trivia2

The October 4, 1969 dance starred Mom's Apple Pie and they were billed as "The
most talked about group in Central Florida....With different and new unusual acts".
The new unusual acts turned out to be lead guitarist Jay Locke setting a guitar on
fire and throwing it out the window. As it happened our rhythm guitar player Steve
Durham was in the right place, at the right time and got to the burning guitar first.
The guitar was thrown out in an area that was fenced in so Jay didn't think that there
was any chance of anyone getting it before he could retrieve it, but he thought
wrong. When he ask for it back Steve said "we're keeping it man" so Jay insisted
that he needed it back, Steve finally relented and returned the guitar.

In mid 1970 Edward Strickland and Steve Durham left the band. Mike and I wanted to
carry on as long as we could until he went off to college. Paul Robinson, Mike's
brother began playing guitar and Kevin Mann joined as drummer. Kevin lived off
powerline road, in the middle of a bunch of citrus groves. We started practicing in an
old barn at Kevin's. We had some concern because the road in front of the open
barn was not paved, so when a car would drive by, which wasn't too often, it would
sure stir up the dust. We didn't want it damaging our equiptment, as it was too hard
to replace. Also another friend of ours, Donnie Pettett, who was a drummer, would
come out and jam with us. We had a lot of fun, but at times we would have
disagreements and it could get pretty heated.

                                           The Red House Band

In 1971 Mike Robinson returned from college for the summer. He and his brother Paul formed a
band to try and play some gigs before his return to school. Mike played bass, Paul on guitar, Tim
Willis on guitar, and Tom Halterman on drums. They rented a house just off Bates Road not far
from Hwy. 27. I had went to hear them practice a couple of times and they were sounding pretty
good. The following account was sent in an e-mail from Mike.

The band never had a name but I always call it the Red House Band. It was the
summer of 1971 after my first year of college. We rented that house which was the
old WHAN radio studio that had been moved there from out by 27. Mrs. Cook
rented it to us for $20 bucks a month on the condition that we clean it up for her.
She had rented it to fruitpickers and it was really dirty inside. We actually hosed it
down and used about a gallon of Lysol on it. They had slopped hogs directly out
the kitchen window into a pen in the back yard or so I remember someone saying. It
might have actually been a dog kennel under the window but you could see the
spillage on the outside of the house.

A funny thing, once I swore I heard a bird in the back yard chirping one of the guitar
parts to Whipping Post. We had a lot of fun with that band and got pretty tight just
before I left to go back to college. We never played out anywhere. Henry Haake
sang with us some too. I have some fair sound quality tapes of that. Later I heard
some band in Winter Haven playing a couple of the songs with the same
arrangements at a bar. It think they had picked them up from Tim somewhere along
the way. We played some different stuff like Blodwyn Pig, a Bloodrock song called
Children'sHeritage, Keep Playing that Rock and Roll (EdgarWinter), Into the Sun by
Grand Funk, Black Magic Woman, Never in My Life by Mountain, Good Golly Miss
Molly and Working Man by CCR and a bunch of other stuff. I remember working up
all those songs with chords and lyrics in Tallahassee to use that summer. It was a
really different set than you would usually hear.

Some tall red-haired guy Tim worked for at a music store came out to audition us to
play somewhere and he said we were good but there was no way we could play out
with our equipment, which was a step up from The Undreground Railway days but
still pretty shoddy and way under-powered. I bought Paul a little used Ampeg 25
watt amp and we literally "sawed it off" Jerry Sears style, to make it into a head and
plugged it into that huge speaker enclosure I built that actually had only one 15 inch
speaker in it but stood as tall as a Marshall stack. I played through one of those
black tuck and roll Kustom bass heads through Henry Haake's fender cabinet.

*** Although I was not present when Mike heard the bird chirping one of the guitar parts to
      Whipping Post, it is my belief that he was not on anything.

The Johnny Winter Concert

In 1969 we saw Johnny Winter in concert at the old Orlando Sports Stadium. This
was not long after he had formed the group "Johnny Winter And". The band had
also released an album by the same name. The band consisted of Johnny Winter
on guitar, Rick Derringer / guitar, Bobby Caldwell / drums and Randy Jo Hobbs on
bass. However, Bobby Caldwell had left the band by this time and was replaced on
this concert tour by Johnny's brother, Edgar Winter. It was a great concert and we
really lucked out to get to see Edgar on drums, he was great and I don't use the
word "great" very often.

This concert was the first time that we had seen a big name artist perform live. Also
on the bill were the "Purple Underground" from Winter Haven, "Tin House" an
Orlando band and "Spring" who had some national recognition at the time. Tin
House was a three piece band, with sixteen year old Floyd Radford on guitar. Those
guys blew the place apart, they were extremely tight and played all original material.
They became good friends with Johnny and Edgar Winter after this concert and
recorded the album "Tin House" with Rick Derringer producing. Radford worked with
the Winter brothers for several years following the album's release.

There were other first for us at this concert also, pandhandlers and hippies. We
seemed pretty straight compared to most of the audience, almost like something out
of the comic strip "Li'L Abner". We could smell marijuana all around us and felt like
we were being sucked up in some kind "freaked out hippie vacuum". The hippies
noticed us as well and seemed as amused by us as we were by them. The show
and the experience were great and will stand out as the best concert I have ever
attended.

"The Bomb Shelter"

Once, we decided to literally take The Underground Railway, underground. Steve
Durham's next door neighbor had built a bomb shelter in the field between his and
Steve's house. The neighbor, Mr. Davis, gave us permission to use it for practice,
we thought this would be way cool. Anyone thats ever been in one of those "cold
war" relics from the early 60's knows that once you open the main doors on the
surface, it's a long way straight down to the door that leads into the shelter.

We carried all of our equipment down the ladder and set it up inside the main room.
It's all concrete from ceiling to floor, so when we started playing, the reverberation
was so bad we couldn't hardly stand it. We tried turning the volume down to see if it
would make a difference, but it didn't. We realized that this was not going to be as
cool as we had first thought, so we packed our stuff up and carried it all back up the
stairs. If we hadn't been so young, we would have had better sense than to try that
in the first place.

While we were in the shelter, we got a chance to look around, as best I can
remember it was divided into two different rooms. There was storage areas for
supplies, and beds for sleeping. Being down there and imagining what it might be
like during a nuclear war gave me the creeps. There were a lot of these shelters
built during that era and thankfully were never used.

"Mischief Makers"

"The Mischief Makers" were a popular area band, that had played around the area
in one form or another for years. In about 1972 they were the house band at a club
in Fort Meade called "El Cid". At the time the group consisted of David Howell, Larry
Helms, a guitar player named Butch and a drummer. They had either taken another
gig for two weeks or a vacation, I can't remember for sure. They needed a band to
fill in for them during that period, so they recruited some local players to form their
replacement.

This group that formed out of necessity consisted of Joe Cleek, Tommy Hagler,
Butch Owens, Mike Parker, myself and a rhythm guitar player who's name I can't
remember. We got together, worked up as many songs as we could and played the
gig six nights a week for two weeks. We had a lot of fun playing the job but the time
went by fast and The Mischief Makers returned to reclaim their gig. After El Cid we
did play a two or three week job at the old Rustic lounge in Winter Haven, after that
the band broke up. "The Mischief Makers" changed their name to the "M & M Show
Band" and continued to play the area.