An FTV Special Tribute – RIP Mike

 

     I just found out that my old bass playing electronic wizard buddy Mike Kesti passed away at his home in Oroville, CA on April 1, 2026.  My condolences to his family – I attached the included photo of us from 1975 that I attached to my memorial note sent to for his obit.

     Mike and I first met during our sophomore year in high school.  We (Gene Betts, Mike, and I) were involved in our high school musical production Bye Bye Birdie.  Playing drums in the pit orchestra, I had already spent a month rehearsing with the other musicians in the high school music room before we started assembling the full production at Kaufman Auditorium (at our old Jr High school, Graverate).  Gene was doing prop and production work on stage and Mike was an acoustic guitar playing member during the big production numbers on stage.  

     Gene and I had played music together at his house a few times (his brother had a nice Gibson SG but Gene could not take it out of the house (yet) so I would bring over a cymbal and snare drum so we could jam).  When the pit orchestra bass player and I started playing snippets of songs waiting for rehearsals to start, Mike began coming over with his acoustic and joined in.  After a while, it became like a version of ‘stump the band’ when cast members would ask, “Do you know Inna gadda da vida?” (or something like that) and we would launch into what we knew of it.  This went on until the director asked us to stop so she could get things going.

     The three of us plus Mike Cleary, the lead singer for The French Church, officially played real music together at the cast party held at the the Chalet Supper Club.  We had a blast and before the night was over, the three of us made plans to get together in the summer and play some tunes.  This was the beginning of The Twig – but our first working name was ‘The Bight’ (which we got tired of spelling and explaining it was a joke from the saying, ‘that bites’).  We were a true garage band (okay, basement band) with Gene finally getting to use his brother’s guitar and amp, Mike playing his bass (not sure he had his Fender Bassman yet) though a homemade speaker bottom he built in the housing of an old and very heavy wooden TV enclosure.  I had my trusty silver sparkle Ludwig kit (the ‘Ringo’ kit) and a couple of old mics Mr Electronics scrounged up.  A classmate (and old friend of both Gene and Mike – June Swanson, nee:  DeRoche) was at many of our practices and early gigs – she was working at Brookridge Heights when my mom first moved there.  June and and I had a blast recalling the days of the band.  She liked to hear my mother tell the story of how she had to move her knicknacks away from the edge of her dresser because Mike’s bass notes would rattle the whole house.

     We spent the next twelve months learning songs, playing the occasional party (a Red Owl grocery store workers party and some teen things at Messiah Lutheran Church).  When we knew we were serious about becoming a gigging band, we worked a regular rehearsal schedule around Mike’s job at the hospital kitchen and Gene’s job at the Erickson gas station.  Both were in need of cash to upgrade their equipment which we did in bits and pieces as we went.  I did not have any regular employment and the drums were paid for by countless hours of helping my dad cut and sell firewood on the weekends.  We also played many youth services at Messiah Lutheran church – it had great acoustics and we enjoyed helping out.  This means we can say we played in the same venue as the Rolling Stones who did an acoustic version of Amazing Grace there years later when their long time road manager Chuch McGee was laid to rest

     The first true paying job we got after we joined the local Musician’s Union was an outdoor event for Northern Michigan University’s Band Camp.  We were hired to play for an hour which was good because we only had an hour worth of songs.  When we were done, the campers  pleaded with their counselors to let us play longer so we repeated our whole set list (minus the drum solo in Toad/Born to be Wild).  We knew we had work to do so we began looking into a real PA and buckled down to learn enough songs to do longer gigs.  We played at a church youth gathering in Gladstone, a fundraising affair  (in a tent) for the church at the U.P. State Fair in Escanaba and set our sights on playing our first real high school dance in the fall of 1970.

     We visited the local electronics store and purchased some good mics while Mike ordered us an affordable set of PA speakers from an electronics catalog.  It was powered by the PA amp Mike had built from a kit.  One gig later, we found the speakers were not going to cut it so we all pitched in and bought two better speaker cabs from Marquette Music, added treble horns Mike had found, and we were in business.  Our final set up had me in the middle with four Fender bottoms (two Bassman and two Showman) on either side.  Gene was on my right, Mike on my left and they each had a bottom on either side so they could hear each other.  It also gave us a bigger sound when playing large rooms like gymnasiums.  Our elaborate stage lighting consisted of two four foot fluorescent bulbs (red and green) placed alongside the drum kit.  The last professional touch came courtesy of the printing class Mike was taking – he made up business cards for The Twig to distribute during gigs.

     From August of 1970 to June of 1971, The Twig played enough gigs that I never did have to get a paying job.  School dances (high school and junior high), frat parties, and even a couple of bar gigs kept us playing while we expanded our set list to accommodate four hour nights.  We used our dad’s (Mike and mine) pickup trucks to haul equipment and were lucky enough to never have had a vehicle or major equipment breakdown during our gigging time.  The largest crowds we played in front of were at the annual High School Talent Show (2,000) and a dance when Marquette hosted the annual Community School Olympics (4,000).  The last job we played was for a dance to open the new youth center in Munising after which life went on without us getting to play together again.  I ended up going to work in the kitchen at the Huron Mountain Club later in June.  I lost touch with both Gene (before he eventually moved to California) and Mike (who was Michigan Tech bound).

     During the spring semester of my freshman year at NMU, I hooked up with a band composed of three airmen from KI Sawyer AFB.  When I joined, they were called Cloudy and Cool.  None of them could join the local AF of M but as I was a card carrying member, I became the Union’s ‘leader of record’ and band booker.  This allowed the newly renamed ‘Knockdown’ to charge union wages and play in joints that would not hire non-union bands.  Knockdown went on until May of 1974 when our guitar player (Ray Bennett, the human juke box) mustered out of the Air Force.  The end of the band worked well for me – after spending two years with them (including two summers commuting back and forth from the Huron Mountain Club for gigs), I was going to  work at the NMU Field Station near Munising and would not have been able to play during the summer of 1974.

     As fate would have it, I returned to town in August and happened to catch the last gig for Sustone (Marquette’s answer to the horn band Chicago) at the Backdoor bar located at the Marquette Mountain ski chalet.  Talking to their guitarist Barry Seymour led to us jamming to see if we could get a new band together.  We added my old Knockdown bass player to the mix.  We added another guitar player and when it became obvious that the bass player was not working out, we wondered where we could find a new one.  Barry and I ran into Mike at the same Backdoor ski chalet bar when we were checking out another band. 

      Barry was a few years younger than Mike and I.  He remembers jamming with The Twig along with another guitarist.  Soon after The Twig disbanded, Mike picked me up to go over for a fun little jam with future Sunstone drummer Tom Lyons and Barry, so we had a little history with him before we all  met up again five years later.  Mike had just returned from an aborted attempt to play in a band in Toledo, Ohio and was just starting work at NMU’s Public TV station.  He was excited to join Sledgehammer and made an immediate impact by designing our new PA (the speakers we built in my dad’s workshop while Mike (again) built the PA amp).   

     My job commitment at the NMU Field Station took me out of town on fall weekends into mid-October.  We couldn’t book gigs yet so we filled that time with regular band practices in my folk’s basement.  Once my weekends were free, we began booking jobs at the usual places:  dances, frat parties, bars, a couple of weekend road trips out of town, and even one wedding reception (even though our band business cards said ‘We Don’t Do Polkas’).  Barry brought in his love of The Doobie Brothers, BTO, Eagles, and Steely Dan.  I contributed some of the older stuff that Mike and I had done back in The Twig with second guitarist Lindsay adding Joe Walsh, Hendrix, and Jethro Tull tunes to the mix.  Mike was big into ZZ Top and the Grateful Dead but for some reason, the Dead never did crack our playlist (Barry guesses it was because we weren’t exactly a jam band).  Mike added floor monitors to our PA and this allowed us to do justice to the harmony parts Barry arranged, especially for the Eagles and Doobie Brothers songs.

     Sledgehammer recorded our live set at the Four Seasons Lanes and Lounge in April of 1975.  Mike put a friend of his on the mixing board for the night and then took the master tape and made copies for each of us.  I eventually converted mine to CD before the tape began to show its age.  It is one of my favorite pieces of band memorabilia from my playing days.  I later used what I learned from Mike to make a similar recording of Easy Money, my last gigging band (recorded at the Ontonagon VFW at the second to the last job I played as a regular member back in the fall of 1978).  I sometimes wish we had been able to make a recording of The Twig back in the day, but Sledgehammer Live from the Four Seasons Lanes and Lounge and Easy Money Live – Taking it to the VFW (yes, kind of a Doobie Brothers ripoff) contain many elements of what Gene, Mike, and I did together to remind me of those days.  

     RIP to both Mike and Gene – we had a lot of good times together and I am happy to say the lessons we learned together in The Twig carried on as we all continued in the music biz.  Even though we were not in contact with each other, we made some great memories together.

 

Top Piece Video:  Mike loved ZZ Top and he and I traded vocals on this burner – the frat boys loved this tune!