FTV: Knockdown Gigs

From the Vaults:  Knockdown Gigs

 

     When my high school band, The Twig, broke up the summer after graduation, I made the conscious decision to not get into another band until after my freshman year at Northern Michigan University.  After working at the Huron Mountain Club in the summer of 1971, I knew working there the next summer would complicate booking band jobs.  The plan changed in the second semester when I happened to see a card on a campus bulletin board that said, “Keyboard player seeking band members.”  I called the number and arranged to have a little introductory jam in our basement across the street from the NMU campus.  I can’t even remember the guy’s name, but we got together a couple of times, once with a guitar player who wasn’t ready to be in a band experience-wise.  About the time I thought, “This isn’t going anywhere,” the keyboard guy called and said, “I found a band that needs a drummer and a keyboard player.  They are coming over tomorrow to audition us.” 

     It turned out, the three guys who came over were all stationed at K.I.Sawyer Air Force Base.  They were gigging under the name Cloudy & Cool and I never did think to ask what happened to their drummer.  We played some tunes and they even helped the keyboard guy hump his stuff outside before they came back in to get their equipment.  Ray, the guitar player and leader, said, “Look, we don’t need a keyboard player, we need a drummer.  I work with that guy’s mother at K.I. Sawyer and she mentioned her son and a drummer were trying to start a band.   If you want the job, it is yours and I will just tell his mother it didn’t work out.”  I felt a little guilty about this turn of events, but not guilty enough to not choose an established band over starting one from scratch.  I never did see the keyboard guy again which was good and bad.  Good because I didn’t have to explain how I got into the band he brought over to my house and he didn’t.  The bad?   He had borrowed my George Harrison All Things Must Pass songbook, which I never got back.

     Cloudy & Cool had a couple of regular gigs they did.  Ray was an Air Force Sargent so they had a standing three night gig every month at the base NCO club.  The other was at a dive bar in Negaunee that only paid $20 per man a night (the going Musician Union’s rate started at $25 per man, but they were not a Union band (yet)).  As soon as we started filling up our weekends, we

played one last Saturday night at the dive bar and toasted this drab place good bye with a few too many beers.  This marked the first and last time I actually got drunk playing a gig.  Even though we knew we were never coming back to this dive again, my sense of professionalism said, “Never do that again.”  The other guys had played there enough, they were glad to see it in the rearview mirror (which gives you a good idea what a dive it was).  

     The three guys in the Air Force were not allowed to join the Musician’s Union so Ray asked me if I would be willing to do the band bookings.  As a dues paying member of the AFM Local 218, I could pay the fees needed to book jobs and it opened the way for us to get even more gigs.  A lot of places would not book a band unless they were in the Union so I registered the band and quickly went from being the new drummer to the booker and calendar keeper.  God bless my dear mother because she ended up taking a lot of my messages when people started calling about hiring us.  I typed up a three month calendar that I hung by the phone so mom saved me a lot of call backs just by looking at the entries and telling callers, “No, I am sorry, that weekend is booked.”  

     Even with her playing gatekeeper, I had a few people call back and offer more money to dump a gig so we could play at their wedding or what-not.  I would always use the same tactic to let these people down gently by saying, “If we took more money from someone else and dumped your event, how would you feel about it?  How long would we get bookings with a reputation for dumping signed contracts?”  That usually ended the conversation and even if they went away mad, at least they went away.

    With the new start, we decided it was time for a new name.  Lee the bass player came up with ‘The Knockdown Party Band’ which the other three of us agreed to, without ‘The’ and the ‘Party Band’ parts.  As the summer of 1972 approached, I went to the new kitchen manager at the Huron Mountain Club (Ted had been the head chef the summer before) and told him I would not be able to work there and play band jobs.  Ted asked, “What if your day off was Saturday?”  I said we had an entire summer of jobs mostly on Fridays and Saturdays with a few Thursday, Friday, and Saturday weekends.”  Ted thought about it and offered a compromise:  “If you work Thursday and Friday evening shifts until 7 p.m., could you still get to Marquette in time for the band jobs?”  I said, “That could work!”  God bless Ted for thinking outside the box.

     Thus began my two summers of shuttling back and forth between the HMC north of Big Bay and band jobs all over Marquette County.  My dad let me keep the equipment in his truck during the week so I would drive home, swap vehicles, do the gig, swap back, and then drive the 40 miles back to the club.  Friday nights I was able to sleep at home and thankfully the Sunday breakfast shift started an hour later than the rest of the week.  With a nap or two to compensate for late night drives, I washed dishes by day and played music by night.  There were many mornings I would wake up and have to think a minute before I knew where I was.  Driving with blaring music, wide open windows, and a lot of caffeine got me through two summers of burning the candle at both ends.

    The three night NCO gigs were always fun.  Thursday nights were usually slow unless there was a party of some sort going on.  The crowd picked up on Friday and Saturday nights and it was great to not have to break down the equipment each night.  As the NCO house band, we were booked for a lot of holiday parties.  Ray lived on base so those were the only dates I didn’t line up.  He would call me to get them on the calendar and I would send the contracts to the NCO Club manager to be signed.  New Year’s Eve was always a great gig at Sawyer because they hired two bands.  The first one played from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. and we came on at 11 p.m. and played until 3 a.m.  NYE was also a double pay night so we picked up $100 each for our part of the show.

     The first year we did NYE, the other band had come in from Wisconsin.  They were a pretty good band but were a little shocked when they found out what NYE Union wages were in Michigan.  Our opening song at the NCO Club was always My Girl by the Temptations.  The other band had loaded their equipment and were standing by the door when we started our set.  As Lee played the familiar ‘Da dum-dum, Da dum-dum’ opening bass line, we got a standing ovation from the packed house.  I made eye contact with the other band’s drummer and gave him a little shoulder shrug.  He shook his head in disbelief and they departed for wherever they were going to spend the night, no doubt wondering why we got such a reaction.

     We had almost the same scenario for NYE the next year.  A different band opened the evening and they did a fine job.  We came on and did My Girl and we watched their expression change when we again got a standing ovation.  The twist in this gig came right after we did the midnight countdown.  The manager came over and said, “The bathroom sewer is backing up so we have to close.  Here is your check, pack up and go home.”  We sat down at our corner table to have a beer before packing up.  Ray started playing his acoustic guitar so we had a little sing along going until the manager came back and said, “You have to stop.  No one is leaving because they think you are going to start playing again.”  

     We packed up and instead of playing until 3 a.m., we went home.  By 2:30 a.m., I was in Marquette at the Sambo’s Restaurant having breakfast.  The waitress asked, “Why aren’t you at a party?” so I told her about our aborted gig.  She bought my breakfast and gave me a handful of free coffee tokens.  I left her a good tip because I didn’t have the heart to tell her we still got paid in full for a whole hour of music.

     One of our strangest gigs by far wasn’t a bad job, just an odd ‘one of a kind thing’ that happened at the NCO club in the middle of the winter.  As we were finishing the second set, a group of long haired non-military types came in and pulled up chairs at the corner table next to the stage.  We ambled over to have a seat on our break and one of them asked, “Who is in charge of your bookings?”  This was not a usual question one fields during a gig, but I dutifully responded, “Well, I guess that would be me.”  With a touch of tension in his voice, he asked, “What is the idea of jumping our job?”  Now I was totally confused.  “What do you mean, ‘jumping your job’?  We have been here since Thursday so this is the third night of our regularly scheduled weekend at the NCO Club.  I have the contract right here if you would like to see it.”  The last part was a lie but I figured the club manager would have his copy if I needed to prove it beyond just my word.  “Besides, aren’t you getting here a little late for a gig that starts at 9 p.m.?  Where are you coming from, anyway?”

     The guy blinked a couple of times and then explained they had just arrived from DETROIT.  He said their manager had not given them the right information on how far north they had to go so that is why they were so late.  “What kind of directions did he give you?” I asked.  He said we were playing at the NCO Club at an Air Force Base near Houghton.”  The lightbulb over my head came on and the puzzle was solved.  “Do you think he may have said ‘Houghton Lake’?  Wurtsmith AFB in Oscoda is near Houghton Lake.  Do you think that is where he booked you?”  His face fell and he went to conference with the other three guys in the band.  They pulled out their road map and were pointing and gesticulating like mad so I walked over and pointed to Houghton Lake.  They pointed at Houghton.  I explained they were still 100 miles from there and there were no other Air Force Bases in the U.P. besides K.I. Sawyer.  

     The spokes-guy went to make a phone call.  Predictably, he was a bit deflated when he came back.  “When we get back, we are getting a new manager,” he said rather despondently.  “Is there any place nearby where we can get rooms for the night and some food?”  We bought them a round of drinks and gave them directions to Marquette.  I suppose we could have offered them a chance to play a few tunes just to see if they were any good, but they were in no mood to hang around.  To this day I wonder what the discussion with their manager was like when they got home.  Things like this would not happen today with GPS.  Right?

     Knockdown was a busy band.  Competition for wedding bands was so fierce in the early 1970s that we even found ourselves booking receptions on Thursdays and Fridays.  If you name a community or church hall in Marquette County, I will lay odds we played a gig there.  My dad enjoyed me asking, “Do you know where such and such a hall is?”  Back in his detective days, he drove to or through every little burg in the U.P. so I never had trouble getting to gigs.  St. Joseph’s Hall in Ishpeming and Timms Hall in Negaunee were particularly nice for wedding receptions.  They had plenty of space and passable acoustics for large rooms, both keys to making a live band sound good.  The Crossroads Bar between Marquette and K.I.Sawyer was okay but after a while, we began turning down bookings there.  Many nights at the Crossroads  we would get an extra break.  When the fists began to fly and the combatants (and most of the crowd) moved the action into the parking lot, we would put down our instruments and get a beer.

     There were nights when the first set would be painfully slow.  Long before the MTV Unplugged show debuted, we decided to learn a few acoustic numbers to at least entertain ourselves with when nobody was dancing.  With my rudimentary guitar skills letting me come to the stage front, we did spot on versions of some Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young tunes.  It was fun and different (but it was a little strange to play Ohio at the NCO club).  Playing the Christmas party for the staff of the Marquette Montgomery Wards store, it was surprisingly dead.  We broke out our acoustic schtick until Cita promised she would get them to dance (Cita was the store manager’s wife and my boss when I worked for the Geography Department office at NMU) .  The rest of the gig was fine (except for hauling the Hammond B-3 organ down from the second floor when the freight elevator was shut down).

     If we thought the NCOs could be wild, they couldn’t hold a candle to the parties we played at the Officer’s Club.  They always started with a nice dinner and some easy listening music in the first set, but by the end of the night, they made Animal House look tame.  I vowed to never drink green beer after one St. Patrick’s Day celebration we played at.  I happened to be in the restroom when the young officer who won the green beer chugging contest came in and decorated the walls and floor.  I can’t even say if the Irish practice this rite on the day after St. Urho’s Day (and no, Finns do not drink purple beer), but after that party, I swore I never would (and haven’t).

     When I joined the band, I believe the keyboard player’s name was Brad.  Not long after, he transferred to the AFB in Thule, Greenland.  The AF boys always said this is where you got sent if you really goofed up on the job, but if my memory serves me, Brad wanted to go there.  We had a high school kid (and Air Force brat) named Nick who filled in for a while.  He was followed up by a pre-med student named Dave Waters I met at NMU.  Dave was a serious student who would study chemistry during our band breaks.  He did become a doctor just like his father.  Much later, I met and worked with his brother, former White Pine and Ontonagon science teacher Jim Waters.

     Our funniest gig moment happened when a rather short woman who was well ‘into her cups’ (as the Brits would say) kept tugging on Dave’s pant leg.  She really wanted us to play Please Release Me and poor Dave was on the closest side of the stage to her table.  This went on for most of our third set.  In exasperation, Dave finally looked down at her and said, “Okay, okay lady.  We will play it, just let go of my dang leg” (although it may have been a little more forceful wording).  When we stopped laughing and wiped the tears from our eyes, Ray ‘the human jukebox’ kicked it off.  Ray grew up playing in a C&W band so he knew it well.  When Dave inquired why he waited so long to rescue him, Ray laughed and said,  “Are you kidding?  That was a great floor show – her husband and their table were laughing their butts off watching you trying to politely brush her off.”  Dave’s studies would eventually keep him from playing more jobs with us.  The story of Rich, or last and longest serving keyboard player, will have to wait for another day.

     I played in Knockdown for two full years and we averaged two gigs per week with exactly two weekends missed (both during the Christmas holiday).  That meant we played between 170 to 200 band jobs.  When we got together, The Twig played and gigged together for a little over three years.  We only played about 30 paying jobs in the last year we were together.  With this much source material, I no doubt will need to revisit some of the other notable Knockdown adventures in the future.  In the meantime, I will let it rest until we catch up with some of the fun we had in band number three, Sledgehammer (which will be our topic in a couple of months).

Top Piece Video:  Okay, My Girl was an NCO favorite and it is buried in this video, but who could resist the Four Tops and the Temptations on the same stage sharing their hits?  Not me!!