My brother Ray's 24th birthday was on the 14th of November. He showed up at Savvy's and we made a big night of it. Rusty Burns and Ricky Cunningham showed up and both ended up sitting in with us for a fun jam session. Word was circulating around the club that Rhonda Cunningham (no relation to Ricky from Rage) was having some people over at her apartment after the club closed and that I was invited.   I'd heard that she had broken up with Drew Pierce (DJ from KEGL), and I'd thought she was adorable for quite some time, so I decided to stop by for a while.

Rhonda on the dance floor at Savvy's.

Rhonda lived with two other girls, Cheri and Becky, at the Woodhaven apartments -- only about a five minute drive from Savvy's.  When I arrived, the place was already packed with people from the club.  I'd seen her around at the club for a while, but our friendship was different than the usual routine I had with most girls from Savvy's. Rhonda and I were "pals." When she wasn't in the middle of a cluster of people standing up near the front door of the club, she could be found on the dance floor. She was a petite girl with a giant personality. We had a lot of laughs and talked about everybody and everything. But dating had simply never come up. I suppose that was mostly attributed to the fact that she'd been dating Drew. But another part of it was that she looked so darn young! She was a year out of High School, but looked younger.

Rhonda's room mates. Becky (left) and Cheri (right).  

I had a great time hanging out with her that night. We ended up in her room listening to Drew on the radio,  looking at her old school annuals, and finally broke the ice a bit by snuggling as we watched TV until we dozed off, and were both snoring! It had been a long day - and night - and now it was almost daylight again. I returned home the next day to find that a major news story had broke; Leonid Brezhnev, the man who had replaced Khrushchev to become the second secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union in 1964, had died! [Of course Brezhnev's death makes it easy for Rhonda and me to remember the anniversary of our first "sort-of" date. After all, everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing the day Brezhnev died, right? Trust me! The only reason I know what day he died was because I happened to write it down in my journal.]

Rick Miller called to tell us that Star Telegram music critic, Roger Kaye, had mentioned Savvy in his review of the Billy Thorpe show. I drove over to the 7-11 on Arkansas Lane and picked up a newspaper so I could check it out. I was surprised to see that he had actually used a quote that I had given him about the song "Pleasure Worth the Pain". He'd cornered me in the dressing room at the Agora after the show and told me he liked that song and wanted to know who'd written it. I told him that RJ had written the music and I'd written the words. It was good to be getting ink again. 

November seemed like it was never going to end. The space shuttle landed after placing the first commercial satellite into orbit! (As of this writing 1/30/06 - there are thousands of them!)  Texas had a new governor. And there was also some pretty important news pertaining to the Savvy world as well. First, Gary Shaw had moved to Brownwood, Texas where he was the new program director for KZOM. And then there was the big story floating around that Lightning had broken up and Rocky Athas had joined Jim Dandy Mangrum and Black Oak Arkansas! 

My fingers were starting to get some serious calluses from all the practicing I'd been doing on my guitar. I'd been playing guitar in one band or another for seven years and was just finally getting calluses! I went over and hung out with Rhonda on my next night off. I thought she was great and we were still mostly just good "pals". But when it came to thinking about my most serious relationship at that time, I had to consider Sherry from Houston to be a major player. She had a lot going on, and we'd actually had a conversation or two about possibly making serious plans down the road. It was difficult to get too attached though; She was just too far away. In rock and roll there is no such thing as a truly successful "long distance relationship."

The Savvy club owners had some video games put in at Savvy's Nightclub. One of them in particular, Moon Patrol, was a huge hit. For a while when the machines were new, we even had the bouncers clear people off the games when the last song of each set was announced so we could play them during our breaks. It doesn't take much of that kind of thing to spoil a person.

Savvy waitress Dondi plays the new Moon Patrol video 
arcade game at Savvy's Nightclub. I spent a lot of quarters
playing that game. 

Tensions began to build between RJ and me again. He was a master of knowing how to push buttons and did it relentlessly. I must have worn my buttons like giant pompoms on a clown suit because he was punching at them all the time. One night in mid November, I was right in the middle of playing my (only) guitar solo on "Black Cloud" when RJ reached over and grabbed the volume control on my guitar.  I think he was taking it upon himself to turn it up more, or maybe he was going to turn it down, but either way he knew it was going to piss me off. He pushed my buttons that night for sure. I was so angry that when I got home after the gig I did something unusual, for me anyway. I grabbed the old black leather bound Living Bible (that Suzanne Hare had given me in High School) and opened it to a random page and began reading. This was about the 4th time I'd done this, and it always seemed to calm me down.

There was something about that particular November that made it just seem to go on and on and on. Nat Davidson from the Molly Maguire Band called to tell me that Lindy Wilson's money guy, Kevin, had repossessed the semi truck and wireless mic equipment that he'd fronted Lindy during the Joe City era. He told me that Lindy had decided to move out to LA and try to "make it big".  At band rehearsal we worked up "She Sheila" by the Producers. Rich sang lead vocal on it, but it was just barely out of his range. He really had to strain to sing it. I knew the feeling. My philosophy was that none of us should ever try to sing songs that were out of our range, but we all did it at one point or another. RJ would intimidate me into it from time to time, making me feel that if I didn't try to sing songs in higher ranges, my job would be in jeopardy. I have plenty of audio cassettes and videotapes of our performances from those days proving my theory was correct. We were all much better when we stayed with what we did best, rather than trying to push ourselves to be something we weren't. 

I hadn't received my McDonald's checks in a while and was concerned that there might have been a problem. Upon looking into it I learned that they'd sent them to my old address at the apartment. We got it straightened out without too much hassle. Hud offered to take my Dokorder 4 track recorder to a repair shop in Dallas to try to get the drive belt replaced and I took him up on it. Sherry called to say she was coming into town the following Friday.

More bad news. Members of local band, Vince Vance and the Valiant's, were involved in a bad auto accident and their guitar player, Richard Heath, was killed. Richard had played with Oz Knozz, and more notably with LIC prior to joining up with Vince Vance in the early 80's. We signed up to play at a benefit for the Valiants at the Agora. The Molly Maguires played at Savvy's and I visited with Steve Wilson's wife, Kim, quite a bit while the band played. We talked more about her possibly being in a movie that some of us were thinking of making. 

Meanwhile, the phone at home was ringing off the wall for Ricky. He never bothered to answer the phone, always opting to let the answering machine get it, So that left me in charge of taking phone calls. Most of them in November of '82 were from official sounding business types who were asking for Ricky. Something was cooking with that boy, but he hadn't been cluing me in quite as much lately as he had in the past.  All I knew was that historically when this much phone activity was going on it was usually followed by a secret flight for Ricky that I couldn't tell anyone about. I knew about a lot of his auditions, but not all. I'd noticed that Ricky was more distant and withdrawn than usual. He was spending a lot of time locked up in the extra bedroom that we had set up as a recording studio. I knew he was looking for something beyond Savvy, and that it would only be a matter of time before the right thing came along. The rest of us in the band believed that the best was yet to come, and that the incredible amount of local success that we'd already achieved was only the beginning. But we weren't kidding ourselves. We clearly understood that Ricky was our lightning rod, and none of us wanted to think about him ever really leaving.

Savvy's lightning rod and nuclear reactor,
Ricky Lynn Gregg performing onstage at
the Dallas Agora.

November continued to drag on. The NFL strike was lifted, giving the Dallas Cowboys the opportunity to beat the Buccaneers in the first REAL NFL game we'd seen in a while! Thanksgiving was coming up in a few days, and it was COLD outside! The rock and roll business continued to be good to us, and the Ronald shows were plentiful. We had my brother Chris video tape our weekend Agora gig with Rage on November 26th and 27th, and then on the 28th we played at the Agora's Vince Vance and the Valiants benefit. Also playing that night were the Penguins (Brad Herring from Penguins had played with the late Richard Heath in LIC), Turnabout, and Bugs Henderson. Valiants front man, Andy Stone introduced us as "The Glamour Boys of Rock and Roll."

On November 30th, 1982,  I wrote the following entry in my journal:  "It is 4:51am and Ricky has locked himself in our home studio. I can hear him writing a country song! I've been lounging in the living room watching an old movie called 'Inside Daisy Clover' with Natalie Wood. We video taped the band at the Agora gigs. After watching the tape I feel much better about my performances lately. My vocals are tightening up and I've smoothed out some things I'd had concerns about. Feeling good about it. My hair is too long though. I want to get it cut but Kathy (my hair stylist) is about to have a baby. I saw Jackie tonight. Her mom died two nights ago and we talked for a while after the club closed."   

Jackie was a really pretty brunette who I'd been wanting to go out with since the first night I laid eyes on her, but she was really good at eluding me when I was in "aggressive" mode. We never dated, but had some good discussions on a few occasions. She had the most beautiful eyes I'd ever seen. Since we practically lived at Savvy's, we got to know a lot of people.  We'd always hear about it when they lost parents or other loved ones. Amidst all the partying going on, there was always someone in the middle of it who was grieving for one thing or another. Most of that went on behind the scenes, though. A big night at Savvy's could make just about anyone forget their troubles - no matter how bad the problems were. I knew that from first hand experience. In fact, that's probably one of the main reasons I loved going to work EVERY night. I knew that once I walked through the doors to Savvy's Nightclub, all my problems and worries would be left behind - at least until I got home again. That was an "okay" plan that worked pretty well, only as long as there was a Savvy's Nightclub to go to.

I went through some old books of poetry I'd written after High School. A lot of it was written back when I was hanging around with Jimmy Mask and his wife Chetta, out at their home on Lake Worth. I decided to print out a copy of those poems and pay Jimmy and Chetta a visit. I hadn't seen them in years. Their two kids had grown so much that I couldn't believe my eyes! Their son Reef was 5 years old and looked just like Jimmy. Shello was 8 and looked like Chetta. Amazing. I was told that Jimmy was sleeping so I just left the writings with Chetta and didn't stay long. Then I stopped by Mom's on the way home and was pleased to find her in good spirits. She watched some of the Agora video with me and then I headed home. I took the long way, driving around some of my old stomping grounds on the North Side of Ft. Worth. I barely recognized any of it. The old Corral Drive In was gone, and in its place was a new Skaggs! 

[In 2005 I found an old video of a Ronald McDonald show that took place on the parking lot of the McDonald's Restaurant in Lake Worth, Texas. I was on hand video taping the show when I happened to see Chetta, Reef, and Shello in the crowd. The old video shows Reef and Shello taking turns going up and sitting on Ronald's knee to be photographed. Now Shello is grown with kids of her own. Reef died a few years ago of an alleged drug overdose.]

The owners of Savvy's Nightclub were investing even more money into improving the club. They had giant photos of each of the band members framed and hung along the wall by the new bar. There was lots of painting going on, and they even installed a giant screen TV. Meanwhile, RJ and Rich moved into a big house with Kenny Stocks over on Gary Lane, only a block from Rick Miller's house on Franwood Terrace. Sherry called from Houston to say she was "confused." That's never a good sign.

I'd been neglecting taking care of myself for years. Between my two jobs I hardly slept at all on the weekends, and I hadn't been to a doctor or dentist for a basic checkup since I could remember. I had frequent toothaches, and had begun to feel rundown. I looked tired too, and started getting noticeable circles under my eyes. Part of that was simply hereditary, and there wasn't much I could do, but going for days without sleep sure wasn't helping matters. I knew I was going to need to start taking better care of myself.

As November finally came to a close I found myself having a nice dinner with Hud and Brenda. They'd moved in together and I was bringing a TV over to loan them. We ate oysters and watched TV. It was the first, and last time that I would ever visit there. Hud seemed pretty normal at home that night. It was a side of him I'd never seen before. 

Brenda Hill, Hud's girlfriend and soon to be wife, poses with Hud and Savvy at a private employee party near the back bar at Savvy's Nightclub. (Left to Right - front) Rick Miler, Brenda Hill, Dan
Kostura, Steve Jones, Ricky Lynn Gregg, and Rich Mauch. (back row) RJ Jones and Jerry "Hud"
Hudson. 

The fact that I'd gone out with Brenda while they'd been broken up for three days didn't seem to be an issue anymore. It was in the back of my mind, hoping THEY weren't uncomfortable about it, but after all, they'd invited ME over. But just how long they'd anticipated me staying after dropping off the TV was another story. I couldn't help it. I was moving slow. November had worn me completely out.

CHAPTER 40:   RUN AND HIDE! IT'S TEXAS' BEST ROCK!

SAVVY STORY INDEX

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