The Allman Brothers show went off without a hitch. During sound check, I ran into Greg Allman and Cher at the food service area. No matter how often I met celebrities in my lines of work, it always seemed strange for the first few seconds seeing them in real life, and not on TV, in a magazine, or on an album cover. In the case of Greg and Cher, it was more of a "sighting" than an encounter. I saw them walking by the food table while I was piling a plate with food. Cher was beautiful, and seemed a little out of place with Greg Allman. I secretly wished her back with Sonny, but it didn't work. 

After our set, I dashed off and changed clothes so I'd be able to catch at least part of the Allman Brothers show. I was amazed at how great they sounded. Those classic tunes have always taken me back to an earlier time. That night was no exception. Steve Howzer from Pace Concerts was on hand and had very good things to say about our opening set. That was always good to hear. After the Allmans were done, we headed back to Savvy's where Lindy Wilson and Joe City were covering for us. As Ricky and I walked in the door, we couldn't believe what we were hearing. At first we thought they were playing our original song, Long Way From Home -- but soon realized it was another song that sounded a lot like Long Way. And it turned out to be a Joe City original! As if the night hadn't been interesting enough already. After the gig, Lindy and Ricky sat out in Larry Patton's car and talked things out. Later, Doc Morgan and William T. Jackson came over and hung out for a while. Lori Doyle showed up too.

Lot's of flooding had been going on in the state. I was reading "The Sword of Shannara", sort of a poor man's "Lord of the Rings".  I was thinking about Sherry from Houston. I hadn't heard from her in a while. On the 16th and 17th we played the Dallas Agora with the Molly Maguires. Friday night the Mollies did a great job opening for us, but when we took the stage, everything that could go wrong, did! Rich's amp shut down, RJ blew a speaker in his bass rig, the power to Dan's keyboards kept shutting down, and on and on. But the next night we opened for the Mollies and everything worked perfectly. Just one of those things.

Monday night (our night off) Mark Myamoto and I had dinner at Larry and Deana's house, went to Spencer's, and ended up at Baby Dolls. A scam started surfacing at our apartment complex. My car was towed away  for being in the wrong space! It cost me $45 to get it back. We started having a lot of problems with wreckers practically stealing our vehicles for a while. It was very frustrating. And then at 4am one morning while we were watching for renegade wreckers, Ricky and I heard fire trucks nearby.  When we got outside we saw a building on fire across the street. It was a huge blaze. 

Just a few days after Savvy played with the Allman Brothers in Dallas, we got the news that Ricky's old bass player from Push, Randy Phelps, had died in a motorcycle accident on his  birthday. Randy had written "Passions", a song Push had played, and that Savvy worked up later as well. (Rick Miller and I still do that song with our current project, The Jones-Miller Band.) Even with the tragic news, band rehearsal went on as usual. We worked up "Pearl Necklace" and "Heavy Metal." During late night studio sessions that week we finally finished up the vocal tracks on "Does She Seem Like She's a Lady."  DJ, Drew Pierce played our song "Long Way From Home" during his late night radio show. 

I began thinking about writing a song that would hopefully help me get Stacie out of my system once and for all. I heard rumors through the family grapevine that one of my cousins was dating music legend, Marty Robbins. There was a big change with the advertising agency that handled the McDonald's account. One of the main partners apparently pulled out and there was a reorganization. The name was changed from "The Lowe Runkle Agency" to "Moroch & Stout."  [Later it would become Moroch & Associates, and ultimately, Moroch - Leo Burnett USA - a hugely successful advertising firm, with branches all over the U.S.]

I went to bed early (4:30am) on Tuesday October 27th. There were big plans in the works for that afternoon. I had a date with a girl named Karla Snodgrass. She was another one of those girls, like Chris Johnson, who would probably turn out to be out of my league. Still I was determined to do my best to give the "impression" that I was a "normal" guy. When I look back at what we did that day, it isn't surprising that we didn't have a long term relationship later. It started out with a visit to my parent's house. What a great way to win any girl's heart on the first date, eh? And then to Dairy Queen for a frosted root beer. After driving around for a while, we had dinner at the Keg Steak House in downtown Ft. Worth. After a big steak dinner we went to the movies and saw "Under the Rainbow", a movie about the antics of the little people who acted as Munchkins during the filming of "The Wizard of Oz." From the movies we headed over to the Mazda lot and looked at RX7's again, and then back to the apartment where we watched "Phantasm" on video. 

Ricky and his buddies had another sandlot football game, but I passed due to my bad knee problem. Our neighbor across the hall found a huge log smashed into his car windshield. It wasn't surprising. He was into some bad things with some bad people. He told us he would be moving soon. I had just finished reading "Sword of Shannara" when the phone rang. It was Mark Myamoto calling to tell me he'd been fired from Q102. He didn't offer a lot of details. I'm sure it was a fascinating story that would go untold  until I'd get a chance to pump a few tequila shots into him at the club. Mark "West" (from the Far East) Myamoto had been a good friend to Savvy from the first day he'd met us. [I'm a bit embarrassed that all through these stories I'm having to guess how to spell his last name, and have probably spelled it two or three different ways. Mark, if you're out there, get in touch dude!]

Mark "West" introduces Savvy in concert at the Six Flags
Music Mill Theater in Arlington, Texas 5/26/80. From left
to right: Mark, Ricky, and Steve. "Everybody put your hands
together for Sa-VEEEE!"

Rusty Burns sat in with us two nights in a row. Savvy was mentioned in Billboard Magazine. The Rolling Stones were coming to town and I had several chances to go, but missed out on all of them. Just about everyone else in the band went. I even invited Stacie to go but she passed. We'd just worked up the Stone's new song "Start Me Up." We also worked up Rick Springfield's song, "I've Done Everything For You." Ricky had a way with kicking those Springfield tunes up a notch. The girls ate it up. 

I had a long discussion with Dan Kostura on the phone about our differences. Hud, Ricky, and I went to eat at Blossom's. The waitress recognized us and we didn't have to pay. I always loved those perks! Finally, my favorite holiday came around; Halloween. The guys in the band lined up at my apartment, each wanting me to apply some kind of makeup, or help them with costume ideas. That was right up my alley. By the time I was done with them, Dan was a Hare Krishna devotee (he even shaved his moustache!), RJ went as a hobo, Ricky was basically a bloody mess, and I went as a punk clown. Rick Miller showed up in doctor's scrubs, and Rich Mauch came as what can only be described as a Boy Toy. Marty was wearing a bad mood and I finally found out why. He'd been dating Lilly for a while and she was starting to drive him crazy. He told me that it made things hard for him when I was rude to her. Poor Marty. If only these chapters had been available to read back then I could have saved him some trouble. So much was going on around us that it was hard to put certain things into perspective. What Lilly was doing got completely overshadowed because there was just too much other stuff going on too. I don't know if Marty ever considered that perhaps Lilly was using him to try to hurt me for not coming back. Based on what he told me, that was the conclusion I had to come to. It explained everything. Lilly was always shooting dirty looks and making snide comments to me, and I would throw them right back without even thinking about it. Poor Marty was caught in the crossfire. 

Rick Miller and Rich Mauch at Savvy's -  Halloween '81

The Rolling Stones concert got rained on, but not rained OUT. Susie the waitress cried to me one night about guys not leaving her alone. Several people had been telling me that another waitress, Sheryl, kind of liked me. Everybody seemed to know about it but me. And yet another waitress gave me a big speech about how after all the time we'd known each other, she felt she MIGHT finally be ready to go out with me. That was an interesting approach. With all this attention I couldn't help thinking how far I'd come since the days of "Steve Jones: Talented Teenage Ventriloquist!"  It was getting pretty silly in Savvy Land. 

A poster used to promote my "variety act"
at a local school carnival event. (circa 1968.)

CHAPTER 30: WELCOME TO THE MUSIC BUSINESS!

SAVVY STORY INDEX

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