In February of '86 I suffered a major back in- jury that left me having to decide between surgery or therapy. I opted for therapy and went six days a week, then five, etcetera for three months. In 1991 I moved to northwest Montana for a year, four miles from the Cana- dian border. One of my best friends there had a band but it was not what I was interested in. However, we began to write songs together. I returned to Florida, did a few commercials, then recorded demos for some of my songs. I got an offer to do a video for one of my songs so I invited Jakson to do it with me. We flew to Wisconsin in January and filmed the entire video outdoors in a blizzard. Kind of rough on Florida boys. He and I then went to Michigan and recorded a lot of songs, most of them his, and some we had written together. He had been in the Dixie Allstars since '88 with Char- lie, and was working on a fairly regular basis. I moved out west again in '96. The next few years I began doing shows with him and now the band was called Southern Rock Allstars. Jakson, Dave Hlubek, Jay Johnson and me. It wasn't full time but did a number of shows with them when schedules permitted. It was a revolving door of players but Jakson, Dave and Jay remained the core. I played four songs on their first CD then started working on my solo CD.
In 1999 I released my CD titled Warrior's Pride and the band was NDN. Jakson co- wrote four songs and my Montana friend, Richard Luciano co-wrote the others. It did great right out of the box in the Native com- munity but never got distribution in the mainstream market. We were nominated in four categories by the NAMA association. A few years later one of the songs, "Times We've Had" was nominated for Video of the Year by the NAMA people and it was the video Jakson and I had done. I recorded a new, different version for the CD but they knew that.
In the fall of 2000 I moved to Texas, did a few shows here and there with all-star lineups with friends like Mike Estes, Randall Hall, Tommy Curiale, Dave Hlubek. I had horses and began doing rescue work and wound up with eight at one point. It was my therapy for not playing full time. In 2002 and 2003 I joined Pat Travers for a few mini tours and had a blast. The last two we did I brought in my friend Simon Wright and we had a hell of a power trio. October 2003 I moved back to Florida and the first half of 2004 did a few more all star gigs with some of the ones men- tioned above and with others like Steve Gr- isham, Barry Rapp, Kurt Petro, Bob Burns, Jakson. There was a lot of excitement when you, Charlie and Jak first came back out with Bobby Barth. What were you feeling at the time? We had always stayed in touch on a regular basis through the years and often talked about a reunion. We were not sure if the pub- lic would support it so a friend of mine in Texas took it upon himself to start a petition to see what interest may be generated, or not. Over 1,000 signed the first week, quickly went to 10,000 and then through the roof. Not all of us had computers yet or knew any- thing about electronic networking other than a website, which we did not have and they were very expensive at the time. RM was con- tacted but was with Skynyrd and wanted nothing to do with it and said for us to do what we want.
Jakson, Charlie, Bobby and I had multiple phone conversations and agreed to have a re- hearsal and made a promise to each other. Despite how much we wanted to do it, no matter how much our hearts were into it, we agreed to accept the possibility it may or may not have the magic of former days. We met in
12
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74