On paper, 1980 felt like it would never end -- but in reality it zipped by in a blur. So far the eighties were looking pretty good to us. There was was a phenomenon at work that we hadn't seen since RJ and I started playing clubs. It seemed that everyone in society, in all walks of life, were getting out and partying several nights during the week, plus every weekend! Not only were we seeing a lot of blue collar working types, but all of a sudden we were also host to doctors, lawyers, and any other kind of profession you could think of. Everyone was in the party mood, and it did seem like it had something to do with putting the seventies behind us.

Ricky and I got our last load of belongings from Green Acres. I went and visited my mom. Dad was out of town and it was his birthday. I thought nothing of it at the time, but would find out many years later that my parents had both been seeing other people for a brief period of time. Dad's "friend" was in Mineral Wells, and mom's was here in town. They were so close to being on the brink of divorcing that it was the natural thing to do. (Fortunately, they worked everything out and would end up being together to the very end of their days.) I was becoming nocturnal again. Some days I didn't go to bed until around 1 pm in the afternoon! The Dallas Agora staff started making Savvy's their favorite hangout on their nights off. Dan had the flu but went to the doctor and managed to get over it quickly. In our business, the flu was not serious enough to cancel the show.

Q102 started up a new weekly radio program called "The Q102 Texas Music Hour."  Each week, a local band would play "live" at Pantego Sound Studios and then the whole thing would be broadcast on the radio a few nights later.  Gary Shaw asked us to be the first band to do the show.  It was an hour program and we did all originals. [In 2005, Gary Shaw moved back to the Metroplex and has been working with Jerry Hudson and Eagle Audio Studios to restore and remix all of the Texas Music Hour tapes and make them available online. The first one done was Savvy's. It sounds GREAT! For more info go to www.texasmusichour.com ]

On January 16th and 17th we played at the Dallas Agora with Pandora. On both nights we broke the attendance records (for local - non big-name acts!) at that venue. After the show, Elaine (lead singer from Pandora) and I went to Mother Blues to meet up with some musician friends in a band called Moscow. Then on the 18th we opened for Steppenwolf at the Dallas Agora. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that our old friend Brett Tuggle -- ex keyboard player from one of our favorite bands Head First -- was playing with Steppenwolf! [Brett would go on to have a stellar career in the music business, playing with such legends as Jimmy Page, David Lee Roth, Rick Springfield, Chris Issac, and Fleetwood Mac, just to name a few. Read Brett's autobiography at http://www.fleetwoodmac.net/penguin/tuggle.htm for a music history that will blow your mind.] 

Several of our new radio DJ friends came to the Steppenwolf / Savvy show. One of them, Randy Davis, told us he really liked our new song "The Quest". We were really excited to finally meet, and perform with the band that had recorded a legitimate rock anthem - "Born To Be Wild". But opening for John Kay and Steppenwolf would end up being the second heart-starter for me that night. The first would be when Rick Miller walked into the Agora dressing room with Carla!

I hadn't heard from her again since seeing her at the club a few weeks earlier, and seeing her walk in with Rick was a real shocker! It was like seeing a ghost. I was literally startled, but in rock-and-roll you have to learn to roll with those kinds of things. We smiled at each other and I took a deep breath and moved on. Rick's body language showed the slightest tell tale signs that he was hoping I wouldn't be upset, but nothing was said about it, other than perhaps Rick making some low key introductions around the room. When it got to me, I just smiled again and said, "Yes, of course I've met Carla!. Glad you could come." Carla and I were almost communicating telepathically. She wasn't giving me those sad, guilty eyes that someone gives you when they are caught stealing. Her friendly, calm glare seemed to console me without needing to get into it. Rick and Carla just looked like they belonged together. Nothing needed to be said. I got it. We did get an opportunity later in the night to have a few minutes to chat. That is when she explained that she had fallen hard for Rick since the first time she'd seen him, and she hadn't meant to mislead me, but that she and Rick had finally managed to hook up soon after that night I'd seen her at Savvy's. She hadn't known if he was going to be interested in her at the time. Of course he would be, and the rest would be history. With the story set straight, I couldn't have been more pleased for them. Besides, we had an exciting night of rock and roll ahead of us to be thinking about. [I saw Carla at a funeral in early 2005 and she looked even better than she did back in the early 80's; something I never would have thought possible.]

The Steppenwolf show was a big success! The styles of our two bands worked well together and some record people from Epic and Capital were there and visited with us in our dressing room after the show. The following night we headed down to the Houston Agora to open for them there. Besides being a fun show, the trip down was extremely interesting too. It was the birth of RJ's "Host" concept. Here's how it worked. According to RJ, if one of us in the band had a girlfriend, she was considered a "co-host." If the co-host traveled to a road gig, she was considered a "Travel-Host." If a co-host became exclusive, or actually married one of the Savvy boys, she would be upgraded to "Master-Host." Anyway, on this particular road trip to Houston, some friends from a Custom Charter Bus company offered to drive us down in one of their busses. Once word got back to the Co-Hosts, some of them started making noise about wanting to go on the bus with us. That got a quick veto, so the gaggle of girlfriends were forced to drive down together behind the bus. It was one of the rare times in the band's history when I was the only one without a girlfriend! All that time that the guys had given me crap about being bogged down with Lilly, and now that we were starting to get something happening on the road, they all had the baggage! It was sweet poetic justice.

The Travel-Host vehicle would consist of Marilyn (RJ's girl), Laurie (Ricky's girl), Amy (Rich's girl), and the new kid on the block, Carla (Rick's girl). Robyn (Dan's girl) had to work and couldn't go. The idea of that vehicle following us all the way to Houston made me chuckle, but at the same time it bothered me on a couple of levels. For one thing, the other guys had been preaching to me about how I shouldn't have a girlfriend in this business, but now they were all tied up in relationships. They would all be wrapped up with their girls and wouldn't be able to cut loose and go crazy in Houston after the gig. But on another level, and I couldn't have admitted it at the time, I was a little sad that I didn't have someone special riding in that car too. I didn't worry too much about it because Houston was full of beautiful Texas girls who loved to party. I could imagine the Travel-Hosts sitting together at a table where they could keep an eye on things. Dan was shy and rarely came out of the dressing room between sets. That meant I was going to have the run of the club all to myself on this trip! Of course I would try to be thoughtful and leave something for the Steppenwolf guys...

When we arrived in Houston, Dee (the Agora manager) was on the war path about something and took it out on us. An argument took place and we were promptly thrown out of the club! But Hud managed to get things worked out, and Lou Messina (the concert's promoter) stepped in too. It all worked out to be another great night of rock and roll. After the gig, we all decided to stay in Houston for the night. But this is where things got cosmic. Most of the Travel Host girls stayed in one motel room, while RJ and I shared a room next to them. It reminded me of old married couples who make the wives ride in the back seat. Gary Shaw flew down and drove the bus back the following day. While he drove, we played more poker. While we played poker, the Travel-Host Mobile followed close behind. I'm not sure what the Travel-Hosts would've done had they known about Kenny's stowaway. He'd smuggled a girl on the bus when nobody was looking, and she rode back to Ft. Worth with us. She was Kenny's date and nothing happened (that I can recall) but I'm sure she wasn't on the copy of the approved Travel-Host passenger list for the band bus. The ironic thing is that the girlfriends weren't allowed on the bus, but the perfect stranger was welcomed with open arms. Sometimes there's just no making sense of rock and roll.

Back at home in Ft. Worth, Lilly started getting possessive about me at the club again. It was silly and made no sense. I did my best to try to ignore it completely. Whatever we may have had between us had been killed when she allowed Marty - my friend and soundman - to stay over all night on the very night I moved out. I never spoke of it. Never gave her hell about it. We just all moved on. [It would be 27 years before I would finally learn that everything she did after we broke up was to get back at me - to try to hurt me. But too much was happening with the band, and with Ronald, and I never really stopped long enough to give it much thought. I just figured we were all moving on. FINALLY!]  

A new waitress named Kathy started working at the club. She also worked part time as a manager for Wendy's. Kathy and I found that we had something else in common besides Savvy's. In trying to compete with McDonald's, Wendy's had come up with a costume for their "Wendy" character; a girl in a Pollyanna dress with a Pippi Longstocking wig.  As fate would have it, Kathy had been the area "Wendy" and still had the costume! When you think about it, the odds of  this happening were incredible. When Kathy and I got together it was like a Costume Ball to beat them all.

After the trip to Houston, everyone in the band had bad colds except for me. (Could Travel-Hosts be bad for your health? Hmmmm...) My Volare' broke down, but Ricky offered to get me around for a while until I could get it fixed. Then, sure enough, it wasn't long before I came down with the same cold and sore throat that everyone else had gone through. On top of the cold, I went through a couple of weeks of feeling lonely and a bit depressed. Being in the spotlight was great, but sometimes when the doors closed at night, I couldn't stand being alone. I couldn't wind down. I wrote that I felt "unfulfilled at times." But once we got back in rehearsals, I got back to my old self again. 

One day at a band rehearsal, David Langston (an old friend of the band's) showed up. David was known for standing in front of Rick's drums during the gig and pretending he was conducting an orchestra. After the gig that night, Hud came over to our apartment for a clandestine meeting with Ricky. For some reason they held their discussion in front of me. I suppose Ricky pretty much trusted me by that time. As the conversation unfolded, I learned that Ted Nugent was interested in auditioning Ricky, and possibly hiring Hud as his road manager! I was still sick from earlier in the week and was barely able to take hearing that news. There wasn't much I could do about it anyway except cross my fingers and hope that if we had to lose one of them, it wouldn't be Ricky. Savvy could survive without Hud, but we had too much momentum going to think about losing Ricky at that point. I'd just have to suck it up and see what happened.

The publicity machine was still going full steam ahead. A local TV show came out and taped us performing at the club. The footage was for Kell Kearns' Metroplex Magazine show on channel 27. Ricky and Rick would have to go in and do the interview portion later. We had a big jam at the club; Dickey Fergeson (U.S. Kids), Turtle and Larry (King Peach), Rusty Burns (Point Blank) and a girl singer all jammed. I got the wheel bearing repaired in the Volare'. I was also getting interested in magic again.

Ricky, Rick, and host Kell Kearns on the set of "Kell Kearns'
Metroplex Magazine."

In February 1981 I met a girl in Dallas who seemed to be lingering around a lot. She was almost "willing" herself to end up together with me, but I had some other things going and wasn't too interested at the time. But then one night she showed up at Savvy's and whispered the magic words that definitely got my attention. She said, "I think I know who broke into your house..."

CHAPTER 16: SUPER SAVVY SLEUTHS

SAVVY STORY INDEX

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