ied the guitar work of Toy Caldwell, and I remember in 1982 I was putting together your press kit and you cited Tommy Caldwell as your biggest influ- ence and Mike did the same for Paul T. Riddle. Then you guys went into Cre- ative Arts and cut the 45 single, “Baby It’s True,” produced by Randy Merry- man, who worked for MTB. We were one of only two bands that recoded on the Creative Arts label that was owned by Doug Gray and George McCorkle of Marshall Tucker. Remember after that we would hear the song on the radio on WORD, or at the beach on the big rock radio station. They were selling it at Westgate mall at Record Bar and Camelot Music. But driving down the road in a town that you’re not from and hearing your- self on the radio, that was a pretty exciting time for us.


(Photo by Pam Tinkham Pugh)


in class and on the school bus, doing all kinds of things. Then we all went to Dorman High School. Randall went to Spartanburg High School. The Calverts lived on the line separat- ing the school districts, so his dad told him to go to whichever school he wanted so he chose Spartan High. But I think those school years was were the bond that kept us together.


How did the local heroes, The Marshall Tucker Band figure into your band’s early days? Well first of all, everybody in town knew them. You’d see ‘em around town. They’d come into the grocery store where me and Mike and Randall all worked. We all greatly admired them and looked up to them as a great band that had come out of our home town and made it big. They were role models for young bands with heads full dreams.


I remember those days. Randall stud-


Some of them even flipped it over and played the B-Side that Steve and I wrote called “Web of Love.” Of course, Steve wrote the A-side too. Yep.


The band has gone through different changes over the years. Talk about Steve Harvey, and when he joined the band in 1982, what he brought into it. Wow. Before I answer that. You really brought back some memories talking about who all was in the band. When it was just Randall and Mike and me down in Alan Calvert’s basement, we decided we had to have a singer, so we put an ad in the paper. We had so many people show up to audition. We had one guy singing “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers, and he’d sing one line in a low register and the next line in a high pitch like Tiny Tim. It was like two people. Weird. (Laughs) It was like, “get the hook!” Another guy, we just called him Wayne, all he could do was play classical guitar. He said, “look, I know what you guys really need is a classical


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