Ah, the last of my 30! My father had a working bar band, a ”weekend warriors” group, that played most every Friday and Saturday night in a night club (4 hours per night). The members had day jobs through the week, but the supplemental monies earned from weekend music “gigs” was vital income. Growing up and watching my father drive away on those weekend nights was hard to witness. Of course, I wanted him to be home, but, the bigger reason was that I wanted to know WHAT THAT WAS LIKE ( playing music in a band)! Boy, would I find that out! As I recall, I was late 14 years old when his band, The Nashville Rebels, started a house-band stint at an old schoolhouse. As a “family” environment, youngsters could get in the place, and I rode along when I had no sporting games (I was a perennial athlete). The first time I sat in with the band, playing my brother Mike’s Fender Rhodes keyboard and singing two songs, changed my life. The sound of the full drum kit, the booming electric bass guitar, and a guitarist with a screaming amplifier all around me established WITHOUT A DOUBT what I would spend my life doing. So, here I am. I turn 58 on January 16th, and music business is my livelihood. I was just starting to play guitar, as piano had been my instrument for 5 years. At the dawn of turning 15 my dad allowed me to join in for the entire gig, using my acquired Gibson Les Paul (all my childhood savings went into buying a used, black Les Paul at $350). He split his share of the money with me, so I walked with $25 a night for about a year. A year later, my oldest brother, Larry (29-ish) stopped being in the band, leaving me as the sole guitarist. My pay doubled to $50 a night, occasionally being $40 or $60 and up. I can still hear the sounds from that first year. Larry’s guitar (another Les Paul), Mike’s Rhodes piano (a bell-like chimey-ness keyboard tone), my dad’s Fender Precision electric bass guitar through an Ampeg amp, and the drummer’s kit (a tambourine sat on top of his high hat at all times!). The drummer was Andy Allan. Mike sang most of the songs. Larry and my father really never sang, though Larry would sometimes cover Turn Out The Lights (And Love Me Tonight). Andy added harmonies and I did, too. Several times a night would find me singing lead. That would steadily change in the coming few years, as my vocals became more and more a part of the fabric. The band name had come from an earlier line-up being in a movie, The Nashville Rebel, as Waylon Jenning’s backing group in several scenes (1966). My father had asked for use of the name and it was allowed. So, there I was from late 1979 through early 1983 serving as guitarist-singer in a later incarnation. We were a country band, with a variety of rock and roll, blues, polkas, etc. included in a night’s engagement. We had a backdrop made of plywood and cloth that said “Nashville Rebels”, using glitter substance. The Confederate flag was a pronounced part of the design. I would not be caught dead with such imagery behind me now, as I detest the symbolism of it. There were no people “of color” at the gigs, so, the backdrop suited many of the blue collar white folks with necks of red who came and danced away their week. I thought little of it then, at age 15/16. I do think of it now, and it is not for me. In fact, we played Johnny Russell’s hit “Rednecks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer”, on occasion. Our sets consisted of doing whatever came to mind, with constant audience-requested songs, too. In that first year of mine the songs were performed without any rehearsing. We were expected to know all the standard country hits, as well as bar band staple rock and roll tunes. For The Good Times, Easy Loving, Your Cheatin’ Heart, Good Hearted Woman, Crazy, Backside Of Thirty, Rose Colored Glasses, Farewell Party, Green Green Grass Of Home, The Fugitive, Sing Me Back Home, Your Lyin’ Blue Eyes, Rollin’ In My Sweet Baby’s Arms, Texas (When I Die), Faded Love, Workin’ Man Blues. All of these and so many more. Blue Suede Shoes, Roll Over Beethoven, Twist and Shout, Kansas City, Elvira (a rock and roll song we did before Oak Ridge Boys had the massive hit countrified version). We did instrumental songs Wheels, Wildwood Flower, Wipeout, Orange Blossom Special (my father was a fiddler). I had to play bass when my dad went to his fiddle. We did a number of long square dance songs and watched as a “caller” barked out the dance moves to the dance floor, using one of our microphones. The whole schoolhouse building would shake for that. Black Mountain Rag, Liberty, Come Along Cindy, Down Yonder, Footprints In The Snow and countless other “fiddle tunes” were played, as my father had a slew of them. He played them on his fiddle, named Old Cheatham. The instrument was named after the song “Bill Cheatham” and had been my grandfather’s and my great grandfather’s fiddle. Old Cheatham is now in my possession. People could “brown bag” booze into the building, a legal arrangement. It created a wild, rowdy atmosphere. The fact that kids were there did not deter grown men from fights. Audience members could, at times, rudely complain about a song we played. Or, our volume level. Or, whatever their selfish, hot headed brain could conjure and yell out. After the months and months, then years and years, of that kind of environment, it is amazing I would want to play music full-time, or at all. I saw family squabble over it, my mother campaign to have me not do it, my organized baseball playing end over it, my high school years of weekends spent in beer joints, and uncouth people try to make me feel bad about playing music. However, I stuck with it. I believed I could do it professionally and that I would love it over any other career. I grew and grew and grew, artistically. I managed to play in opera houses, theaters, theatres, on TV. I made albums, wrote hundreds of songs, played in 20 countries. I am lucky. As of now, my health is reasonably good. I can get engagements to play around my country, though I have lost touring in other countries. Only far west of Canada brings me in to tour, not the rest. I beg and plead for gigs all over the US. My community of 58 years has been very sluggish toward coming to hear me perform. It is like dragging my amp on to the stage of Fredonia schoolhouse in 1980, spending my weekend playing music for beer-guzzling yahoos, and forfeiting whatever it is I am forfeiting in life. I am going to keep doing it. Spend your hundreds on the big star, sit in your arena, sing along to your 50-year old classic pop songs in your untrained, out of tune falsetto voice. I don’t care. I am going to perform. I love the music, I must. No one would put in that first year of playing Fridays and Saturdays in the Nashville Rebels unless the love for doing it outweighs the downer aspects of it. Somehow, that lone positive still gives me drive to sing and play. The year 2023 is about to start, as of this writing. The musical sounds of Tom (my father), Larry, Mike, and Andy are still swimming around in my head. Probably, those sounds are echoing in the old schoolhouse, which has been renovated to offices.