The non-stop drive home didn't bother me at all until I saw the 10 mile marker out from Ft. Worth. At that point I suddenly felt like Superman in a Kryptonite factory. My eyelids grew heavy and a severe headache gripped my brain. That final 10 miles felt like 1,000, but I managed to get us home without nodding off. I dropped Stacie off at her house and went back to the apartment for a nap. 

It didn't take long to get back into the groove at home. The first night back at Savvy's was a promotional night for KEGL. DJ Doc Morgan game over to the apartment after the gig and we stayed up all night re-dubbing movies and TV shows. In addition to being a DJ, Doc was also the announcer for WFAA TV (channel 8 locally.) He had a wonderful, rich, deep voice that added another dimension to our re-dubbing efforts. That night's videos were mostly old Cowboy Weaver TV episodes. (My mom had once dated Cowboy Weaver when she was a teenager, or so the story goes.)

Ricky and I decided it was finally time to get a telephone. On the 19th we flew to Houston to play two nights at the Agora with New England. The Agora provided limos for us again. The New England guys were great to work with. Lou Messina caught the show and wanted to meet with us after the final set. He told us that he felt that we truly deserved the settlement money from being denied the Jam, and that we would be receiving a check in 30 days. He went on to say that he'd talked with the Pace Concert lawyers to see what could be done about getting us a record deal with a major label.  We never accepted anything at face value anymore and knew we'd find out how serious he was at the end of the 30 days. 

On the 20th, Stacie and I went to Irving Mall where we did some shopping and had Chinese food for lunch. The DA dropped the charges against the Green Acres Burglars, saying he couldn't get in touch with us for important procedures. It was true that we'd gone without a phone for a few months, but they could've found us easily enough if they'd gone through the club. I bought Ricky a $130 cassette player for his birthday. After the gig we ended up throwing him a birthday party at the apartment club house. I ended up with a lot of beer left over afterwards though.

The money from Messina hadn't come yet, but he did give us notice that he would be out the next night. To our surprise, he brought along a representative from Asylum Records to check us out.  At rehearsal that week we worked up Ricky's new ballad, "Hold Me Tight." The following Monday I went to see my parents and ran my vacation slides for them. That evening, Detective Gaylor returned a few of our guitars to us that had been held as evidence. I hadn't seen them in such a long time (since December 10th 1980) that they didn't feel like ours anymore. Gaylor wanted us to re-open the case, but we needed to think about it. We'd felt that ours should've been an open and shut case, and had grown suspect of the criminal justice system after seeing it in action for over a year. 

Savvy was notified that the Pace check was "in the mail." We'd believe it when we had it in our hands. The 22nd of August was a big KZEW night at the club, but we had radio personalities from all the big stations there. John Wells hosted the event, along with Doug Saye from the "ZOO." Mark Myamodo from Q102 was there. Representing KEGL were Drew Pierce and Doc Morgan. It should've seemed odd having all the stations together on one night, but it was becoming routine. Doug Saye came to the apartment after the gig. We talked about acting and possibly writing a screenplay together someday.  The following day, we did a live interview with Doc Morgan on KEGL. It was a fun interview and he played a lot of our tunes on the air. 

On Friday August 30th, Savvy  played an outdoor concert at Twin Points Lake Resort sponsored by KEGL radio station. We made a deal to play the show in return for KEGL playing 10 radio spots promoting our record and the club. My brother Chris video taped that show. It was a crazy event. Ricky used a really bad expletive (MF'er) over the mic, and Rick got a little upset about it because there had been families with children of all ages in the audience. The Twin Points concert started at 5:30pm, followed by a gig at Savvy's just as soon as we could get ourselves there. We had several special guests show up at the club that night; Dee from Houston, Larry Earp (bassist from Phren-Z), and Lee Parks (playing with Cobra).  

On August 28th, Savvy went to Ricky's hometown of Longview to play a concert at the big Tri-County Fair. Our friend Mike from the custom coach company offered to take us to the Longview show in one of their big tour busses! That was an offer we couldn't refuse. While the ride may have been somewhat luxurious, the concert was a nightmare. For starters, Longview is in East Texas "good-old-boy" territory. In 1981, law enforcement in Longview wasn't too happy about a big rock concert coming to town and did everything they could to sabotage the event. In short, it wouldn't be unfair to use the word "redneck" when talking about the 1981 Longview police department.  In a scene right out of the Blues Brothers Movie, a parade of police cars came racing up and a small army of officers jumped out of them looking as if they were expecting to break up a massive riot. But there wasn't a riot. There were just a lot of people sitting out in a field listening to music. Hundreds of people were harassed, and several dozen were busted for pot. The police threatened to shut the event down all day long (for no apparent reason) and probably would have if it hadn't been for 96FM radio keeping things together. 

The Longview police pull into the grounds of the Tri-County Fair.

In addition to the overzealous police department, rain was threatening the event as well, but it never came down hard enough to cancel us.  The sound system was really bad, and monitors were non-existent. They didn't even have enough microphones for all of us. Rick had to go without a vocal mic. In all our years of playing, that was the only time we didn't have mic's for everyone. As evening approached, a couple of fights broke out in the crowd. After our set, someone made it onto the bus and got into a fight with our driver! The police announced that alcohol would be prohibited after midnight. The longer I was at that event, the more appreciation I had for the police. They seemed to have a good read on the situation after all and had known the alcohol, sun, music, and drugs would result in people getting out of control. We couldn't wait to get out of there. 

After the show at the fairgrounds, we spent the night at the Contessa Inn, a well known party hotel in the area. Several of us got a room together that had a hot tub in the middle of it. Big party that night. Our real purpose for celebrating was getting the news about our latest recording, "Long Way From Home", being the 3rd most requested song on 96FM! It was in B rotation. Our album wouldn't be coming out for another 4 or 5 months so we figured this would really help sales when the album hit the stores!

Ricky stayed in Longview, but the rest of us came home on the bus. Back in Ft. Worth  I met a girl named Janice who was an attorney. She invited Leon Ellis (Tarbaby) and me to a party at her house.  The Molly Maguire Band played Savvy's while we took a couple of nights off.  On a whim I drove down to Covington where my grandparents are buried. I scouted around the old cemetery and found their graves. Memories of visiting them as a young boy filled my mind. It took only a few minutes to do the whole tour. They'd been sharecroppers in their younger days and the little house they'd ended up in didn't seem like much more than a sharecropper's shack, but it was home to them. While I loved my grandparents very much, I hated the whole idea of using an outhouse. Instead, I became very adept at being able to "hold it" until we got back home. 

Ricky finally got back from Longview. Stacie came over and did some laundry for me.  Rick, Carla, and Hud went to Vegas for a couple of nights.  

It was finally September, and that meant the Telethon was coming up soon. On the 4th and 5th of September we played with Impact at the Dallas Agora. As usual, the deal was that the two bands would take turns headlining. The first night, Impact opened for us and we headlined the show. After the gig they came to our dressing room and told us they just didn't feel right about having us be their opening act the following night. I suppose with all the media hype going on about us, along with having our songs on the radio, it may have seemed a bit strange to have us opening for Impact, but we were still known as the "good" guys and it really wasn't going to do us any harm to open for them. We calmed their concerns and said we would be happy to open for them the next night. And we did. It was all good. Headlining was great, but if we opened, we could go home early if we didn't feel like staying at the Agora all night. Impact told us that if we played together again, they would definitely open for us. The whole thing was very flattering. 

Savvy's raised $14,000 during the 1981 Labor Day Telethon. Some of the bands who played were; Magic (LD Lumpkin's new band), Fugitive, Hit and Run, Spyro, Penguins, Artists, Blue Fox, Molly Maguires, Max, and Savvy. The club managed to get another RV parked out back for the bands to use as a green room. Sisters (and neigbhors) Lori and Colleen were good telethon buddies that year. They stayed for almost the entire night. At about 5am, bartender / club owner Wayne Addington and I did a short set of songs. Wayne played drums while I played guitar. That was a lot of fun.

Wayne Addington and me jamming at the MDA Telethon. 

There was talk of us opening for Peter Frampton in two weeks! Frampton was still a huge name in the industry and we were really excited. In the meantime, Q102 put together a concert for us to play out at Green Valley Raceway. The lineup would be Silver Condor, Savvy, Lynx, and Lightning. They were expecting 60,000 people to attend. That would be a great way to shake things up after the lull following the Labor Day Telethon. It was this way every year. Everyone burned themselves out over the weekend, and then it always took a few days to get back up to speed. The night after Labor Day, I went to Spencer's Corner to hear my old friends in RIO. Even Spencer's was slow that night. The band killed! I ended up eating at Denny's that night - alone.

CHAPTER 28: HEARTBREAK ALLEY 

SAVVY STORY INDEX

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