Nobody knows better than I do about the old saying; "The show must go on!" I've been through hundreds of situations throughout my career where I really shouldn't have shown up for work. April 2nd, 1981 was one of those days. I was scheduled to do a McDonald's appearance in Corsicana at the annual Derrick Day's Festival. My knee was so swollen by then that I could barely walk. As my luck would have it, the sponsors wanted me to walk all over the downtown area while meeting and greeting people at the event. My leg had stoved up into a bent position, creating the illusion that one leg was shorter than the other. I did the best I could to minimize the limp and mask the pain. Somehow I managed to get through it.

Later that night, Hud provided us with yet another excuse for shutting down the studio session early; He said there simply too many people in the studio and he was going home. None of us bought that one. He was always playing host to any number of people during sessions and it had never bothered him before. Nor had he ever been shy about telling people to leave. Something was definitely up with Hud, but I sure didn't know what it was. It wasn't a problem for me. I had the least amount to do during those sessions anyhow. Besides, my leg was killing me from walking all over Corsicana. I was glad to get out of there. 

All my payments were late in April. I’d had a lot going on and just didn’t take care of business too well. That was rare for me and I hated it. One trait I picked up from dad for sure was being serious about paying bills. Chris and I transferred the old family slides to videotape as a Father’s Day present for dad. The Molly Maguire Band  played at Savvy’s.

A really great band and a bunch of very cool guys. The Molly Maguire Band  (in this lineup)
 consisted of (from L to R): Steve, Punkin, Lawrence, Nat, and Ross. 

On our night off, Ricky and I wrote a song together. It was called "Cops and Robbers", inspired by the burglary ordeal. Afterwards, I made the rounds. First stop was Spencer’s Corner where I found that a band called "Artist" had brought in Scott Moss again on bass. He’d played with those guys back when they were called Pleasures of Time, and then they changed the name to Flight. RJ and I got to know these guys pretty well back when we were all playing at the Hungry I. They let us use their rehearsal room once, and we played a benefit for them after their equipment was stolen from that same rehearsal room. (I promise we didn't do it!) After a few songs at Spencer's I went to Baby Dolls, and ended up at Savvy’s. Nothing was going on anywhere so I just went home.

This photo of Flight appeared on the cover of the January 
'77 issue of Pair Magazine. Clockwise from top left: Terry
Bowers, Scott Douglas, Scott Moss, and Larry Hughes.

Ricky had a rehearsal with Rick Miller and RJ. They were working on an original that Rick came up with called "Laugh and Keep On Going."  I slept in and then worked on setting up a monitor system for our home studio. RJ and Barbara spent the night on our couch. The guy who broke in our house had his trial. Our neighbor across the hall was upset because his lesbian wife left him again.

The Agora staff came out to Savvy’s again. They were always in the mood to party hard. Rick brought a couple of his spare drums over for us to use in our home studio. At rehearsal we worked up "Already Ready", another one that RJ and I wrote together. Ricky and I bought steaks at Safeway, and then worked out with the weights for a while. I’d progressed to the point of doing about 40 pushups each day, when I could remember to get around to it. (Oops! Now I've given away the secret to how I kept that great body! Forty pushups. Wow...)  A band called Agent and Lee Pickens dropped by the club and jammed. Local music legend, Eric Johnson, joined Christopher Cross’ band.

Our burglar was convicted and went to prison in Huntsville for a year! Marty started working part time as my assistant on the McDonald's gigs.  I went to visit our ex-keyboard player Don Reeder. He was cool as usual and still very much into computers. Don was a great help when it came to me and RJ trying to figure out the whole Atari software thing. A big TV miniseries called Masada was finally over. This was hyped like nothing I’d seen before for TV. It was about the Jews fleeing the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.

Plans were back on to expand the club sometime in June! Savvy played two nights with the Molly Maguire Band at the Dallas Agora on April 10^th and 11^th. They opened for us both nights. This was sort of unusual because generally the bands would take turns opening. It was nothing personal against the Mollies. We just happened to have some momentum going for us at the time and had to do everything we could to market ourselves properly. The band returned to the studio to record "Long Way From Home" and "Love Light." Hud had taken so much grief from Ricky and the band for ending sessions early that he was purposely overcompensating and working us to death. Ricky, who was usually a steamroller in the studio, was a bit lethargic and couldn’t get going. The next night, there was a big party at the Agora and everyone ended up back at Rick and Hud’s apartment.

There was a big Q102 sponsored night at Savvy’s. The following dignitaries showed up: Gary Shaw, Brenda Shaw, her two hot friends (one named Yvonne), Tom Owens, Drake Hall, Mark West, Dee (manager from Houston Agora), Eddie (manager from Dallas Agora), and the Agora staff: Bill Barger, Alan, Rick, Joe David, and Jim. A portion of the ceiling over the stage caved in at Savvy's and was completely repaired by the following night. We headed back to Houston to play with Push again. Ricky and Laurie were on a break up merry-go-round. Everyone else in the band seemed to have Co-hosts except for me; I had No-host.

The old, worn out ledger I'd been writing my journals in since high school was almost full. There were only five blank pages left before I would have to start a new one. For some reason, I challenged myself to try to have a record deal by the time the ledger was full. As time would go on, the writing would get smaller and smaller. We actually already had the makings for a record deal in the works with Charles Stewart, but the paperwork hadn’t been done yet. The project we were working on in the studio was for that Made In Texas label. I still wasn't sure of just how legitimate of a record deal that was going to work out to be. Ricky, Hud, and I went to Furr’s Cafeteria for lunch and discussed Drake Hall’s attempts to lure Ricky from Savvy for other projects, along with several other topics.

On April 8th, as Rick Miller paid the band, I was shocked to see that my bar tab was a whopping $126 – an all time high record for me. But we'd been entertaining a lot of Agora and radio DJ friends lately so most of that was for drinks I'd bought for them. Someone reported to us that they believed the U.S. Kids sabotaged the ceiling over the stage to purposely collapse at the club. We had no reason to believe that. Q102 jock Drake Hall told me that "Won’t Call It Love" was his least favorite Savvy original. (I wrote in the journal that he was my least favorite DJ, but I didn’t mean it. I just couldn’t take criticism very well back then.)

The first Space Shuttle mission took place. It had originally been scheduled to launch on the 10th, but was delayed due to a computer glitch. The shuttle landed at Edwards Air Force Base on April 14th. The mission had lasted two days, six hours, twenty minutes, and fifty three seconds. They'd orbited the Earth thirty seven times. I was completely captivated by the entire event.

The Houston Agora gigs were exceptional in April. Lou Messina from Pace Concerts partied hard with us. But the big story for me was that I met Sherry H. on that trip. Sherry was a beautiful girl who stood in front of the stage all night long, smiling at the band with her twinkling eyes. I was pretty sure that she seemed interested in meeting Rich, but was surprised when she showed up looking for me after the concert. She said she would meet me back at the Marriott where the band was staying. The two of us ended up sitting in the Marriott restaurant, which was closed at the time, until almost daylight. We just talked and got to know each other. She was very sweet and I was on my best behavior. We made plans to see each other again the next time I came to town.

Messina gave us some advice. He told us that Savvy would make it big if we would keep writing originals the way we had been. Then in a huge surprise, he asked if we wanted to be the opening act at the 1981 Texas Jam at the Astrodome coming up in July. That meant opening for Heart, REO Speedwagon, Foghat, Blue Oyster Cult, and the Rockets! But of course we would! He was making every effort to make up to us what had happened the previous year with the Eagles. The Agora manager, Dee, said we could book that week at the Houston Agora so we could get more exposure out of the Jam appearance. She had become a huge supporter of the band, and an obvious secret admirer of Ricky’s. That put Ricky in a tough spot. He didn't feel the same way about Dee, but she was the manager of the Houston Agora. I'm not privy to any details, but for some reason she was always happy to see us. 

I made it through that Houston trip without any damage to my knee. On the flight home, we took up our usual seats in the back of the Southwest Airlines flight. Soon everyone on board knew every time we were doing a round of shots because they would hear Big Mike shout (in his deep and husky baritone voice) "CANNONBALL!" It was a blast. Back then flying was actually a delight sometimes. The first thing I did upon arriving home was to celebrate the upcoming Jam gig by going on a shopping spree! I purchased another VCR – a top loading Magnavox unit – for about $800. (They were still very pricey in those days.) Then the little boy in me came out and I bought something I’d been wanting for a long time; a big H.O. scale road racing set.

Back at Pantego Studios, Ricky and Hud got busy mixing "On My Own", "Won’t Call It Love", and "Love Light". An A&R guy from Capital Records, John Kurtsy (someone please tell me how to spell his name) came to Pantego to listen to what would eventually become our album. He said he liked it, and promised to get some "coast" people to come in to hear us at the Dallas Agora soon. That sounded like promising news! I dropped by the old home place to visit the folks and found that dad was out of town again, so I hung out with mom for a while.

Sherry H. called me from Houston. She said she was driving up to see me. That was more good news! RJ and Hud woke me up racing cars on my new road race track that was set up in the living room. They were like two little kids in there. I just put a pillow over my head and let it go. The next day I went to see Ricky Mullings, an old high school buddy. Another old friend, Wes Kelly, was there too. Wes had a lot of brothers and sisters and lived up the street from me when I was growing up. I'd had a crush on his sister Helen when we were kids. If I hadn’t been so shy, I would’ve asked her out. Ricky and Wes were out front working on a car. Ricky Mullings was a really talented artist and a very deep-thinking, sensitive type guy. We used to hang out a bit right out of high school. I would strum on a guitar and he would paint and we would talk about Karma and stuff. When I was in my early progressive country phase, he painted a picture of a longhaired cowboy riding a rainbow on a piece of leather and gave it to me. Looking back, being around Ricky Mullings back in those days (circa 1974) was probably not unlike hanging around Jim Morrison – only without all the drunken comas. (I saw Ricky at my 30^th high school reunion not too long ago and he looked the same as he did 30 years ago. He was ageless.)

I noticed that my eyes seem to blur out occasionally, but not badly enough to get them checked. On 4/27/81 I got paid at the club and was proud of myself that I didn’t have a bar tab! That was a first! I’d made an effort to pass on the drinks unless someone else was buying. It was really easy to start buying drinks for family, girlfriends, musicians, friends, and fans until the next thing you knew, you’d spent your paycheck! Then one night towards the end of April, one of the Savvy Nightclub owners gave Dan a hard time about running up such big tabs every week. Dan argued that it shouldn't matter as long as he paid the bill. Of course he was right, but the situation made Dan feel as though he wasn't appreciated. Other members of the band picked up on the vibe too. Before long, some of us were starting to feel that we were being taken for granted by the club. The way we saw it, business was obviously booming and couldn’t be better. We knew the club was making big money as a result of the band and we wanted to get a fair share of the profits. It didn't take much for someone to start talking about how we should be making more money before the old greed monster reared its head. But the feelings would soon fade and we’d be back to just having a great time at our jobs, and loving every minute of it. 

[Regarding the greed issue, the fact was that every member of Rick Miller's family, including Rick himself, had put up a lot of hard earned money to get Savvy's up and running, and it took a lot of money to keep it going. There was a lot of overhead and several investors to pay profits to. But we were just simple-minded musicians and we hadn't really taken all that into account at the time. It was very easy to look at Savvy's on a beer night and imagine that all of us should be rolling in dough, but they were practically giving away the beer to get the crowds in to start with. We never truly felt cheated in any way. It was a short-lived, small thing.]

I did find myself thinking more and more about the future and where it was leading me. I knew there was not going to be an automatic pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but I couldn’t help feeling that our chances were better than good to do something big with the band. I would have been completely happy to just make enough money to move my parents into a nice new home away from the North Side. That was at the top of my personal agenda.

Marty and I worked together on a few more clown gigs. We rode in a parade together in Duncanville (Marty in the big, purple Grimace costume), and then we performed for 10,000 boy scouts at Texas Stadium. Roger Staubach was there for that one, and this was about the 4^th time I’d worked with him. It was sort of sad to think that he knew me as the character, but wouldn’t recognize me if I were to walk up to him on the street in normal street clothes. But that wasn't likely to happen since I didn't really own any normal street clothes. Nevertheless, it was always exciting to see him. I was a big Dallas Cowboy’s fan and Roger pretty much was the star of that show.

Savvy's soundman Marty (in the purple
Grimace costume) with his favorite pal.

As April came to a close, the weather was feeling almost summer-like. Jim Wise and Savvy’s waitress Kathy came over. We stayed up most the night. I wasn’t getting enough sleep. I knew I needed to rest up so I would be in tiptop shape when Sherry got into town. Local musician, Lee Johnson messed up his face in a motorcycle accident. I started writing a song for mom for Mother's Day called "Mother, Mother." In an exciting development, there was talk that we might get to open for Todd Rungdren soon. We saw Donny Iris play at the Agora. They ran a "Savvy" drink special during his show. That was pretty cool!

I bought $258 worth of stereo cabinets for our home studio. They looked and sounded great. Rick Miller called to tell me that the band was getting a raise! Ain’t nuthin’ wrong! It made me wonder if our little greedy period had been part of the reason why. Perhaps the club had decided we were due to share in a little more of the profits. More money is always a good thing. I was heavy into logging the old Desperado tapes, trying to get that chapter of my life organized once and for all. Some friends from a limo service came to the club with one of their stretch cars. They gave us a ride home after the gig. We ended up bringing several of the Agora staffers back with us too. That night was the first time that Gary Logan (the Agora stage manager) had been to Savvy’s.

We partied until daybreak, which wasn’t such a bright idea considering we had to be at rehearsal at 3pm later that day. It worked out though; Ricky brought in one of the best originals since "I Wonder Why". It was called "Does She Seem Like She’s a Lady". A lot of big things were on the immediate horizon. Invitations had been sent out to a lot of record industry people for our upcoming record preview party concert at the Agora. Graham Central Station booked us for a big Q102 night. On top of all of that, Sherry was flying in the next day! It just didn’t seem to get any better than that. It would, however, turn out to be a really bad night for Rick Miller. He got a stomach virus so bad that he did something he hadn’t done since RJ and I had joined the band. He called it a night after the third set! In those days we had code words and phrases for everything. When someone needed to go to the bathroom (for number 2) we called it "going to see Earl." Business was kind of slow, so we shut down the band and let the DJ play records. Besides, we had a feeling that Rick would be meeting with Earl until the wee hours of the morning.

CHAPTER 19:  EVERYBODY'S TALKIN' SAVVY! 

SAVVY STORY INDEX

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