vocals and rhythm guitar, Britt Meacham, lead guitar, Tommy Patterson, keyboards and vocals, Ronnie Vance, drums, and Russell Gulley, bass and vocals. We were together from 1973 until 1986.
Did you guys do some big time touring? Tell us about that. Oh we did tours with Ted Nugent, “The Wango Tango Tour,” Triumph and UFO throughout Texas and the Mid-West, sporadic fronts for Blackfoot, Mother’s Finest, Nan- tucket, etc. After we were not picked up to renew our deal with Capitol, we migrated to Nashville (at the suggestion of Teddy Gentry of “Alabama”) and worked everywhere from Las Vegas, through Canada, showrooms such as The Opryland Hotel, county fairs etc. Strangely enough, we never claimed to be a Country band and never changed our style.
Did you know/work with other south- ern rock bands of the time? We of course had Lynyrd Skynyrd come up to the line when they’d visit Johnson and MSS. Blackfoot sat in with us a few times, and we became friends with the guys, hosted a dinner party for them once. Ricky Medlock intro- duced us to Blackfoot’s booking agent that booked tours to support the Capitol Record. Through the year’s we’ve met and shared stages with folks like Jimmy Hall, and today am close friends, record and play gigs with Johnny Neel (former Allman Brothers) and Chris Anderson of the Outlaws.
What were the highlights of the band's first run? It was without a doubt working inside that sa- cred landmark, Muscle Shoals Sound.
The band reunited in 2010. Tell us about what you guys have done this time around, recording and playing. Mostly we’ve been doing some selected dates
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in our home area, places such as Muscle Shoals where it started for us. We wanted to record again and try to write material that is current, although we still want to remain true to our roots as writers and rock musicians. So we’ve done an EP that’s in limited distribu- tion and are writing material to complete a full CD. All the guys work with me at various times on various aspects of my career and we all just like to hang together. Can’t be on the road for 13 years, chasing a dream and facing the hardships that comes with all that and not be family.
Now to your solo work. You have a new album. Tell us about it, who plays on it, who produced, about the songs, the whole nine yards. Solo - nobody really does anything by them- selves. After we all went our separate ways, Dennis settled into Nashville, doing sessions, production, and songwriting. That’s where he became associated with Johnny Neel as an engineer at Johnny’s Straight Up Sound. That’s been some twenty years or more, recording lots of recordings. Along the way, I started to write again and came up with a song, the title to one of Neel’s solo records, Late Nite Breakfast. I’d become more in- volved in the folklife world, documenting tra- ditions and musical cultures in Alabama on such folks as The Louvin Brothers, Johnny Shines, Pap Baxter, etc. I studied the tradi- tions of sacred harp, ol’ time fiddling, on and on. And I got involved in arts in education programming for schools around the state of Alabama. With the new songs, I started gigging with
Larry Grisham’s Beat Daddys (Britt played with them for quite a while) and writing more songs. Did “Miss Dixie” for one of their Malaco/Waldoxy records. Had a cut by Carl Weathersby titled “Nothing Hurts a Man Like a Woman Can.” All this led to my wanting to record again
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