Thursday July 18, 2019

Jack's and John's Part Two

Last week, I introduced readers to Jack’s Place in Superior, Wisconsin: http://wannaskanalmanac.blogspot.com/2019/07/thursday-july-11-2019.html

One of its entertainment segments included Shantily Clad and The Low Hanging Fruit, on July 6, 2019, the band that our son, 
John Helms, has been playing lead guitar in the past few years. 

After a tour of the place with John as tour guide, he showed me an exclusive Wisconsin phenomenon, the “Bottoms UpBeer” system that fills beer glasses from their bottoms up, rather than from the top of the glass down, as has been done since dinosaurs roamed the earth before they were obliterated by chem trails. Right.....

I doubted that myself--er, that is, filling beer glasses from the bottom up rather than the tops down. The dinosaur dying thing by chem trails is a fact, everybody knows that, but there’s no disputing that filling beer glasses from the bottom up, can’t be done. Right ... Check out: https://www.bottomsupbeer.com/Testimonials.html

I since have ordered the Bottoms Up Kegerator 1000 described on their website as “The best home improvement since indoor pumbing” which no one, including an old dinosaur like me, would argue. Beer even tasted better served this way, plus you get a bonus after you empty a glass -- a little round refrigerator magnet (that my wife says, ‘smells like beer’) that has a indistinct letter of the English alphabet on it, and in my case, is either a ‘u’ or an ‘n’.  https://www.bottomsupbeer.com/Product/Magnets/Alphabet-Magnet.html.

Have I mentioned that Jack’s is a terrific place?

I had parked myself, my camera, my little notebook and pen at a front table nearest the band because I planned to highlight the night, knowing I’d likely be there four or five hours, even if I had to endure a dozen sappy Barry Manilo songs until the band started. Luckily, I had brought some ear plugs along just in case I discovered myself too old to sit so close to the speakers as I had in my youth -- (Yeah, yeah, Barker, during the time dinosaurs roamed the earth...)

Regulars started piling in. They all knew each other. A slender woman about my age in a leopard-print sheath dress and black lace shawl pulled out a chair at an empty table next to mine. Others stopped to talk to her, give her a hug, or a gentle touch of her arm as they talked and laughed with her; she visited with people sitting at the bar. "A very chatty group this," I note. 

 Leaning toward me over the back of her chair, smiling, the woman introduced herself. I tell her my name. She asks where I’m from and I answer, “You ever heard of Canada?”

 I should carry this little map, as it’s easier than naming towns that no one knows.

An outspoken woman comes in, who knows everybody, and sits at the end of the bar closest to where I was sitting; who, according to the loud conversation I was privy to, nor could escape from without giving up my table, used to be not only a blonde, but have long hair as well--and had now, overnight, astonished her closest friends by having chopped it all off, colored it black, and created a spiky-looking thing atop her head which she fiercely defended, more or less as her Right-to-Do Do. Okay ...

She said she had got up just an hour or so earlier after working--somewhere--all night. After visiting with my new friend at the other table, the spikey-haired woman turned to me, smiled with a certain twinkle in her eye, and asked me if I had my dancing shoes on.  

Ulp! I looked down at my new fisherman sandals, smiled weakly, and said, “Uh, maybe.” She smiled back, but went on to say to others, she couldn’t stay. She was too tired. (Whew)

SHANTILY CLAD AND THE LOW HANGING FRUIT: JOHN FLYNN/BASS, SHANNON/ LEAD SINGER, JAMES FAWCETT IV/DRUMS, AND JOHN HELMS/LEAD GUITAR.

Shantily Clad had come in and set up. They played a first song, working out the cobwebs that had accumulated since they played together last, three months ago. ‘Spike’ was pulled onto the dance floor by another regular who wouldn’t take no for an answer, and she stayed around for another dance with the lady at the next table too.
 
My new woman friend and I visited, trying to hear each other speak as the band played only a few feet away. I invited her over to my table so we wouldn't have to shout back and forth. She accepted, apologizing that she smokes. It wasn't necessary; her cigarette smoke didn't bother me. 

From a table behind me somewhere, somebody shouts jokingly, 

"Play a polka!" I laughed, forgetting I was in Wisconsin where polka was probably born and maybe they were serious. I cringed at the thought of being swept from my chair and forced to lock elbows with a bunch of energetic polka dancers whipping about in a frenzy. In fact, it's a reoccurring nightmare ... as soon as we drive into Wisconsin from Minnesota.

I had learned my table mate was a summer regular there and that she enjoyed the people, the bands and their music. She loved to dance she told me.
“Do you dance?” she had asked.

“Well, not so good,” I had replied. “My wife loves to dance and had she been here now, we’d be out there dancing for sure. I’m not the best dancer, but enjoy the music, even if I do lose step now and then. On the other hand, the wife dances very well. I’d feel strange dancing when she cannot, so I’ll sit the evening out.”

When my wife was a kid, her folks used to host Arthur Murray company dances at their home in Shoreview, Minnesota. She was supposed to be in bed by that time, but she would sneak into the stairway to watch her folks and their friends ‘cut a rug’. Growing up, as she did, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, she learned to to waltz, rumba, and ‘rock ‘n roll’. Later on, in her college years in the Twin Cities, she sang and danced professionally as an entertainer at the Shiek’s Supper Club in Minneapolis, and also was a member of The Cast, another group of entertainers who performed at elite supper clubs in the city.

When we see movies featuring women whose dance partners lift them over their heads or slide them down between their legs and up into the air, she’ll say, “I used to do that!”

My wife and I dance at my daughter's wedding

In Part One, last week, I included the story about how our son, John, had learned to play guitar, which I later learned, was the same story that was on their band’s website. So researching John’s lurid past as a professional musician in the 1980s and 1990s, (Yeah, he’s that old) I came across this gem in Volume 11 issue 1 of              THE RAVEN: Northwest Minnesota’s Original Art, History & Humor Journal, (that magazine we published for 24 years), a part of a two-volume collection that included the interviews of thirty-six Minnesota artists. Bear with me here. Honest to God, this is but a little excerpt:

Steve: So there you were, a teenager with raging hormones, in a socially-isolated rural region in extreme northwest Minnesota. Did you view becoming a musician as an escape from it all?
John: I didn't have any aspirations that way at first. I just enjoyed watching the bands that came from the cities every weekend to play at my mom's bar and steak house in Goodridge, MN.

In fact, a band group forgot one of their guitars there. When we notified them about the guitar, the guy said "Hey you can keep that guitar. We had insurance." So it sat around the house and once in a while I'd take it out and tinker on it and after a period of time I thought, "I could really play this if I worked at it." It was an electric six-string Yamaha.

Steve: So, John, how did you get started playing in a band?
John: It was just a bunch of young guys sitting around drinking beer and smoking weed and playing guitars. (John Laughs heartily)
 
It sort of went on from there. I could get to be compulsive and had to be better than anybody else so I practiced chords a lot. The other guys had music lessons and played instruments in school, so I wasn’t the best player because we didn't have money for lessons. The guys would tease me and tell me I was tone deaf and would never be able to play the chords right.

Steve: Funny! So when did you actually put a band together and start performing?
John: I can't remember exactly the date, We called ourselves     "The Quest." It was a joke kind of a thing, like the quest was to get high, to get girls. We would each practice our parts and then practice together. 

THE QUEST featuring John Helms, Kelly and Tracy Prichard, Rick Langlie, Steve Carrier, and Danny Dahlin. John is center, wearing glasses.

 My guitar lessons were going into bars. People thought I was older than seventeen. No one carded you then. I'd watch the band's guitar players and then I would go home and try to play what I saw whether what I saw was right or wrong. I kept observing and doing till I learned to develop a technique to play. I was determined to learn while I was young so I could play better as I got older. I was obsessive about it.

Steve: Who were the guys you played with initially?
John: Lessee, Kelly and Tracy Prichard played guitars, and Danny Dahlin, who was an excellent drummer. He pretty much made the band because his grove was always right on. He had a good ear too. He could hear when we were playing things wrong and help us out that way. Then there was Steve Carrier, an excellent bass player, and Rick Langlie on guitar.

Steve: You didn't like singing?
John: I just wanted to turn my amp up loud and play. We played some school functions and private parties, dance halls and sometimes in local bars. I played drums sometimes, but mostly electric guitar, and just attempted backup singing.

Then some older dudes (which meant people in their '30's) saw us play somewhere and asked me and Tracy to join their band called The Full Moon Band from Grygla, Minnesota. Playing with them is how I got introduced to old country songs by Hank Williams, Hank Williams Jr, Willy Nelson, Waylon Jennings and such.
We played town halls, some bars and dance halls.

Steve: So what kind of guitar were you playing by this time?
John: Honestly? I started college in Thief River Falls, Minnesota and got a ‘GSL’, which became a Guaranteed Strat Loan: a white 1979 Stratocaster. That was one thing about being a young musician, was to go into a music store and have a salesman talk you into going into hock for all this cool new stuff you just had to have. Another thing you realize as a musician, is you need money to make money, no matter how talented you are, so you are always working another extra job in hopes of making that one big recording.

Steve: Did you play in any college events?
John: While I was in jazz band at Northland in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, we toured around each year to schools in the state and also played in Canada. I went to school for broadcasting, but when I was finished I worked 60-70 hours a week and made like $650 a month. That came out to less than $2.50 an hour, so I went back to being a musician.

Steve: Really! Who were your influences?
John: First Ted Nugent, and then later, Eddie Van Halen. The crazy way Van Halen was playing, instead of strumming and picking, he would do hammer-ons with his left hand and tapping on the fret board with his right, taking the guitar playing world by storm.

Steve: So instead of playing on the body of the guitar, he was playing on the neck of the guitar?
John: Yes, and I was one of the first guys in our area to figure out how he played. When I came to practice, I wowed the guys with what I had learned, then incorporated some of that style when I  played country music.

Steve: So, did that become your signature style?
John: Well, kind of. Putting a little rock in the country became the hit thing on the radio, and it gained a lot more followers.

Steve: Were you ever approached to travel on the road?
John: Well, in the '80's, I was playing in heavy metal or rock 'n roll bands, but they always fell apart. It was hard to get four or five guys on the same plane when it came to commitment, responsibility, and keeping egos in check. I learned a lot, but I was never lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.

You know sometimes when you are aiming for the stars, you forget that you have to hit all the little meteors on the way up. People use to tell me I was so good, and that I had potential to "Be the star, I know you are." So I had that riding on me. I would practice sometimes six to eight hours. I learned a lot of music and different ways to play, it but it was always someone else's stuff and not my own songs.

Beginning in the late '80's or so, I sobered up, stopped smoking weed, and got more serious with my life by working day jobs and playing at night, always striving to be better. I started singing, learned some harmonies, and developed a singing voice I never had. I worked days at a music store in St. Cloud, MN called the Bridge of Harmony. I began offering guitar lessons too, and taught students how to play by ear.

Another thing I did was to call up resorts, as there are 10,000 lakes and a resort on each in Minnesota, and book gigs with them.  I would brag up a make-believe band, and say that I had that just got off the road. Then I would call up good musicians and tell them we could make $200 each if they’d meet me there. I'd bring a PA system. We’d pool our song knowledge, come up with set lists and do a good job.

Steve: That was pretty innovative! So, did you ever make it ‘big’?
John: One day I got asked to sit in with a group who needed a guitar player. I played with them and they liked my style and asked me to join their group and help write songs. That was         "Southern Cross." We played our own stuff around St. Cloud and gained a bunch of followers and then made a CD. 

We were asked to play at a place at the Mall of America called Gatlin's, named after the Gatlin Brothers a popular famous country rock group at the time. The crowds liked us, so we got asked to play there many times. Our CD was played often at the time on radio stations in St. Cloud and Duluth. “Southern Cross” was really good. They played with heart and soul and the audiences could feel it. All the guys were seasoned musicians.

SOUTHERN CROSS.  Bruce Anderson, Steve Smith, Pat Haley, John Helms, Aldo Juleson,

I don't think I ever played the same lead in a song. The audiences and the guys liked it. I think when you become master of your instrument, the spirit comes out when you play. Sometimes I would be playing, and I couldn't tell you what I played when I got done. People would tell me I sounded like two people playing one guitar and wanted to know how I did it. I couldn't tell them. You know, the word ‘music’ is Latin for muse; and muse means ‘a guiding spirit.’ That’s where this band was at. They had a lot of feel.

Then LSD came along ...

Lead Singer Disease. Our harmonies were so right on, but the manager kept telling the lead singer guy that he could be better going solo and make more money. Then outsiders had these ideas about adding this and changing that, soon the group started disagreeing, slowly splitting up and after being one of the top bands in Minnesota with national managers keeping an eye on us.

In six months there was nothing left. We had been right up there with the Killer Hayseeds. In fact, KH would play our CD on their PA during set breaks, ‘cause they liked our music. That was the closest I ever got to being part of something that had an excellent chance of being successful at a national level where we could have made good money.

After that I was depressed for a little while and then just said 'f-it' and went back on the road. The first band I played with was with a group out of Canada which had a hit song in Country Canada. They had heard about me somehow and gave me a call and asked me if I would meet them in Detroit. I did, and we grouped up and went on the road, touring all over.

I met a lot of people in the business. Back then, if you were talented and wanted to be a star you went to Nashville to try to get an agent or manager. Then they would send the entertainer out on the road to develop themselves as a showman. I would be part of the bands they put together to back the potential star on stage. We would play, casinos, truckstops, music fests, state fairs and went all over the US.

One of those bands I played with was the Key Lane Band. After a couple of years, I gained some following at these places and some of the audiences would come to see me play, which sort of run into conflict with the star of the show, so I had to tone it down a bit.

But not at Jack’s in Superior, Wisconsin on July 5th, 2019. If anything, as dark came on, the crowd wanted Shantily Clad to rev it up. Let ‘er rip! People there wanted to dance!