I get that sometimes. (Laughing) I am a Southerner by choice and they have accepted me in Muscle Shoals, and by God if they will accept me here then I guess I can pass any- where. (Laughs) When I was five my parents moved to


Louisville, Kentucky and I went to grade school there thru fifth grade. Then I went from 6th through high school graduation in Florida and then went to Florida State in Tal- lahassee and lived there for a while. I got into a band called The Travelers. How is that for an original name (Laughs). Then got up with David Brown and Butch Trucks, whom I had gone to high school with, in Florida State where I was a viola major. This was when folk rock had gotten going. David Brown had the idea to go to


Butch - they had been in competing bands in high school, rock bands that is. So they felt like we should all get together because I knew the words and he knew all the rock and we could turn all the Bob Dylan songs into rock songs. We made a ton of money. We were making $300 per night in a three piece band back then. This was in 1965. I bought a Jaguar and we were playing 3-4 nights a week. I dropped out of college at the end be- cause I was making good money. I could probably do well as a viola player somewhere but I enjoyed this kind of music.(Laughs) David Brown went on to play with Boz


Scaggs. We had a band with Butch Trucks called The Bitter End at first, and then were later called The Tiffany System, playing in Kentucky and Tennessee, around Chat- tanooga and Knoxville. This was when bands like The Strawberry Alarm Clock were big. We were a Spinal Tap kind of thing, acid rock. After that we became The 31st of February. It was me, Butch, and David. The three of us and Duane and Gregg Allman did play with us for a little while. I believe some demos were cut in Miami and they came out later as Duane and Gregg, The Early Years. That was some stuff we sent to Vanguard which was


our record label at the time, to secure a budget for a second album. Vanguard did not approve the budget so then we broke up. Duane started hanging out in Jacksonville and there were jam sessions happening a lot shortly after. I think someone at Vanguard must have lost their job after letting The All- man’s go. (Laughs) Gregg had a couple of tunes, one was called “Well I Know” and then there was another called “God Rest His Soul.” They were good songs and whoever listened to them at the label felt they were not that good.


You gotta love record label people. There was a lot going on in Jack- sonville at that time. Can you tell me a bit about that? Lynyrd Skynyrd was around then but they were called The One Percent, and there was a band called The Second Coming, with Berry Oakley and Dickey Betts and Dickey’s wife. Reese Wynans was their keyboard player. They were a great band. There were several things going on at the time as well. The Illu- sions were a band that was kind of like The Beach Boys.


Tell me a little bit about how you got Cowboy together, meeting Tommy Tal- ton and all that... Well, I was living in Gainesville with our key- board player, Bill Pillmore. We were living with a guy that was... shall we say... not mak- ing his living legally. (Laughs) We were hang- ing out and picking on some guitars - and I had met Bill at Florida State and there was another friend Pete Kowalke, and the two of them were on the swimming team at Florida State. Pete came and saw us, or did a gig with us at some point in Gainesville and said that he knew this guy that was a very good song- writer and that we should meet. I went and met him in Orlando and that’s when Tommy and I met. We sat up for several hours picking with each other and by the time the night was


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