I filled 19 spiral notebooks with songs and poetry from 1989 to 1996. I wrote some good stuff and some not so good stuff. I refuse to post every single piece I wrote because that'd be embarrassing and too self-indulgent for my tastes. Instead, as I see fit, I may share something. I confess to writing very painfully bad pieces. The worst pieces forced a ABABCDCD rhyme scheme and relied upon cliches instead of imagery.
Some of the pieces I wrote were either for or about the band Old Stew. The name Old Stew is not one I can utter without bringing a smile to my face. I've told the story of how the band came together to many people over the years. This is what I would call the official story. Because there are references to illegal drug use, I'm changing the names of those that participated in those activities.
My friend Ken was a guitarist. We were the same age. He and I had been playing together since the summer of 1989. We mostly worked on covers of metal songs like Dokken's "In My Dreams" and the Scorpions' "Rock You Like a Hurricane." There was another guitarist, James, and he was younger and wilder than either of us. He would show up to rehearsal late. He had a cool vibe about him and I loved to listen to him speak. Even though he was younger than me, I felt cool that he would actually want to be around me.
In the fall of 1990, James was a senior in high school and wanted to put together a performance for his high school's talent show. He wanted to play Hendrix's "Purple Haze" as an instrumental. We started rehearsing at his house and actually pulled off a good set. He had recruited a teacher that played bass and the three of us played well. I have an audio tape of us and Jonesy smoked on the guitar. His guitar playing was outrageously good.
I was a junior in college and Mount Mercy was going to have a talent show. I wanted to have Jonesy and the bassist play in the talent show with me. I also wanted a singer so I recruited Ken. Our set list was "Purple Haze," "Tush," and then a drum solo to end the set.
That show was panned in the Mount Mercy Minstrel. Something about the music was too loud, the vocalist wasn't very good, and how we gave a bad association to the phrase "garage band." A few weeks later, a letter to the editor appeared in the same paper which I came across this letter today while I was looking for my 2007 tax information:
The last issue of the Minstrel included a review of Standing Room Only, the talent show held during interim. As MC of the show and vice president of the Drama Club, I appreciate the recognition given to our first production of what will hopefully become an annual event. However, I was disappointed that your comments about the band Prophesy did not include reference to the one member who is a student here at MMC. Paul Hanson's talent was evident as he entertained us all on the drums; his energized solo received an enthusiastic response from the audience. I was sorry that this was seemingly overlooked in your article.
Thank you again for your critical comments. Hopefully, practice will make perfect and the show will get better every year.
Desire Steigauf
During the summer of 1991, I was determined to put together an even better winter 1992 talent show performance than I had in 1991. I still wanted to work with Ken and James but I didn't know exactly what to do. It happened that Ken came over one day after learning the riff to Metallica's "Enter Sandman." Wow, I thought. That would be an awesome song to play in the talent show.
At the same time that that was happening, James had hooked up with Catfish and Shoebox. The three of them had started working on tunes. Catfish was James' age and I knew of him. Shoebox was an unknown. I had never heard him sing until he was in my apartment and James and Catfish played the Black Crowes' "She Talks to Angels" while I played along on my Yamaha drum machine. It was magic. We sounded good. We talked about maybe doing the talent show.
Through some negotiations, we came up with a set list. We would play "Enter Sandman," I'd do a brief drum solo, then we'd play an original song that Catfish had written called "Bullfrog Blues." Ken would play lead guitar, James would play bass for "Enter Sandman" and then they would switch instruments to play "Bullfrog Blues."
The talent show that year was two nights. The first night, the nerves struck. I watch the video of us and all of us looked scared. Shoebox walked in front of Ken during "Sandman" and unplugged his guitar by tripping over it. Then during Ken's solo, he walked in front of Ken. My solo was uninteresting and "Bullfrog Blues" had some mistakes.
I remember walking down to my on-campus apartment that night and watching the video with the band. "Don't walk in front of Ken during the guitar solo," I told Shoebox. Shoebox nodded.
The next night, though, was magic. I was pumped, ready to play better than the night before. In the audience were my best friend and my parents. The house was packed. The show went off better. Shoebox jumped off the stage and ran up and down the center aisle of the auditorium during Ken's guitar solo. I played more interestingly than the previous night. We even threw in an impromptu blues stomp at the end. If you were to see the video, you'd see Ken looking confused as it was unrehearsed and unplanned.
That night, I went to a party with the other band members. It was a great time. I drank a lot of beer and, frankly, I don't remember much else about the night except that Old Stew was alive and well and ready to take on the music scene in CR.
And for awhile, that's what we seemed to do. We started rehearsing twice a week. Ken left because he didn't want to play bass - he had always played guitar and since Catfish wasn't going to play bass and James didn't want to play bass, we suddenly had three guitarists and no bassist. No one gave in so Ken left.
I remember that Shoebox disappeared for a week or so. He had a daughter named Mackenzie Rose who lived in Waterloo so he went up to visit her. We all met up again at a downtown bar, now called Brick's, but it used to be called Kurtz. We went to the house that Shoebox was living in and, literally, played music all night. I played a set of bongos and we did not sleep. We drank beer and enjoyed each other's company. It was the kick in the butt we needed.
The four of us started rehearsing at Catfish's dad's house. We started putting together a set list. We learned BTO's "Takin' Care of Business," Clapton's "Cocaine" and arranged "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" with influences from Axl and Clapton. We got a Sunday night gig at a bar called Bonehead's. We were never paid a cent but we got free beer. Around Easter 1992, the gigs stopped. It was okay, I guess, because during the 2-a-week rehearsals, my academics had started to slide. I had senioritius.
Our last gig was on a Sunday in May. We set up and played at Mount Mercy as part of the Spring Fling weekend and then played at Bonehead's later that night.
The band took a break for most of the summer of 1992. James went away to Paris on a school trip. I had graduated from college and had proposed to my wife. I also was intensifying my job search as I did not want to continue working at the restaurant I wrote about earlier in this blog after I became a husband.
We regrouped in the fall and started rehearsing again. Catfish had written more songs and wow! they were good. We would go into long jams at rehearsal and I'd walk out with sore arms. It was also around this time that a bassist named Dave joined us. No one really liked him but he helped shape a couple of the songs we had been working on and helped round out our sound. The problem with Dave was that he played his bass like it was a guitar and kept trying to play melodies. That didn't really fit into the songs that Catfish was writing.
By this time, there was a definite pecking order in the band. Catfish was the leader. Shoebox was the wildcard and would sometimes skip rehearsals for weeks at a time. When he was there, he helped Dave, Catfish, and James smoke pot. It drove me nuts. This was unacceptable to me. I was old enough to know better - college educated and all - and there I was with 4/5ths of the band I had put together, watching them smoke pot. I tolerated it longer than I should have.
Eventually, Shoebox, Catfish, and James got a gig at Open Mic night at a bar called the Mill in Iowa City on a Monday night. I told them to pick me up - that I wanted to watch them. They didn't pick me up. I have a cassette of their performance. I really wish I had seen them play. They played a song I wrote, that we had been working on, called "Sunshine Summer." That song was a love song I had written to my wife and Shoebox sang it beautifully. Catfish and James had come up with some ferociously awesome acoustic guitar melodies and ... it was magic.
A couple of years later, long after I had left the band and moved on in life with marriage and moving to Coralville, I wrote a piece called "Tentacles." At the time, I hadn't seen Shoebox in a couple of years. It's actually been over a decade since I saw him. I asked James about him the other week and was told that he isn't doing well, apparently living in a commune in Colorado and that he'd had a mental breakdown. I've added Shoebox to my daily prayers.
The epilogue to the Old Stew story isn't very interesting. James and I have had lunch. Ironically, he plays bass now. In February 2008, a guitarist I know came over to jam. I asked James to bring his bass over. James couldn't make it as one of his twin boys had an earache and the other had strep throat. I haven't seen Catfish in years. James did tell me that Catfish moved into a loft in Marion and that he had gone up there to jam with him. James said something about a reunion and while the idea has merit, I'd have to say it wouldn't be the same unless Shoebox was there. Shoebox always had a great smile. He appeared to have a good heart. I can only imagine what he's going through nowadays and I hope he is okay. "Tentacles" is the song I wrote about him on 02/03/94. In the song below, "Johnny" is "Shoebox" because what parent would name their child "Shoebox" after all. His real name was John.
I made music with Johnny
During the wildest daze of my life
We'd set up and play
Songs he wrote from his soul
When we had enough songs together
Sunday night was our night
We'd set up at a bar
You know, we never wanted to go too far
When the tentacles are around
They crush the life from your soul
Like a burned cigarette
Dance the mystic rhythms as you fall . . . falling
When the tentacles are around
You must beware
The giant octupi strips away dreams
Replaces them all . . . with screams
I haven't seen Johnny since he left town
Don't know where he is, whether he's high or down
Been thinking about soul brothers
And what they really mean
Drifting is the life Johnny knows
He follows the flight of the crow
I think about the music we made
And wish that bird could've stayed
We sat on the front stoop of the house
Taking a smoke break from the jams inside
Johnny held his cigarette tight
Smiled as he told me I'd be the one smoking one day
So I look at me now, the burning in my hand
Wondering why I started remembering this band
And it seemed so painless when I started
Then I reach the memory when I departed
No comments:
Post a Comment