannered dude. We adored him as a player and a person, but much to our dismay he abruptly decided to leave the band after about six months, which is yet another story. It turns out that we were a bit too wild for his tastes, and this story illustrates that perfectly. We broke him in in a hurry...maybe too much of one.
We'd played a couple of gigs in town just to get him warmed up (it was his fist band, and maybe last for all I know) and then did our first gig out of town. It was in-state and maybe a 100-mile drive, and nothing like the marathon trips to Virginia and elsewhere, but we wanted to ease him into it. The previous bass player, Eric, filled in a couple of shows until we got Chris, so we had a couple of gigs under our belts but this was Chris' first real band. We were playing in the lounge of a Best Western I think, and a couple of rooms came with the contract. Just to make sure we had more than enough time and so as not to make Chris feel rushed in any way we left early. We rolled into town around noon, had a bite, set up our gear and retired to one of the rooms. It was maybe four o'clock.
We planned to take the extra time to go over song arrangements and such, find harmony parts for Chris to sing, answer any questions he might have, and find out what songs he might want to sing and bring to the table. Speaking of songs I have to mention that Chris turned me onto NRBQ, a band I DEARLY love, and for that I'll be eternally grateful. Anyway by default it was also a bit of a meet-and-greet for Chris. O' and I hadn't even met him before the first gigs in town, and he didn't really want to "hang" after the gig like we did, so we'd barely gotten to know him. He was a little nervous maybe but luckily he had a very strong and very quirky sense of humor, which I would think would be necessary for being in most any band, and we had him laughing and more at ease pretty quickly. He was a really nice guy and he'd passed my "bass-player hookup" test with flying colors and we already liked him, but that first road trip set the tone for him, and I think it scared him a bit.
For the first hour or so we did what we were supposed to do. We talked about sections of this or that song that maybe still needed some ironing and things like that. We'd already found a common song for Chris to sing. He had his parts down and it was the rest of us who needed to do some work. Things were going smoothly and Chris was loosening up and we were having a big time. We were all excited about the new band but I was on Cloud 9. O' and Greg had been doing the band for a couple of years but the steady, travelling thing was something I hadn't regularly done. I knew that I was going to be playing music and meeting people and seeing the world for the foreseeable future and I was thrilled. Oh, and I'd be paid really well to do it.
There wasn't much we needed to work on because Chris was really smart about music and knew where to fit in, so we were just telling stories or whatever, and pretty soon O' and I started to get a little bored. We'd all get bored from time to time but it would usually hit O' and me first. Greg was a little more reserved and less juvenile-acting that O' and I. He was extremely smart and funny and he could hang with anybody if he wanted to, but he was generally calmer. Chris was stating to relax and get with the program but what happened next made his eyes get big.
O' and I would look at each other sometimes and without a word we knew it was time to stir things up a little bit. Hurry Up and Wait Syndrome, or HUAWS, is sort of a bored, prickly sensation that's occasionally a tad unsettling, if you don't come up with something fun to do. If you do it's no problem but if you just sit there it'll dive you nuts. Your brain knows something fun is going to happen but it doesn't realize that it's still a few hours away. You get jacked early on the adrenaline but it's not time to play yet. You're all dressed up with nowhere to go as it were. I hate playing with people who show up to the gig drunk, but to be fair I can see needing a drink to fight HUAWS if all you're doing is sitting around. In fact I could see putting away half a bottle. Sadly some people took that route, while the smarter ones found something useful to do, like warming up or doing some stretches or whatever. In a big city there would be museums, cool record stores, nice restaurants and such, but in a small town you had to create your own entertainment, and we got good at it. Boredom mostly wasn't an issue. We usually took care of the problem with reefer and fireworks.
Out came the pipe and the bud. Chris declined. It wasn't that he didn't ever smoke pot, but he was still going over parts of a couple of songs and making charts and whatnot, and didn't want to muddy the waters. After a few bowls Greg was fine but it didn't take the edge off enough for O' and me so I went to the van and grabbed the bag of fireworks. I could see the look of alarm on Chris' face but he didn't say a word. I'm not sure if he thought I was actually planning to shoot fireworks inside the hotel room or not, but I was. We kept a well-stocked bag of fireworks and I was going through everything to see what we had, as Chris' eyes got bigger. I didn't want to shoot anything that put out tons of sparks and start a fire, or blow the shit out of the furniture, but I didn't want anything too wimpy. I selected a dozen Whistling Moon Chasers, which were high-powered bottle rockets that made a loud whistle as they flew up in the air, and had a nice loud bang. O' smiled and nodded in approval.
I reckon Chris realized that I was really going to do it when I opened the desk drawer and took out the Gideon's Bible. I might have been crazy but I wasn't a heathen. I wasn't about to blow up the Good Book. I think Chris was relieved to know that I wouldn't do anything like that, but at the same time it let him know that I was really about to shoot fireworks inside, and his look of deep concern turned to one of utter disbelief. I'm sure he was thinking "This crazy fuck's really gonna do it!" but still he didn't say a word. He was probably in a mild state of shock. I couldn't help but chuckle to myself. Bless his heart.
I picked up a rocket, lit the fuse, calmly dropped it into the drawer and closed it. Chris and Greg were halfway across the room but O' and I were sitting right by the desk, smiling and waiting. Greg was already used to that kind of shit and jaded to O's and my antics. He had a grin on his face but Chris looked like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. The rocket took off and made a slightly-muffled whistle and then a nice "THOOMP" when it exploded. It was probably muffled just enough by being inside the drawer that it didn't get the cops called, but it was still pretty damn loud, especially for being in a motel room.
Every time one would go off O' and I would laugh like little kids. I'm laughing right now actually because I'm remembering opening the drawer after each shot to reload, and smoke and tiny bits of paper would come billowing out, which made us laugh even harder. After I'd shot about ten of them Chris finally spoke. "Umm...do you guys always do stuff like this?" I was trying to hold back laughter and I said "Well, sometimes...kinda...well...yeah, usually." "I see." We did do stuff like that and I couldn't lie to him. He'd be finding out anyway. Way crazier things happened during Chris' time in the band but I'm not sure he got over that initial shock. Yes it was childish and it left gnarly burn marks in the drawer and I doubt the management was very pleased when they found out about it, but at least we weren't destroying the room, and it was an excellent way to fight Hurry Up and Wait Syndrome. And I never blew up a Gideon's Bible.
Maybe I should start on the book. It would be a total blast. I know of four guys anyway who'd read it. THE END.
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