Last Updated: January 24, 2006
I have been in dozens of bands in my life. I’ve been in pop bands, rock bands, blues bands, folk bands, good time bands, bluegrass bands, country bands, country rock bands, jazz bands, and boogie bands.
I guess I’ll always lean toward the blues rock genre a la Cream. While Eric Clapton may not be my favorite guitarist, he is undoubtedly the biggest influence on the way I play with the second biggest influence being Jeff Beck.
Some of the names of bands I’ve played in include: The Roots of Evil, The Mayonnaise Men, Deep Water, Midnight Special, Saddle Boogie, The Joe Jeffs Band, The Mad Czech, The Blaine Line Jazz Band, The Ponderosa House Band, Nancy Short, Straight Up, and The Country Travelers. But the best of them all was the band I put together in Salt Lake City called The Full House Band.
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This is the Full House Band. That's Jon on the left, Doug's hat sticking out above his drums, me playing guitar and Croppy on bass on the far right. This was taken during a radio show taping that we did in Murray, Utah, for one of the country stations there. |
We played it all. And I had the best people and musicians in that band that I have ever worked with.
John Crookston was one of the lamest bass players I had ever met when I first played with him. He didn’t own his own bass or amp and I have serious doubts that he had any more than a rudimentary knowledge of how the instrument worked.
We had lost, Jim Jarvis, our regular bass player in Midnight Special. I really liked him because he played a hollowbody Guild bass that looked like something that Jack Cassidy of Jefferson Airplane used. He used an Acoustic amp that gave him more trouble than I would ever have endured. He was a good bass player but he had an attitude that was destined not to last in our easy-going band. He is the first person to ever comment on my pedal steel playing abilities, but more on that in another chapter.
So, in came John and I was as leery as a person can be. We were desperate, so we decided to give him a try. The second time I saw him, he had purchased a Peavey bass and amp that served him well for as long as I knew him. Over time, John’s bass playing became exceptional and his personality was uplifting to the entire band. John’s nickname was “Croppie” because he like to fish for them in the Strawberry Reservoir up in the mountains from American Fork, Utah.
John and I moved from Midnight Special to Saddle Boogie at about the same time, and from Saddle Boogie to The Full House Band. He only sang one or two songs, but he could nail a harmony everytime, and tell you where you should be as well.
He was a prankster from the word go.
In Saddle Boogie, we had a drummer, I think his name was Merlin, who was so anal that he used a tape measure to set his drums up, measuring each stand and the distance between drums very carefully. His even bigger problem was his meter—he didn’t have one. Yet another problem was his stamina. He ran out of gas because he was so thin, smoked heavily, and the only thing I ever saw him eat was the ice in his drink.
Merlin had spent his usual extended period of time setting up his drums, measuring each distance carefully again and again. Once satisfied, he headed off for supper, something liquid with ice in it. John, in his usual prankster mode, went over to Merlin’s drums and proceeded to move them all a half inch here and a half inch there. To the novice, his drums looked totally normal. To Merlin, they were absolutely unplayable, although he and we didn’t discover it until we played the first song. Merlin missed everything he could possibly miss and looked perplexd through the entire song. At the end of it, he jerked the tape measure off he kept clipped onto his belt and started measuring stuff and yelling that his set was ruined. I think that was the last time he played with us and we replaced him with Gary Kopinsky.
Gary was a power drummer. Not much finesse, but he had meter like a metronome and needed very little amplification for his drums. Gary was a very nice guy, about six foot two, very good-natured and wide open all the time. You’ll find Gary’s name on the credits for several of Chris Ledoux’s albums. Saddle Boogie was the road band for Chris who was labeled the “Singing Cowboy.” Chris had won the National Bull-Riding Championship in the mid-70s. Gary had a very sweet wife named Keri. Gary and Keri. I found out in early 2001 that Gary had been killed in a truck accident.
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This is Keri and Gary Kopinski. Gary was a power drummer, a very funny guy, and wide open nearly all the time. One of Gary's sayings that I recall was, "You can pick yer friends and you can pick yer nose, but you can't wipe yer boogers under the seat of yer friend's truck." Gary died in an accident in 1990 and I hear Keri has had a rather hard life since. |
When I left Saddle Boogie, basically over issues with Marlow Swenson, the band leader and chief alcoholic, I started my own band called The Full House Band. Croppy came with me, but Gary stayed with Saddle Boogie. He tried to get me to stay, but I had had enough of Marlow and his drink-a-thons. A fellow named Doug Johnson had set in with Saddle Boogie once and Croppy said he would be a good choice. He was very right. Doug proved to be all you could ever want in a drummer and even more in a friend.
Doug was young, very nice and clean cut, and cowboy through and through.
Doug was also well-endowed.
One night, after playing at a bar named Kay's in Lehi, Utah, near where the movie Footloose was filmed, everyone was gone but Croppy, myself and Doug. We had packed everything up in the trailer and were ready to head to our respective homes, but nature called. I walked over to a barbed wire fence at the edge of the parking lot which surrounded a few cattle in the pasture next to the bar and began to relieve myself. Soon I was joined by Croppy who also had to go. Next Doug came over and decided to make a trio. As soon as Doug had his equipment out, the cattle started shuffling around and emitting some mooing noises. Croppy, always looking for a humorous opportunity, said, “Doug! Put it back in, you’re scaring the cattle!” I’m lucky I didn’t pee all over myself from laughing so hard.
The remaining member of The Full House Band was Jon Hall. Jon was an award-winning banjo player, a good fiddle player, good guitar player, decent harmonica player and a good singer. The entire time we played together, he never had his own amplifier and used one of mine, an old blond Fender Bandmaster. Jon was a good guy and wanted to make good music, but his drinking would take its toll on him during some nights and his playing and singing would suffer. If we could keep him straight, he was wonderful. Jon, like Doug, was cowboy through and through.
The Full House Band never met a song it wouldn’t tackle. We covered from Charlie Daniels’ “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” to Firefall’s “You Are The Woman” to Freddie Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” to a Lovin’ Spoonful medley.
We traveled together in the same van when we played and always had greata conversations about everything from rodeo to fishing to kids to music. We would even work out harmonies while driving down the road.
It was a sad day in my life when I left Salt Lake City and that band. We did get the opportunity to play together a few more times, but it was not as good as playing twice a week. We played around Utah and Idaho and were well-liked everywhere we went.
the Full House Band's swan song was in MacKay, Idaho, just south of Chilly. I was living in Bellevue, Idaho, at the time and found out about the job. I asked the guys if they would like to do it and they said yes, so I booked it. It was a very nice looking club to be located out in the middle of the boonies of Idaho. Everything was made from cedar and it all looked relatively new. While we were setting up, Croppy visited the bar. He came back and told me that I needed to come to the bar and try something. That was when he introduced me to slammers. We sat at the bar while the bartender made them in front of us. To this day, I don't know what goes into them. There was a drop of something resting in the bottom of the glass under a shot of whiskey. Croppy told me to put a napkin on top of it and then slam it down on the counter. I did and it fizzed up and drank the whole thing straight down.
It was smooth...and good!
I had another at Crop's insistance. Then we went back to setting up. Then we had another. Then we played the first set. Then we had another. I'll be amazed if I wasn't slobbering drunk, but I don't remember. I guess that was Croppy's send off. Thanks, buddy.
Our base seemed to be Kay's next to the cow pasture in Lehi. We would return for several weeks after being away for a couple of weeks. We found replacement bands for ourselves and the club liked to have us there.
One night, we were playing to a crowd of about 50 people, some bikers and some just regular people, when a local guy named Shay was in the audience. I often wondered if Shay was granted both oars with his leaky dingy. He was a big man, very rough and prone to fight, not overweight, and displayed a penchant for wearing vests in the winter—no shirts, just vests.
He was a biker type. We had just finished a song when Shay jumped up from his table and yelled, “Who’s the meanest, orneriest, baddest sumbitch in this place?!” I immediately started looking for a place to hide.
“I am! What about it?” yelled a voice from the other side of the room.
“Well, then, take over fer me!” was Shay’s reply, and he left.
Shay got Croppy involved in some illicit activity one day. Shay asked if Croppy would mind driving him to the Sears up in Salt Lake from American Fork. Croppy didn’t mind and they both drove the 20 miles around Point of the Mountain where they keep hardened criminals,and up I-15 to Salt Lake.
When they got to Sears, Shay had Croppy park facing away from the store, lower the tailgate and went in to “pick up some stuff.” Croppy was sitting there smoking a cigarette when he heard Shay yelling.
He turned to look toward the store and saw Shay running full-tilt toward the truck with a couple of big black boxes under his immense arms.
“Start the truck!” yelled Shay.
Croppy noticed that a couple of people came out the doors after Shay and they were yelling too. He cranked the truck, quickly sizing up the situation, threw it in gear and jabbed his foot on the brake. Shay ran up and launched himself into the bed of the truck, Croppy stomped his foot on the gas and away they galloped, two bandits, one willing and one drafted.
When they got out on the road, Croppy looked into the back of the truck and Shay was sitting there appreciating his brand new speakers. “I’ve been wanting these babies for months!” he yelled to Croppy. Shay did a lot of yelling.
Croppy later told me, “I ain’t never takin’ Shay nowhere anymore!”
Doug Johnson came all the way from American Fork, Utah, to Las Vegas to visit me at a trade show once. We hit the casinos all across town and made our way over to the Palomino. The dancers were great, but the company was better. It was one of the most fun buddy experiences I ever had and I'll never forget it. Good friends are never gone.
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