As a result of the massive press from the Texas Jam ordeal, we began getting some really interesting offers. Hud was working on a deal for us to open for AC/DC in Dallas; that was really exciting. We were offered a gig opening for America (“Horse With No Name”, "Muskrat Love", etc) in New Orleans on October 31st, but declined that one. Our music styles wouldn't have been a very good match. In mid October, Lou Messina from Pace Concerts threw us a bone by booking us on a mini Agora tour as the opening act for Head East. The Head East -- Savvy connection would turn out to be a quirky one that would last for several years. They'd been around for a long time; RJ and I had been playing cover versions of their only hit "Never Been Any Reason" since back in the early Desperado days. Despite their status of being one of those "one-hit wonder" bands from the past, they could still pack a moderately sized nightclub just on the popularity of that one song alone. Besides, we loved playing the Agora clubs, so we signed up.

The first Savvy / Head East show happened at the Dallas Agora on October 19 of 1980. The Agora was becoming our home away from home in Dallas and our fan base in that city was growing. Still, we depended on a big contingency of our Ft. Worth fans to show up to make us look our best. And show up they did! We got called back for an encore, which always makes an opening act feel good. The following day we rented an RV and made a road trip down to Houston to open for Head East at the Houston Agora that night. Gary Shaw traveled with us and most of the trip to Houston was spent crowded around the small kitchenette table playing poker. We were pleasantly surprised to see that several fans from Ft. Worth / Dallas showed up in Houston, including Bernadette. Our underdog reputation of being the "band that got ripped off at the Texas Jam" had spread to Houston and everyone seemed to want to talk about it.  While Savvy's first appearance in Houston ended up being a huge  success, our trip home would turn out to be a disaster!

After concluding our opening set for Head East, we ended up hanging out and partying with Lou Messina and the staff at the Agora until they locked their doors at 2am.  Then we simply moved the party -- Lou included -- to the RV for another hour or so until our crew had the equipment loaded and was ready to head back north to Ft. Worth. Our soundman, Marty, usually would have traveled with the equipment in the van, but on that night he'd asked to ride with the band in the rented Winnebago so he could join in the poker game. One of the band members (I think it may have been Rich) volunteered to ride home with the remaining crew, and gave up his spot in the RV. He didn't realize what a good choice that had been because around 4 am on the morning of October 21st 1980, the RV broke down in Madisonville, Texas - 22 miles north of Huntsville, and 75 miles north of Houston. We'd only made it less than one-third of the way home. Hud had been at the wheel while the rest of us, including Gary Shaw, were in the back playing poker. This wasn't like a regular car dying, where you can just pop the hood and bang on a carburetor. I doubt we could've figured out how to pop the hood even if we'd known where to find the motor on that rig. We weren't too thrilled about poking around in the pitch-black night that close to the Huntsville State Prison either. It was going to be a long night.

Most of us were still wired from the gig and stayed up playing poker until daylight. Once the sun came up, we were able to read a nearby billboard advertising a small cafe up the road about a mile away. A few of us (including myself) volunteered to hike to the cafe and call a wrecker. When we got to the cafe, it hadn't opened yet. We were severely out of place in the middle of redneck land, with our glam-rock hair and what was left of the stage makeup we'd worn the night before. Because we'd gone straight from our opening set into party mode, some of us still had on gig clothes. Once the locals arrived to open the cafe, we found a phone and contracted a wrecker to come to our rescue. We received lots of intense stares, but managed to mind our manners well enough to rate a decent breakfast. We hiked back to the RV and waited while the rest of the guys went for grub. The locals, just getting over the sight of us, were even more shocked to see the second wave of hungry rockers show up for breakfast. Being so close to the state prison, there is no telling what kind of paranoid scenarios they were imagining about our reasons for being there. 

By the time the wrecker showed up, we were all crashed out in the RV with our bellies full. The RV wasn't meant to sleep that many people, so there were bodies everywhere. Fortunately, we were used to crashing in all sorts of situations so it wasn't all that unbearable - until Marty took off his shoes...

Most of us slept through the ordeal of being towed, and were still asleep as the RV was raised up on a giant lift at the repair shop. Hud was dealing with the mechanic and at first it looked like it was something that could be repaired if the part could be located. We continued to sleep as best we could, considering the conditions. A few hours later it became obvious the RV wasn't going anywhere for at LEAST a few days. Hud, who magically never seemed to be bothered by going without sleep for days on end, rousted us all from our slumber and we were told about the situation. After a bit of deliberation it appeared our best plan would be to catch a bus at the Madisonville Continental Trailways station. Thank God they had one! Our next obstacle was getting there. Madisonville may have had a bus station, but the town wasn't big enough to support a taxi service. One of the mechanics offered to drive us to the station for a nominal fee. We were tired, fried, cranky and hung over. Just the thought of spending the day on a regular travel bus was enough to make us lose our breakfasts. Somehow we managed to survive it all. The trip ended up being a humbling experience that served to remind us that whether we traveled in the comfort of a cozy custom RV, or bumped along in a drafty Continental Trailways bus, we still put our Spandex pants on one leg at a time - just like everyone else.

Our new keyboard player came in with one of his original songs: “The Quest.” It had a "Queen-meets-Styx-during-a-sleep-over-at-Kenny-Loggins'-House" feel to it. The song was a little dramatic, and not really in line with our other originals, but we considered ourselves to be on the cutting edge and didn't want to discount any possibilities. It was a very interesting, riffy, and intricate song and was fun to play, but Dan sang lead on it and it was a tad bit out of his range. Nevertheless, Dan was the "Ringo" of Savvy and had quite his own fan club. We got lots of requests for the song so we played it. The opening lyrics from the Quest sounded like something Styx might do on one of their theme albums. We gave Dan a lot of razzing over the pirate's treasure stuff, but again, it was a pretty cool song:

“Time doesn't wait for me
I cast my ship onto the sea
In search of pirate's treasure
On a quest that sets me free.”

Halloween was busy! It started with a day of Ronald shows in Denton. Chris Johnson (dream girl from Six Flags Mall) came to the shows with me. Then we went by Mom's, and then on to Savvy's where Joe City was playing. Chris had to get in early so after dropping her off I went on to Mother Blues in Dallas. There I met Kathy, one of the waitresses. She and her Dallas friends were very cool and they invited me to a party after the club closed. I got home as the sun came up, just in time to for another full day of  clown shows. I drove back to Children's Medical Center in Dallas where I was video taped doing the new "Miles of Smiles" show production in the giant hospital lobby. That performance was for a group of people associated with MS. During the show I kept saying "Muscular Dystrophy" instead of Multiple Sclerosis. My agency contact, Gordon Law, handed me a note during the show. It said "MS! NOT MD!" Without missing a beat, over the public address system I said, "I've been saying MD but of course we are here for an MS event. We work with so many diseases that it is easy to get mixed up." I didn't realize what a rookie mistake I'd made until after the show when the McDonald's representative read me the riot act. (It became important to make those kinds of novice mistakes early on, getting them out of the way, and learning from them.)

In November I screwed up my right knee playing in one of Ricky's big full contact football games. He was always trying to convince me to go and I hadn't been interested, seeing how I didn't care for pain and was about as fragile as a Krispy Cracker. But I let him talk me into going and watching. I couldn't believe how those guys would get out there and play full contact football without any pads or helmets. It was insane. Then one of the guys had to go home and they needed a warm body to fill his place to keep the teams even. The pressure was on me to play. All eyes were on the last person seated in the bleachers; ME! Oh how I so didn't want to do it! My gut was telling me it was a bad, bad idea, yet at the same time it was like walking out onto the edge of the high diving board at the local pool and knowing you had to jump and that it was going to hurt and that you would likely survive. So I went in.

I would be on the team playing defense. My intention was to look busy but stay out of the way of any real action. I had to play that night and couldn't afford to break any fingers. I needed my fingers to hold microphones - and shot glasses. But on the very first play, the quarterback threw the ball right to me! I intercepted it with the grace of a bowler who gets a strike on his first roll. It was awesome! Everything shifted into slow motion as I jumped up, caught the ball, and came back down making sure it was securely tucked; as my feet were planted on the ground, I went into multi-task mode. I scanned the field of vision looking for a path, realizing I was a target and making sure I ran the right direction - all at the same time.

Still in slow motion, I turned to take off running when my knee went out from under me and I went right to the ground. There wasn't another player within 15 feet of me when it happened. I'd overextended the muscles, or whatever holds things together, in my knee. I was sure I broke my leg, or popped a kneecap - or something really bad. Ricky tried to help me up but I couldn't put any weight on the leg. It felt like it was dangling, mangled. They managed to get me to the car and we headed home. I packed it in ice for the rest of the afternoon, hoping I would be able to stand on it to play that night. But Ricky had to practically carry me in and I had to play sitting down that night. The leg had stoved up in a "V" angle. I couldn't straighten it for days. (That knee injury would create many interesting circumstances for me for many years to come.)

Rusty Burns surprised me when he called asking if I wanted to come over and do some vocals in his home studio. I went over on a night off and took one of Dan's synthesizers he'd loaned me. Rusty was working on a new song for their next album and wasn't happy with the lyrics. It was something about a Radioactive Girl, or Nuclear Girl - something like that. I came up with some lyrics and asked what he thought of them. He seemed thrilled. I was surprised - and thrilled - when I heard the song on the radio a year later! 

I saw a lot of people from school and from other places from my past. Everyone seemed to have a great time when they came to Savvy's. At times, I felt almost as if I was their host, welcoming them to my palace. I ran into girls who never looked my direction in high school, and suddenly were in the party spirit. I guess all dogs have their day, and I was having mine.

The house on Green Acres was slowly falling apart. I couldn't believe it. The place had seemed like a palace to me only a few months earlier when I'd moved in, but I'd recently started hearing noises in the attic. I was sure it was rats. Great big rock-and-roll rats! November 4 marked one full year of captivity for our hostages in Iran. It was finally Election Day; 538 Electoral College voters would decide if Reagan or Carter would be our next president. We had a blast watching the parodies of the debates between the two on the late night TV show, Fridays. I had a bad sore throat and a big swollen bum leg as Reagan won the election. I saw Sherry Wolfe and Ricky Barbarena at Blossom's Restaurant on the West Side of town. (They weren't together). Ricky was a high school friend who'd become a probation officer for Tarrant County. He was with Pete Hinejosa's sister. Pete was also a probation officer for Tarrant County. He and I had been tight for a while. Sherry Wolfe (or Fox - I can't remember) had worked with my old friend Carla Valentine at Cox's Department Store in River Oaks a few years earlier, before I'd learned how to talk to girls. I had a secret crush on the pretty red head, but figured she never knew I existed. Nonetheless, she was really friendly to me at Blossom's that day and promised to come to the club soon. She suggested we get together. Sounded more than fine with me!

I was doing pretty good for myself financially so I broke down and bought a washer and dryer. Trying to hook it up was like monkeys trying to build a model airplane. We ended up flooding Bob's giant master bedroom. Bob was cool about it though. We pulled up the carpet and put fans everywhere to dry the room out. I don't think we ever put the carpet back down. It just stayed sort of rolled up against one wall. I got asked for my autograph at the 7-11 on Rufe Snow on the same day that an article came out about Savvy in the Ft. Worth Start Telegram announcing the release of our 45 rpm record. The song "When the Lights Go Out At Midnight" was the number one requested song on Q102 for 3 days in a row!

Rick Miller and Jerry Hudson were living as room-mates at the Sleepy Hollow Apartments in Arlington, just across a driveway from Pantego Sound Studios. Ricky and I started talking about getting an apartment there. My baby brother Ray turned 22 years old on November 14th. The band went to Dallas to do another interview on Q102. I couldn't believe how often I was recognized around town - and how many autographs I was asked to sign. It was officially winter, and our record was being played on Q102, KZEW, FM101, and 96.1 every day. On November 30th we played a show at the Dallas Agora with Steve Marriott and Humble Pie. Marriott was in the dressing room screaming at a roadie at the top of his lungs. I felt bad for the roadie. Ricky's friend from Longview, Dawn, came to stay with us for a week and ended up crashing in my bed every night. I really like her, but she liked me for a "friend” - nothing more. We cried on each other's shoulders about this and that, but we never hooked up. 

Christmas was in the air. Ricky and I looked at a few houses but didn't find anything. When we weren't playing Savvy's, we were doing shows at the Agora. We played there with US Kids and again later in the month of December with Suspects. DJ's Gary Shaw and Doug Saye hung out with us in the Agora dressing room on the 6th. That same night we got one of the biggest encores yet!

Another of Ricky's Longview buddies, Marcus, had a big Christmas party. Savvy's hosted a Cowboy Game watching party for the playoffs. On my night off I went to Sneaky Pete's to see Lynx play, then drove over to the Bijou to see the Steve Long Band and Pandora. Billy Cook played with Steve Long. In the Bijou dressing room I ran into Big John O'Daniel (singer from Point Blank), and Leland (also with Steve Long.) I later heard that someone got killed at the Bijou that night. 

I bought a 4-track TEAC recorder and got into overdubbing. It was nice to go to my room and put on headphones and record when things at the house got too crazy. On the night of December 3rd it became official; our days on Green Acres were numbered. The Sheriff had left a note on the door warning us to move our insanity out of his jurisdiction or else we would be getting acquainted. I thought it was a nice gesture on his part. It could've been much worse. As it would turn out, it wasn't the Sheriff who would cause us the most grief on Green Acres. It would be the thugs who were about to break in and steal everything we owned.

CHAPTER 14:  Putting It In Perspective

SAVVY STORY INDEX

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