Savvy still had some unfinished sets to play at Savvy's before I could head for the mountains. During rehearsal that week we worked up "In the Dark" and "Jessie's Girl." At the end of rehearsal Hud showed up with big news. He'd been talking with Pace Concerts about a financial settlement for canceling us from the recent Jam. Our fee, had we played the show, would've been $7,500. It seems that Hud was going after them to pay up anyway.  His news was that Messina had been very open to paying us and appeared eager to make good for the fiasco.  If they paid up, each band member would get $800, Hud and Marty would get $700 each, Rabbit would get $300 -- and I later found out that Gary Shaw was also cut in for $300.  Gary was a great guy and friend to the band, but  why we were paying him a fee all of a sudden was never really made clear to me and I don't think I even asked anyone about it. Maybe he helped Hud with our fight to get that money back from Pace. Or perhaps it was for working on trying to line up some things that hadn't actually come through yet. Honestly, I didn't even care about details. I was just thrilled that I might have an additional $800 for my Colorado trip, and let it go at that. 

I knew better than to get my hopes up about the extra money. By the end of the week Messina had backed off the deal. So we gave Hud permission to start talking about suing Pace concerts for the money they owed us. Lou Messina was a smart businessman who knew we would likely win the open and shut case if it came to a lawsuit, but he was probably banking on us being afraid that if we did sue, we wouldn't get to open any more big shows for Pace. But we'd been screwed one time too many and had been the good guys for way too long. Unless Pace paid up, they would only be taking advantage of our good nature for the third time in two years. In a unanimous band vote, we all concurred that it was time to demand what had been promised to us. Hud made it clear that Savvy was not going to take this one lying down. We'd made our move and the ball would be in Pace Concert's court.  For me it was the principal of the thing, along with hoping to have some extra cash for vacation. Rick Miller had higher aspirations. He was suddenly in the market to buy a Corvette. Even though his cut as an owner of Savvy's Nightclub had to be sweet, that extra $800 no doubt would have helped with the down payment on his dream car. When Rick told me about being interested in getting a 'vet, all I could think about was how bizarre it would look parked in the alley behind the club with a big dumpster on one side and my Volare' on the other. 

The new bigger and better Savvy's Nightclub was doing very well. It was the place to go in Ft. Worth, and for many it was the place to go in North Texas. Rusty Burns came to the club with KEGL DJ, Drew Pierce. Drew (whose real name was Dave) became a good friend and a regular at the club on nights he wasn't on the air. We were all excited for Rusty and Point Blank as their new song "Nicole" was number 48 with a bullet in Billboard. Stacie and I were spending a lot of time together. We went to lunch at Pulido's and discussed our upcoming trip. Savvy's had become such a popular club that local bands were willing to come in and open up for Savvy on the weekend's mainly for the exposure. When we had opening acts at Savvy's, we usually only ended up having to play two sets. Things were still only getting better!

I spent my next day off visiting with my parents again. Dad got false teeth. He loved them and they looked great. Next, I headed back to the apartment to clean up before picking Stacie up for a night on the town. We went to Steak & Ale and then ended up at Spencer's Corner. It was Q102 night at Spencer's and the usual 102 gang was there; Drake Hall, Tom Owens, and Mark West. (Mark West was really Mark Myamoto. West was his radio name. RJ affectionately called him Mark West from the Far East! Very clever line...) The manager of Spencer's wouldn't allow me to pay for anything all night. He let us in free and paid for all our drinks. Dickie Ferguson, from the old Hungry I days, was playing. They sounded great! I ran into several familiar faces. It was a good night.

The next day we had a game of Monopoly at Stacie's house. Her brother won. The tail lights on my Volare' had been screwing up for a while and I managed to repair that problem. For some reason I got it into my head that my hair was way too long. Of course it was, but what was new about that? It was the 80's. We would one day be looked back on as "hair bands", so it wasn't a big deal how long the hair got. During our final week before vacation, we worked up Point Blank's song "Nicole". I bought an Ibanez Artist guitar from Stacie's ex boyfriend. It was in a pawn shop and I got it out for $280. 

Rusty sat in with us at the club. We surprised him by playing "Nicole".  When I got home that night, I stayed up until 6am logging old cassette tapes of the Desperados. I listened to the concert we played at Casino Beach with Rastus and Crossfire. It was just plain awful! But yet we'd always managed to have a big following, even back then. The most popular theory about all that seems to be that we were fun to party with, and entertaining in a lot of ways. What we lacked in music ability back then, we made up in other ways, such as the re-dubbed movies, comedy shtick, ventriloquist bits, banjo breakdowns, and on and on. From listening to the tapes it became obvious that you had to "be there" to fully appreciate the Desperados "experience"...  The tapes were nice to have for historical archiving purposes, and they captured some what it was like to be there, but it just wasn't the same.

At Savvy's, KEGL DJ's Drew Pierce and Doc Morgan partied with us. I also ran into a couple of friends I'd known in High School. It was good to see Ron Polich, a nice guy who hadn't changed much since school.  Then there was Becky Epps. Becky had been dancing all her life. Back when we were kids we'd occasionally find ourselves booked on the same local talent shows -- me with my puppets (doing the ventriloquist routine), and Becky with her long muscle-toned legs and sexy dance routines. Becky was in her dance tights, and I was dressed (in matching suits with the dummy) for Sunday school. No matter how cool I might have tried to make it seem that we were both in "show business" -- as far as she was concerned I was still just the nerdy red headed kid from school who "played with dolls.". But at Savvy's we were on MY turf. Had the worm turned?  I usually had a great time seeing old friends from school, but for some reason Becky was "less than friendly" to me that night. At least that's what I wrote in my journals when I got home that night. Oh well. Can't win them all.

I went home from the gig that night and played Missile Command on my Commodore computer. I was a computer nut! It started out with a Vic 20, then on to the Commodore 64. I bought every computer book I could find about those computers. Eventually I figured out how to use the Commodore 64 to make titles for my video productions. I would get home from work at 3am and stay on the computer until I couldn't hold my eyes open anymore. (A habit that I still find myself indulging in from time to time.)  

The next day, I started getting things together for the Colorado trip, starting with a haircut. On Friday I got my car out of the shop. I'd had U joints and brakes replaced, got the AC serviced, and the horn repaired. I also bought a spare tire for the trip. The money from Pace hadn't come in yet so I took out a loan at the bank for $400 for the trip. During a brief shopping spree I bought a tent, water cooler, ice chest, camping knife, horse shoes, and NFL Strategy game. (LD Lumpkin had one of those NFL Strategy games when we were kids. When I saw it on the shelf at the store, I had to have it! I still have it to this day. It has been played maybe twice in 22 years.) 

We had just one more night to go before vacation started. Ex schoolmate Keith Capehart came to the club. Kim Wilson (Steve's wife) came out again. She'd been coming to Savvy's for the previous few nights. I told her about a horror screenplay I was thinking of writing, and that I wanted her to star in it. She said it sounded like a lot of fun and would be happy to do it. Brothers Chris and Ray came out, and Kent Calhoun was there too. Rumors started floating around concerning the really nasty things that had been written about the band members in the stalls of the girl's bathroom. I couldn't wait for the customers to leave so I could see for myself. Initially, I imagined I'd have to invest in a can of spray paint so I could go in every few days and paint over it. But once I started reading the things girls were saying about me, the other guys in the band, and other guys at Savvy's in general, I became enthralled by it. Soon, it became a ritual for us to check for updates every few nights or so. Most of the stuff was obviously written by girls who felt they'd been ignored by someone in the band, but other parts seemed to be out and out BS. And of course, some of it was true. When you are reading graffiti it just all sort of blends together anyway. Our attitude about the stuff written about us in the girl's bathroom was simply this; it doesn't what people say about you - as long as they are talking about you. We only had it sprayed over when there was no room to write new stuff - to provide a new blank space for our female customers to express themselves. In a way, it was our version of a Customer Complaint Service.

At 6am on August 3rd 1981, Stacie and I loaded up my '77 Volare' and headed North. All that money I'd spent on getting the car road-ready paid off. We made it all the way to Decatur before being forced to stop for repairs. The car had been making a loud rattling noise in the front left wheel. It sounded like the wheel was going to come off, so I pulled into a Texaco gas station / repair shop. My personal mechanic was on the other side of the city, and I knew it would be easy for these guys to rip me off if I wasn't careful. For that reason, I was extremely relieved to see their excitement once they recognized me from Savvy's. They were funny, friendly, and reminded me of  the main characters from "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure." It was getting daylight and we were anxious to get back on the road, but rather than look at the car to see what was wrong, they were more interested in trying to get me to take a hit off of their home made bong, fashioned from a Root Beer can.  Soon enough, my car was on the lift and they concluded that it was just a brake pad noise, but didn't need replacing yet. They asked for my autograph and wanted to know if I had any "promotional albums" I could give them. They became the first colorful supporting characters in our adventure and I asked Stacie to snap a photo of me posing with them. We were pressing on towards the Great Divide less than an hour after pulling into that Texaco in Decatur, Texas.  Fortunately, the wheel wasn't rattling anymore and we were motoring again! In fact, we would get all the way to Wichita Falls before the car would break down again. Had Stacie known what she was in for, I'm sure I would've been traveling alone. 

Stacie snapped this pic of me with the Decatur Texaco dudes
during our road trip to Colorado in August 1981.

(I took a cassette recorder along with me on the Colorado trip and recorded everything; including the two guys at the repair shop. I hope to digitize some of those sound bites and post them on this site soon.) 

CHAPTER 25: A Volatile Volare' Vacation 

SAVVY STORY INDEX

BACK TO JONESLAND

SEND EMAIL