Last Modified May 10, 2002
Over the years, I've owned a lot of equipment which cost a lot of money. However, I haven't had a lot of money at any point in my life. I've had to work hard and earn everything I've received or bought. That especially includes my musical equipment.
I've already told how I came upon my pedal steel. I'm very proud of it and it will probably be the only one I'll ever own. It very nearly got trashed one night, however.
I was playing with Midnight Special in Bountiful, Utah, at an Elks Lodge or something very much like one. There was no stage, so we set up at one end of the banquet hall on the floor which had been cleared out so people could dance. As I usually did, I put my Peavey monitor in front of my pedal steel so I could hear it best while I was sitting down. It fit neatly in front and on the floor, and it's pyramidal form pointed the speaker right at me.
So, we're playing and people are dancing. It's somewhat discomforting when the dancers' heads are higher than yours. It's even more disconcerting when they bump into your equipment.
I was sitting at my steel and suddenly a pretty large woman danced into my monitor. I'd like to think that she was so transported by the music and that she didn't realize just where she was in relationship to the band, but in retrospect, it's more likely that she had gotten that great back end of hers going in one direction and couldn't stop it before it ran into something.
She backed into the monitor which stopped her feet and her rear end sat right down between the two front legs of my pedal steel and on my right foot which was on my volume pedal. She was stuck with her legs hanging over the monitor and her butt in between the two front legs of my steel. The volume was now wide open and my amp would scream if I let go of the strings. I wanted to scream because she was crushing the life out of my right foot! And I immediately notice that there is something very wrong with the way my pedal steel looks.
It took three people to pull her out of my steel. I stood up, when I was able, and hobbled around to survey the damage. The speaker was fine, but the foot pedal rods on my steel were bent way over to the side, pulling the pedals way up into the air. My volume pedal, an Ernie Ball model, was also fine. The biggest problem was that she had broken one of the front legs of the pedal steel, actually separated the chrome tube from the aluminum screw on the top that screws into the bottom of the guitar itself.
I worked the two pieces back together, taped them with a musician's best friend, duct tape, and tried to reassemble my pedal steel. It held together okay for the rest of the night, but I needed a new leg.
The next week, I tried to get a new leg. Everyone told me I would have to order it from the factory. In the meantime, I drilled through the two pieces and pilited a screw into them to hold them together. It worked. When the leg finally came, I immediately noticed that it was not the same style as the legs I had. It did not seem to be made quite as well. If the fat lady had hit this new one, it probably would have broken in half. I told the music store that it wouldn't work for me and to return it. I still use the leg I repaired
I bought my first real PA system in the late 70s or early 80s, I don't remember when exactly, but I was preparing to leave Saddle Boogie because I had had just about enough of Marlow Swenson's shenanigans. I wanted to be ready at a moment's notice to leave and start my own band. I sunk about $1000 into the PA.
My first, and only, PA was a Kustom 8-channel board with 100 watts for the mains and 100 watts for the monitors. It had full patching capability, and you could send the monitors out to an external amp and use both 100-watt amps to run stereo mains. The board and amp had natural finish wood sides and color coded knobs. The cabinets were mid-sized, with an adequate bass bin and port on the bottom, a horn on top, and a pair of tweeters mounted between the woofer and horn. The woofer, while receded in the cabinet, was bare with no grille clothe or screen. I put casters on them because they weighed in at about 60 pounds and that was a bit much to lug around.
That PA served me very well under heavy road conditions for about 15 years. Then I sold it to a group that was just starting out.
The first time the PA was used was when I was still gigging with Saddle Boogie. We had a job in Sandy, Utah, that was in a club with little stage area and our main PA wouldn't fit there. I volunteered my new speakers and we put them up on a couple of stands to get them at head level for the dance floor. They performed admirably throughout the weekend.
When we were packing up, I was standing there holding my fairly new Gretsch Beast 5000 in its case when I noticed two guys getting into it on one side of the dance floor. I had a bad feeling. One of the guys grabbed the other by the shirt lapels and started pushing him across the dance floor—directly at one of my PA speakers! I could just see them hitting the speaker and one of them getting his head shoved through the speaker cone or the whole thing being knocked off the stand it was on. I had to think fast.
With them half way across the dance floor, I used my finest bowling form and sent my guitar case sliding across the floor in an intercept course. The guy who was being pushed hit the case and fell to the floor with the other guys still attached to him. They looked like they were having bad sex.
The fight broke up immediately and my case was no worse for the wear.
Another time, while The Full House Band was playing for a picnic in West Jordan where there were lots of kids, I noticed that the brightness was gone from one of the PA speakers. I thought there might be some kind of problem, so I checked all the connections, made sure the amp was set right and finally, took a look at the speakers.
Kids. Gotta love 'em. There, carefully shoved in to be inconspicuous, was a hot dog crammed down the throat of the horn. You can't believe how hard it is to get hot dog out of a horn.
Yet one more time, while playing with the Mad Czeck in Hailey, Idaho, I was tearing down the equipment and sitting on the "shelf" in front of the woofer was a stack of beer cans that could have easily be pushed right into the cone or spilled and damped the woofer. I was incensed and decided to find a way to protect my investment. I went to a local hardware store and bought some screen door screen and set about the task of dismantling the entire speakers and putting my own nearly invisible grille on them. It worked like a charm, and most who saw the speakers would have never known that they weren't built that way.
It lasted many years under regular use and only experienced two failures: one when it was knocked off of one of the cabinets, I think by Jon Hall accidentally, and broke a reverb spring, and one when I lent it to country superstar Patty Loveless's ex-husband, Terry.
Terry was never been able to get over the fact that Patty left him, at least not as long as I knew him. He put together the best band that I played in during the past 18 years, but his inability to deal with Patty's success destroyed the band. Called Straight Up, the band featured a variety of players, but the best group was Terry, Richard "Ace" Philbeck, "Little" Bill Allison and myself. We could play anything.
After Straight Up went straight down the tubes due to Terry's drinking and drug abuse, we all went our separate ways. Terry kept playing and one day, called me up and said he had a gig and needed a PA. Terry owned his own, but it was a monster that required an electrical engineer to hook up properly. Needless to say, selfless man that I am, I said he could use mine since I wasn't using it at the time. All Terry needed was the control board with the amps internal.
It was gone for a few days, and when Terry brought it back, He told me that it didn't work right for him and he thought there might be something wrong with it. When I checked it out, I discovered that he had put a 20 amp fuse in the 3 amp fuse socked and one of the power boards was totally fried. It cost me $100 for the replacement and I installed it myself. Terry graciously offered to pay for half.
One final thing about my PA.
When I moved back East from Idaho, I and my family did it pioneer style. We sold everything we owned that would not fit into a Ford F-100 Econoline van and a Chevy truck bed that had been converted into a trailer. That is quite a feat. I managed to hang on to the PA and most of my band equipment, but sacrificed a wonderful blonde Fender Bandmaster head (that I wish I still had) and the twin 12 speaker cabinet I built for it. The speakers got tied to the tow bar on the trailer and the head got to ride inside. Fortunately, it did not rain through the entire trip. As long as I could get my musical equipment to my new home, I felt I could handle this pioneer stuff.
My only real PA was a far cry from my first attempt at one, a Radio Shack amplifier and a Horn that I stole from the Charleston Air Force Base Youth Center. I kept that horn for two years, and finally returned it in person to Sarge, the manager, in better shape than it was when I pilfered it. It had been hanging outside the Youth Center on the patio and was severely rusted. It always sounded like the vocals from "Winchester Cathedral" back in the 60s.
One night, during a camp out, I walked to the Youth Center, climbed the 8-foot fence and stood on a table to steal the horn. I took it home and learned how it works by disassembling it, looking at the parts, sanding and cleaning it, repainting it, and hooking it up to my guitar amp to see how it could be used. In one of my earliest band jobs, I used it in conjunction with a Radio Shack amplifier to serve as the PA for a kluged-together band at the Youth Center. I knew I couldn't set the horn out in the open because Sarge might recognize it, so I hung a piece of cloth on the opening of a wooden crate, laid the speaker inside pointing off the stage, and we used it all night.
Shortly thereafter, in a moment of communion, I guiltily confessed to the deed to Sarge. Sarge, who had proven to be a good adult friend over the years, was concerned as a father would be that I had done something less than honest. I returned the horn, which had never been replaced on the Youth Center patio, about two years after I had taken it. It was in excellent shape, far better than when I took it, but my image in Sarge's eyes had been tarnished.
I can thank my mother for my overriding feelings of guilt when I have done something wrong and my powerful internal urges to confess my sins.
When I was five, I coveted a set of cowboys and indians that hung on the toy rack of a nearby store for what seemed like weeks. I always asked if she would by the 19 cents item, but she never would. "You don't need them," she would say.
Sure, I didn't NEED them, but I sure as shootin' WANTED them!
I wanted them so bad that during one trip to the grocery store with my mother, I picked up the coveted item, looked around, and stuffed the package into my jacket. When my mother was checking out, I smuggled the cowboys and indians out the door and climbed into the car. Once back home, I headed upstairs and pulled the package open on the far side of my bed so no one could see if they came into the room. The figures spilled out onto my bedroom floor and I immediately began playing with them. Ahh! The sweet taste of victory.
Suddenly, I heard my mother coming up the stairs. I quickly stuffed the set of cowboys and Indians under the bed and tried to look innocent. Mom stuck her head in the room and said, "Whatcha doin', Davy?"
"Playin'," I said. I'll bet she could read guilt all over my face.
I got up and sat on the bed, but obviously had nothing that I was playing with in hand. She walked around the bed, looked under the edge of the bedspread and found the figures. "What are these?" she asked.
Here's where I got real smart. "I dunno," I answered.
"These are the cowboys and Indians you've been asking for at the store, aren't they?"
I hung my head in abject resolution. I was caught red-handed. "Yeah."
Here's where she made one of the most momentous impressions on my life. "I want you to take them back," she said sternly as she scooped up the loot and put it back into the bag. Oh, great. Now I was not only a crook, but I was going to have to go back and face the cashier from which I had stolen. Ultimate ignominy on top of guilt.
She drove me back to the store and made me go in by myself. It was like walking down death row, head hung down, bag of cowboys and Indians at my side. I walked in the door and the cashier was looking at me. I didn't say a word, just walked to the toy section and hung the cowboys and Indians back on the hook from whence they came. I turned and walked back out to the car. Mom said, "Thank you," to me and we drove home. For some time, I had the distinct impression that my mother could see through walls and know what evil lurked in my heart. My God, she was supermom!
Later, mom told me that the store cashier had seen me stuff the figures into my jacket and had called to inform on me.
Throughout my life, Mom was interested in what I was doing. She came to hear me play many times, once on vacation to Utah when I had a job at a club near Brigham Young University. She also always encouraged my art. And she reprimanded me nearly until the day she died that I never called enough.
Mom had lived most of her life in Florida, but she loved snow. During her visit to Utah, on July 7, 1980, we were driving up to Park City and stopped at a rest stop about half way between Salt Lake City and Park City on Interstate 80. It began to snow before we even stopped and we played in the snow for about a half hour. During an August visit to North Carolina, my wife and I took her up to Blowing Rock. While there, it began to snow. The happiness shows on her face and her happiness shows on mine.
I still think she was supermom.