The rumor mill had been churning out the stories again. The latest was about Point Blank allegedly being involved in a feud with Ricky's band. The story I got was that they were scheduled to play a show together, but Ricky's band refused to strike the stage after their set, so Point Blank cancelled. I wasn't there, so I can't say for sure what that was all about, but I found the story interesting since Ricky had been so close with Rusty back in his Savvy days.

Point Blank on the cover of the October 1977 edition of Pair Magazine.

RJ had a party, but Dan and I weren't invited. Rhonda and I seemed to fight and argue a lot. It wasn't like the "Lilly" thing because Rhonda and I weren't living together. But it came close sometimes. Rhonda was a regular at the club, so she understood that having a committed relationship in that environment was a lost cause. Still, we cared about each other so it was hard not to have jealousy flying about now and then when one of us thought the other was losing interest. It was a classic co-dependant relationship. When it came time for the behind the scenes, real relationship, Rhonda was the one. But there was just too much going on around the club every night to settle down with just one girl. The fact that I was operating under a character deficit didn't help matters either.

A girl named Yolanda came onto the scene in mid November of 1983. She was obviously interested in me, and during one of our breaks, she came back stage and wanted to meet me. I was standing by the door of the dressing room, chatting with her, when I noticed the beer man (a club regular) standing by the bathroom door looking on with way too much interest.  He was spying on me.  Sure enough, he reported the incident to Rhonda, even though it was a non-incident. That's why we couldn't realistically have girlfriends and be in a band at the same time. It was a Peyton Place around there. I guess the beer man must have thought that trying to make me look bad would make him look better. All I know is that a few years later I would see his face on a TV news report. He moved out of a house leaving a mother dog and a bunch of puppies to starve to death. It was an atrocity.

I received a big McDonald's paycheck, which allowed me to pay off mom, dad, and Rick Miller. On the 22nd, it was the 20 year anniversary of Ms. Pearson telling my 3rd grade class that President Kennedy had been killed. She broke down and cried and sent us all out to get a drink at the water fountain. Rhonda went with me to the gig at the Waco Savvy's club on the night before Thanksgiving.  A few nights later, Rich and Dan rode with me to Waco. Construction had traffic backed up and down to one lane for 16 miles. It took several hours to get there, instead of the usual hour and a half. We started late because of it. During the trip, I had a heart to heart talk with Rich and Dan about how I thought the growing problem of substance abuse on the part of a few, was affecting the entire band. On some nights, it seemed some of the guys were in a trance, hypnotically watching the club entrance to see when someone might come in that would have what they needed. This went on while we were on stage playing! Just being in the band and making music wasn't enough for some of the guys any longer. 

On November 27th, we opened for Humble Pie at Savvy's in Waco. Mark Ballew was their road manager, and he even sat in and sang a few songs at the end of the show. Humble Pie rocked hard, but the crowd was in a lackluster mood for some reason. David Zycheck, from one of my favorite local bands from years earlier - Head First - dropped by. He'd been dating a Waco girl named Patty, but Patty had told me they'd broke up. I'd taken a nap at Patty's earlier that day, so I was surprised to see them come in together that night. On November 30th, a man named Robert Sullivan was executed in Florida's electric chair. He had been on death row longer than anyone else in America's history - ten years.

By December, I was having some of my best nights vocally since the band had come back without Ricky. Business was still slow at both Savvy's clubs, and that was a major concern for all of us. Ricky asked me about computers. Seems he was interested in buying one. We opened for a band called "Rail" at Savvy's on the 11th. They were really impressive. Rick Miller fired Kathy the waitress for popping off while drunk. Too bad. I really liked her. 

Waitress Kathy. Gone but not forgotten.

Finally, Waco was hopping again. We were beginning to see more girls coming in, which was good news. Clubs do better when there are a lot of girls there. Otherwise, guys just walk in, look around, and leave. The weather was terrible though. Ice storms caused us to stay in Waco for three days to avoid driving home on the bad roads. Rick bought a couple of heaters for the club in Waco. We put two on stage and one in the dressing room. It helped. 

When our week in Waco came to a close, we came home and the Ricky Lynn Project played a week there. We were finally in direct competition with Ricky and his new group. Back home though, the streets were still iced over, and that killed business at Savvy's in Ft. Worth. A guy named Doug had made a hobby of pestering me at the club. I thought we were actually going to get into a fight, but he was kicked out of the club and I never saw him again. Even though Ricky was playing in Waco, Hud dropped in to pay a visit to us.  I built a handi-tote carrying caddy for the radio control transmitter and all the other stuff that goes with the radio controlled plane my brothers bought me. The plane was finally ready too, but I knew I was never going to really fly it.

My brother Ray holding one of our Dad's radio controlled
model airplanes. We loved watching him fly them, and my 
brothers got into the hobby, but for some reason it just never
was for me. 

The weather was cutting cold. Chris and Ray went with me in hopes of having a maiden flight for my new RC airplane, but it was just too cold to fool with it. The streets were still icy, and we got more and more ice and sleet every few days. On Christmas Eve, sisters Lori and Colleen dropped by the house for a visit, but the roads iced over again so they stayed over. 

For Christmas, I bought Rhonda a watch, and she bought me a clock / telephone. I was spending as much time as possible with my parents. Then, on the 28th I came home from a band meeting to a message on my answering machine saying dad had been in a bad wreck! Another car had lost control on the ice and had slammed into his car, pushing it into a pole. Dad was in Haltom General Hospital. I went to visit, and stayed in close touch, and all reports indicated he would be fine.  I did a lot of praying during those days.

Cecil Jones - a self portrait. Circa 1959. (My dad.)

Ricky dropped in at Fort Worth Savvy's and played the entire last set with us. We did all originals except for Train, which had been our traditional closer. The set list was as follows; Pistol, Wonder Why, Break Your Heart, Love Light, Midnight, Alive, Long Way, and Train. It was a great reunion of sorts, and everything was just like old times - as if we'd never stopped playing together. The crowd went wild. We all hung around and did shots of Tequila way into the morning hours, but still had to get up the next day for a 3:30pm rehearsal.

As I tried to find words to sum up 1983, the first one to pop into my mind was "awful."  Dealing with the band breakup and reorganization had resulted in all of us seeing each other's worst sides. We'd gone from a carefree bunch, living out their fantasies with no worries, to wearing our emotions on our sleeves, not trusting anyone or anything, and healing from the wounds left by bruised egos and metaphorical back-stabbings.  Yet 1983 had also been a year of perseverance and pride for us as well. We'd hit bottom and risen from the ashes again. We'd lost our star player, reorganized, and come back fighting. There was something to be said for that. Something to be said indeed. 

The first day of 1984 marked the 6th anniversary since I'd started keeping journals of my adventures in the music business. It also marked the one year anniversary since Rhonda and I had officially started dating. The band was continuing to get tighter and tighter. Even though the band was doing well, I was beginning to sense that things weren't going to continue on like they were forever. Rick Miller had made several references to wanting to move on to something else. Business was slipping at the clubs. And several clubs in the area had shut down. RJ and Dan rode with me to Waco for a week of gigs, and business was definitely falling off in that town again. The guys from the band STIFF were hanging out in Waco. They were really into the whole new rock and roll look, with the wild teased hair and heavy makeup. There was a whole new wave of local bands sporting this similar look. In fact, they all looked exactly alike. Most of them were kids coming out of garage bands, using MTV as their blueprint for success. We could feel that some torch had been passed, and a new genre of rock and roll was on the horizon. Our generation of rockers had been all about the music, but these new whippersnappers seemed to be all about the "look". The sad thing was that audiences didn't seem to care if a band sucked anymore, as long as they looked like something off of MTV. The average age in our band was around 30 by then. If this "look" thing turned out to be more than a fad, we were going to be in big trouble.   

NEXT CHAPTER:  Peaks and Valleys and Everything In Between

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