| The Savvy Stories by Steve Jones |
|
|
Prologue In April 1997, the Ft. Worth Star Telegram named Savvy’s Nightclub one of the most important music clubs in the history of the city. But in November 1978, when cousin RJ and I finally dissolved our band (Desperados) to join Savvy, Savvy’s Nightclub was just a new joint on the strip that was struggling to stay open. The Desperados evolved over the course of about two years into a really fun and likeable little band - with a loyal following and rich history all its own. However, time had finally run out for the Desperados. The band members all got along, but nobody was really on the same page regarding visions for the future of the band. Nobody that is, except for my cousin and me.
Legendary
Bloodrock guitarist - and friend - Lee Pickens had been honest and open
about his desires to put a band together with our (Desperados) lead
guitar player, Boogie Lamont. Talks had been ongoing for some time and
we knew Boogie was pretty much on loan to us from fate until something
better came along for him. To his credit, Boogie could have taken off at
any time, since almost every band in town was musically more
advanced than we were. Still, Boogie hung in there with us for much
longer than we ever dreamed. There was just something special about the
Desperados. We were the perfect band to hang out with because we loved
letting visiting musicians sit in and jam their hearts out. We weren't
pretentious or egotistical. We knew our place in the local hierarchy.
We were just glad to be in the mix among all those great players, and we
proudly called them our friends for many years. Ultimately,
it would be another local musician / vocalist / friend - and not Lee
Pickens, who would lure Boogie away. His name was Mark Ballew. Mark was
putting together a "super group" of local talented
players, and Boogie ended up in his sites. In their new band RIO,
Boogie would end up sharing guitar duties with another local guitarist,
Buddy Whittington (who years later would rise to international notoriety
playing guitar with blues great, John Mayall). While it was sad to see
the Desperados fold, the timing couldn't have been more perfect for the
Jones cousins. We'd been offered a gig playing with Savvy just up the road. The
band Savvy came with guaranteed gigs - as the house band for the club of
the same name. It seemed perfect! The Desperados drummer, Wade Johnson,
was offered the drumming gig with RIO. Our keyboard player, and one of
the original founding members of the Desperados, Jim Wise, was a full
time student and decided to focus on school for a while. It seemed to be
both a perfect ending, and beginning, all at the same time. Once with Savvy, our mission would be to integrate our following from the Hungry I with theirs and generate enough business to fill the seats at the much larger Savvy’s club. When RJ and I joined Savvy, we weren’t planning on making "music history." We were only looking for the next rung up the ladder of the local music scene. We paid a lot of dues leading up to the breakup of the Desperados - 339 nights (roughly 1,695 sets comprised of about 17,000 songs), just counting the Hungry I gigs. We knew that Savvy’s would give us a chance to play on a bigger, nicer stage for much larger audiences. We would still be able to do our trademark stunts, gags, and bits during the floorshows on the weekends. The pay was going to be much better too!
While the Hungry I was a much smaller, more
gritty rock and roll venue, Savvy’s was appealing to the glitz and
glamour clientele of the Disco era - or what was left of it. Yes, it
seemed silly, shallow and fake to us, but Savvy had a great home base on
which to build, and the band was interested in getting into the rock
genre. Oh, and I suppose it didn’t hurt that we now had access to the
glamour girls of Savvy’s who had been leery of going to the Hungry I.
Savvy’s seemed a safe haven to the longtime followers of Savvy up to
that point. They employed bouncers who kept trouble to a minimum and the
atmosphere was more like a happening hotel lounge-type club. Everything
was about to get ratcheted up a few notches. Everything was about to
change. Still, even with all the attention we were getting at the time, my self-esteem wasn't anything to write home about. It would have been just my luck for Lilly to end up having a big crush on Boogie or RJ or Ryan the Bartender, or ANYONE other than ME. All that changed the moment she made a big fuss over my performance of a particular song that I sang with Desperados - "Miss You" by the Rolling Stones. I knew that my singing was just ok on that song, so I kind of figured that she must have been trying to break the ice. It worked. The ice was broken. That night after the gig, she invited me to her place. The Brentwood Stair Apartments were right off the old I-30 turnpike, across from where the tollbooths used to be. I ended up staying there with Lilly and her roommate Leanne - for two months! I felt like I’d just won the rock and roll lottery!
I was still paying rent at the garage apartment on Lulu Street in Diamond Hill that I'd been sharing with RJ, but had no reason to go back. I didn't even want to think about what the place looked like without me there to pick up. RJ made it clear that in OUR odd couple - he was Oscar and I was Felix. It didn’t matter though because I had two girls taking care of me, cooking my meals, washing my clothes, and putting me up in a nice apartment with actual hot running water and a shower! This was how I’d only dreamed it could be! Lilly’s apartment was the first place I’d ever "resided" that had a shower. I grew up with only an old timey bathtub back on Lincoln Street; the same with the garage apartment. I’m sure I'd taken a shower before at some point in my life, but can’t recall where that might have been. Lilly also gave me full access to her blue Mustang (when I could get up early enough to take her to work.) The old VW bug, which I'd bought from Mike Mash, sat idle in the apartment parking lot. In mid November 1978, RJ and I began rehearsing with Rick Miller, Rich Mauch, Don Reeder, and Larry Patton. Larry played trumpet and his wife was a bartender at Savvy’s. The Patton’s were long time friends of the Miller family, the owners of Savvy’s Nightclub. Larry had stayed out of the band reorganization. He was happy to go along with whatever happened, as long as he still had a gig. That was fine with us. It seemed cool having a horn in the band for a change. The song list still had a lot of holdovers from the Disco days. RJ and I were promised that once the loyal Savvy fans accepted us, and our Desperado fans accepted Savvy, we could start turning Savvy into a rock band. Frankly, we didn’t mind playing the songs on Savvy’s song list all that much at first. It was a change of pace for us: a new look, new sound, and all in new surroundings. The Savvy lineup gave us six voices, meaning killer harmonies that we never could to do before. We could play a much wider range of musical styles. The acoustics in the bigger room were difficult at first since we were still going to be "running" sound from the stage. One of the first striking differences about Savvy’s was the depth of the room. At the Hungry I, there had been only about 30 feet from the stage to the bar. It was a very shallow room (in more ways than one). At Savvy’s, when you looked out into the audience, it was a vast sea of darkness, highlighted in patches by table candles, beer clocks, and mirror balls. You could fit at least four Hungry I Clubs into Savvy’s Nightclub! The bar was on the far opposite side of the room from the stage. Compared to what we were used to at the Hungry I, this was a lot like playing a concert - every night! Rehearsals went very well right from the start, although I had my work cut out for me regarding guitar parts. I spent many nights worrying that I wouldn’t be able to hack it. I wasn’t an accomplished guitar player. I didn’t have a mentor around. I’d even offered to pay Rich to teach me parts, but he casually waived it off, assuring me that it wasn't anything I couldn’t handle. I spent countless hours hovered over turntables and tape players, listening to parts and trying to figure out how to play them, with only the most basic knowledge of bar chords. We brought along a couple of our favorite and best songs from the old band and Savvy kindly allowed us to incorporate them. Already familiar with those, the burden was eased a little. Deep down, I went through the entire rehearsal phase concerned that at any time I might be considered dead weight, and cut loose. But the music came together and my personal homework paid off. With five full sets worked up, RJ and I realized that our next major hassle in adapting to Savvy life was going to be adjusting to the new stage wardrobe. We were definitely going to have to go shopping! When it came to stage clothes, Savvy was still suffering from a Disco / show band hangover. That was one trend we wished to change when we joined, but no such luck. Our wardrobes were color coordinated depending on the day of the week it was; all black, all white, black and white, black and red, or red and white. Sunday nights eventually became "come as you are nights," and we sometimes really took that literally. Desperados had never imposed or enforced a dress code for the band. We wore comfortable clothes, not unlike what the customers were wearing. Savvy’s would take some getting used to for us.
With us new guys in the band, the vocal duties were divided roughly as follows: Rich did one third, I did one third, and the rest of the band shared the rest. Some of the stuff Savvy wanted to continue doing seemed lame to RJ and me - but then that probably worked both ways. Larry Patton, the horn player, never really made the transition to the new Savvy as well as the rest of us. He was deeply rooted in a certain kind of music that was about to be left in a big wake behind us. The Barry Manilow ballads weren’t going to cut it for too long with the new crowds starting to show up night after night. When we worked up "Jamie’s Crying" by Van Halen, Larry didn’t have a part to play so he put on a baby bonnet and bib, and walked through the audience carrying a giant baby bottle and gag dirty diaper, flashing it in people’s faces. Granted, that was something I might have done at the Hungry I, but we were trying to transition Savvy into rock mode. Larry was a great guy, on stage and off, but we all figured out fairly quickly our success meant we had to do something with him. I believe Larry would’ve been the first to admit it too. It had to be tough on him because his band had just made a big change that would eventually force him out. Still, Larry wasn’t going anywhere yet. We had some growing pains to endure first. Meanwhile, back at the "Lilly Pad", Lilly had a friend named Chris who worked as a professional soundman. He offered to loan us a new, high tech digital device called a Harmonizer for the Savvy gig for a few nights. The Harmonizer was designed to digitally add harmonies to a live vocal, when additional live vocals aren’t available. All it did was make it sound like Alvin the Chipmunk was singing with us – OFF KEY! It was particularly noticeable on Aldo Nova’s "Life Is Just A Fantasy." What a joke! The effect didn’t come through the monitors so the vocalist never realized how silly the song sounded out front! The wonderful possibilities of using the Harmonizer were lost on us. For starters, we didn't have a clue how to even use it. I'm sure if we had, it would've sounded great. Chris also offered us passes to the Ted Nugent concert at TCCC, but we were playing that night and couldn’t go. He ended up inviting a couple of girls from the club to go. (One of them, Stacie, later reported she got to go up on the catwalk above the stage during the concert. She had a hard time getting around because her spiked heels got stuck in the grids of the catwalk. Nobody fell but beer was spilled on a few unknowing Nugent fans below. If it's going to rain at a Ted Nugent concert, it might as well rain beer!) While Savvy’s Nightclub wasn’t big enough to need a catwalk above the stage, we did have the luxury of an enormous back stage dressing room. It was our private area – our sanctuary away from the madness when we needed it. No one got in without knowing the secret knock; one knock – pause, followed by two quick knocks. If one of us were standing near the door, we would always instinctively reach over and open it upon hearing the secret knock. A main door from the club led to a small hallway. Once in the hallway, if you turned left you would be facing our dressing room door. To the right was the infamous employee restroom. Rarely did anyone go through that main door into the hallway unless they had approved access to the employee bathroom, were making a quick escape out the back exit, or had business in the band dressing room. The secret knock was a classic joke. I’m sure that every person ever invited back to the dressing room who heard the secret knock from the INSIDE, eventually went on to reveal the code to their friends. Surprisingly, few ever abused our simple security system. We never had to put a peephole or window in that door, like they used to have in the old Speakeasy clubs during Prohibition days. The secret knock came in handy, not only at the club, but at hotels and dressing rooms on the road, and even at our homes as well. For the next several years, we would rarely get up from where we were sitting for anything other than the secret knock. (To this day, if I knock on a door, I instinctively use the secret knock.) Deep in the back corner shadows of the dressing room was a small, forgotten, cluttered junk room just about the size of two walk-in closets put together. While the rest of the club was always kept clean and neat, this room was where junk and old paperwork came to die. The lone filing cabinet and stacked cardboard boxes weren't enough to hold all the old drink receipts, and in places the clutter spilled out onto the floor. At first glance, it was just a junk room, but I quickly envisioned a private dressing area and party room all my own! I took it upon myself to clean up the little junk room and it worked out quite nicely. A dim red light burned in one corner. Beanbag chairs and an old sofa served as seating. The coolest part of the little room was the secret entrance that led through a hole in a wall, directly onto one end of the stage. Once on the stage, there was a short passageway concealed by the stage curtains before you were visible from out front. There were lots of nooks and crannies and special hideaway spots in the back of Savvy’s, but it wouldn't take long before the guys in the band would find them all. It was not uncommon to open a closet door, or even the door to the old furnace, and find half dressed people in them, twisted into all kinds of compromising positions. I took a lot of pride in the project, but received some ribbing from the other guys about it as well. Initially, I wanted a place where I could get dressed and take breaks away from the smokers in the band, but they kidded me about thinking I was the star, needing my own personal dressing room. It didn't surprise me in the least to see the entire band and all their dates partying in my little room before the end of the first night of it being in use. I was happy to hear that Jim Wise got a gig with Tony Walls and George Jara, formerly of JET. (George would eventually end up making a name for himself by playing with the popular Beatles tribute band, "Me and My Monkey"). Jim talked me into trading my Peavey 300 pa amp for his Pignose portable guitar amplifier and a really primitive phone answering machine. Years later we would still laugh about my dumb trade. Jim was a real wheeler-dealer. He was patient about looking for bargains and always came out on the better end of things. I, on the other hand, had to have instant gratification. If I saw something I wanted, I had to have it right then even if it cost me double. My VW bug had to go into the shop. It cost me $240 to get
it fixed, but then it broke down again. There was a lot of ice on the
streets, particularly on New Year’s Eve. I bought a Stratocaster
guitar, Rich and Don's apartment got ripped off, my brother Chris had a wreck, I saw
Kerry Lewis (high school beauty) at the mall, First Rush changed their
name to Dallas, and I saw old school chums Sara Bell, George Papajohn,
and Ronald Briggs at the club. Of all the recent happenings, the big story for me was when my estranged half brother Mike showing up unexpectedly at Savvy's the night before my Dad's 60th birthday. On the night of January 13, 1979 - the night before my Dad's 60th birthday - while I was on break and standing at the bar at Savvy’s, someone tapped me on the shoulder and said "Hello stranger!" I couldn’t have been more surprised to turn around and see my estranged half-brother Mike standing there, grinning from ear to ear. I hadn’t seen him since RJ and I made our trek to Houston two years earlier to find him. This was the first time he ever came to see me play in a band. Mike looked a lot like Pernell Roberts from the TV shows "Bonanza" and "Trapper John." He’d lost his hair at a young age, but looked very distinguished. His personality always reminded me of a Dick Van Dyke without the comedy. Tony Michael, or Bubba as we kids had called him, was my Dad’s son from a previous marriage. Mike and Dad could never seem to get along for more than a few days at a time. When I was growing up with my two younger brothers, Mike would always be at our house on Christmas morning. While other kids were looking forward to their toys, we were thrilled because we knew "Bubba" would be there asleep on the couch by the Christmas tree. Even though he was eleven years older than me, we always had a great time when he’d play with us. The only time I ever got to experience having a big brother was when he was around. We chatted for a few minutes and I learned that he’d come to town to be here for Dad’s birthday. He wanted to try to mend fences again. I invited him to come and stay at Lilly’s that night. We invited a few friends over for a small party. Nothing was too wild, and Mike didn’t appear to be shocked by anything that occurred. It seemed very unreal to me because I remembered Mike as always driving fancy red convertibles and having beautiful girlfriends. He’d been like a cross between James Dean and Young Elvis to me - larger than life and cooler than Fonzie. That’s the image I’d grown up with of him in my mind. But now, here I was playing the cool guy in the rock and roll band, with the thick red lion’s mane of hair and shacking up with the beautiful Belle of the Ball, Miss Lilly. It was like a scene from a movie. I was incredibly full of myself and just knew big bro had to be a little envious - if not proud.. The following day, we had a big party for Dad at Wyatt’s Cafeteria in River Oaks. In attendance was Mom, Dad, brother Chris and his date Stacie, brother Ray and his girlfriend Denise, me, Lilly, RJ, and, of course, Mike. An old school friend, Ricky Mullins, happened to be eating there and I invited him to join us. We had a wonderful time and it seemed that Mike and Dad had put their differences behind them. Mike’s plan was to settle in town and have his wife and kids move up later. In one afternoon, he popped the hoods on all our cars and worked on them all at the same time, doing tune-ups and fixing whatever needed fixing. He was like a super mechanic. It was great having him back in town. Back at Savvy’s business started to pick up. Savvy's was a big club with a lot of seating. It took a lot more people to pack the place than it did at the Hungry I. During the first few months it was always fairly easy to get a table at Savvy’s. The customers liked it that way. As time went on and we got better, more people discovered the place and it became harder to get a table. I’ve been told some of our most dedicated fans took this pretty hard in the beginning, as they had to share the club – and the band – with so many strangers. They’d come to think of the club as THEIR club, and of the band as THEIR band. They didn’t like the thought of having to share their discovery with the rest of their schoolmates, neighbors, relatives, or anyone else. It was like finding a beautiful, peaceful, secluded fishing spot on a river, only to return one day to find a fishing tournament going on. The legal drinking age at the time was 18 so we had a lot of high school kids coming in - many with fake IDs. As word spread like wildfire through the area schools about the hot new place to party, business boomed, our fan base grew, and it reportedly got harder for underage teens to get past the bouncers. Over the next few years, as many of our customers turned 18, they would show their REAL ID to the bouncers for the first time. The poor bouncers, feeling duped, could only shake their heads, chuckle, and wave them on in. Birthdays at the club were always interesting. Every night, near midnight, we would invite everyone celebrating a birthday to come up on stage. Then after making sure they were all completely wasted we'd do a big birthday shot of tequila with them, followed by our own version of the Happy Birthday song. Sometimes there were girls on stage that hung around the club for months, admitting they were just finally turning 18. When that happened, you could sometimes hear guys on stage and off, all throughout the club, choking on their drinks in horror. My first few months at Savvy's were magical as our routine continued to take shape. We played the club Tuesdays through Sundays, with Monday nights off. On Monday night the 22nd of January, the entire band went out together on a rare partying blitz to Spencer's Corner, Hungry I, Motherlode, and ended up back at Rich's apartment to celebrate 60 nights of playing together. We couldn't believe how many people had recognized us around town that night. Everywhere we went people shouted our names, offered to buy us drinks, food, gas, and even clothes. It was our first real taste of local celebrity. I was definitely hooked! On Friday and Saturday nights, we performed a special floorshow at midnight. Setting our microphone stands on the dance floor, we did a special set of crazy songs and routines - Vegas style. The songs were usually strung together with comedy / magic bits that I came up with. At the stroke of midnight, from off stage, Rick Miller would have the house lights turned off. Next he would request that everyone blow out the candles at their tables. With that done, the band attempted to find our way in the pitch dark to our places on the dance floor, ready and poised for the Midnight Savvy Show to begin! Sometimes, getting into position could be a difficult and hilarious task, particularly after a few rounds of shots! Here are a few of the crazy, wild and wacky bits we did during our floorshows: ·
Sonny and Cher routine featuring Larry as Sonny and me as
a really ugly Cher. ·
Ventriloquist routine in which the dummy, Jimmy, had
shaved his head and was leaving the band to join a Hare Krishna group. ·
Magic act performed to Steve Martin’s song "King
Tut" with me in complete King Tut costume. ·
Comedy fake dance numbers with straw hats and canes, built
around Smothers Brothers type bits between Larry and me. ·
Tribute to the Blues Brothers, where the usually quiet and
shy Don Reeder came out from behind the keyboards and performed
"Hey Bartender" as Jake, to my Elwood Blues. ·
Black light illusions that never seemed to work correctly,
and turned out to be so cheesy that audiences loved them more when they
didn’t work. ·
Righteous Brothers medleys, Who medleys, Yes medleys, and
many more.
Having grown up a "creative" and "imaginative" child, I was interested in puppets, stage props and illusions. I loved Sid & Marty Kroft and Jim Henson productions. After visiting the puppet theatre at Six Flags Over Texas, I fell in love with the idea of production. The Savvy floorshow would give me a blank slate to work with - and work with it I did! And despite my best efforts, things didn't always work out the way I envisioned. One of my more ambitious ideas was to paint a giant balloon with black light paint to resemble the Earth, then suspend it in mid stage with invisible wire. From one side of the stage, a rocket, also painted in black light paint, would appear to float through space (across stage) in slow motion while the band played the theme to 2001 Space Odyssey. With proper lighting in the club, the only thing visible on stage would be the glowing giant Earth and the rocket flying towards it. The rocket had a needle in the nose of it and was supposed to pop the balloon on contact, making the Earth explode. If we had only done a test run we would’ve learned that when the paint dried, it formed a shell around the balloon that couldn’t be "popped." I was wearing a black sheet to keep me invisible in the black light as I slowly moved the rocket across stage attached to a broom handle. As the song came to the big climax, the pin went into the balloon, but the dried paint formed a crust that held its shape. I drew the rocket back and jabbed at the Earth again - and again nothing happened. By this time, all the audience could see was a rocket that kept backing up and flying into the Earth over and over for no apparent reason. The 2001 theme segued right into another song that cued bright dance floor lights to illuminate the band. When those lights came on, I was completely exposed, standing on stage, WHACKING the Earth with the other end of the broom, as the band went into "If They Could See Me Now." The bit got a huge laugh response, and at the time I was frustrated that the illusion had failed. In hindsight I realized that the audience thought it was supposed to be a comedy bit. Classic moment in Savvy Floor Show History!For the sake of preserving history, here is the actual lineup for our very first Savvy Floor Show: ·
Feeling Alive Again (Chicago) featuring the entire band. ·
Friends (Kenny Loggins) Larry Patton.
·
King Tut (Steve Magic Show). ·
Ventriloquist Bit (featuring Steve and Jimmy the Dummy). ·
Dueling Banjos (Steve on banjo). · Tommy (The Who) featuring the entire band. The floorshows were my first chances to try my hand at production. Our audiences had never seen anything like this before at a local venue. As crude as those shows were, we performed our asses off. What we lacked in musical ability, we made up for in shenanigans and tomfoolery. With the Savvy Floor Shows came a sudden flood of birthday and company party bookings for me - performing a one-man variety act featuring magic, ventriloquism, and banjo playing. (Some people who booked me were Don Hudson for his Insurance Company party; Jerry Coker for his son Damon’s party; and Larry Patton for his nephew Lee.)
For me, this was just fun stuff to do during the day to make extra cash. I'd dress up like a clown and do silly magic shows. Little did I realize just how much I would come to depend on these skills later in life! |
|
|
|
|
|
|