Well, for all of you who do read my posts, you know that I wander a lot in my topics and often have the urge to write about my experiences in music. Here as of late, while I’m dealing with our struggling site work business, trying to figure out how to carry large insurance payments, heavy equipment payments, health insurance, and a myriad of other fixed costs in addition to costs of materials, fuel, and payroll. We went from about ten employees to four and are still trying to do 1/2 million dollars in work with proper social distancing. We applied for the government giveaways. Still, I guess all the businesses with nearly 500 employees (which I can’t fathom how they are “small businesses” have sucked up the two trillion and ran the system dry in less than a month and left us real small business’s hung out to dry. Businesses in our class and industry are used to us fixing the infrastructure in this country, and the truckers who haul everything being taken for granted. Right now, the truckers are heroes, have low fuel costs, and vast amounts of freight to haul and are finally getting a break, but the rest of us get screwed. Sooner or later, when that water main breaks and all the sheltered in folks can’t flush their toilets or get clean water, being short on toilet paper will be the least of their worries while our industry implodes. We were already near collapse because, in this full-employment country, we can’t find anyone to work in the trades. Even if we pay competitive wages to the student loan, buried college grads who didn’t learn anything marketable and lecture the rest of us how stupid and backward we are. It is in this backdrop, I write this morning to escape this world and into my passion for music, which in the song by the Doobie Brothers says, “Music Is the Doctor.”
The band I formed back in 1976, fresh out of college. It has had many alumni, each with their own story to tell, kind of like the books of the New Testament. Each version of the band with a version of music and a life of its own. With music in its God-given way acting as its earthly representation of the Savior.
We were always a family and were bound together by the music we played, mostly cover songs of other bands, but we did record four originals that are linked in the blog. A couple of nights ago, as usual, I couldn’t sleep away my depression, so I surfed the tv and ended up on the AXS channel. They had a run a tribute to one of my all-time favorite bands, Chicago. I listened and wept with sadness as well, as “tears of joy” when I heard their hit “Make Me Smile.” I grew up in high school and college, listening to their music and played it live in bands from then on.
Topaz started out with six guys; Leigh played bass and doubled on Trombone when the keyboard picked up the bass line either on low-end keys or foot pedals on a Hammond B-3; Louie (the token Cuban) played trumpet. I played sax and doubled on vocals, and I covered Donna Summer because I had a falsetto that sounded like her since we had no chicks in the band then. Earth, Wind, and Fire “Fantasy,” which was reserved for the second set so I could warm up and not blow my chops beyond what an emergency shot of Drambuie chased by a beer could not cure! Matt played the B-3, the real and heavy deal with a full Leslie, ARP string ensemble, and Fender Rhodes piano. RIP Matt; he passed away a few years back. Jack on guitar played massively loud through a tube Fender twin, who sang lead and Mike on drums (who on one occasion brought in dual Tympani kettle drums, so we had the right sound for a disco version of 2001 A Space Odyssey. Everyone sang except Matt, who was a New York Italian, that sounded like Marlin Brando doing his Godfather thing. These were the guys in the first edition of Topaz.
The next edition continued with the nightclub thing but recorded some originals. We recorded these in a little eight-track studio in Orlando in 1979. Me, Leigh, and the Guitar player, all worked during the day at the mining operation, my family owned. My dad passed away in 1978, leaving me at 26 to take over the business with my mom, sister and brother. So we all had day jobs and played clubs at night sometimes six nights a week until 2:00 AM, and then it was back to work at 7:00 AM. Out of this environment, we got off work one Friday night and headed to Orlando to start a recording session at 7:00 PM and broke up after the final mixdown of the four tunes at 5:00 AM when we were done, physically, mentally and out of money to pay for any more studio time. The quality of this take was not derived from the original master but from a second generation cassette. In order to keep the “tape hiss” down, I encoded it with dolby noise reduction and goofed up and played back and transferred to the last version using DBX noise reduction. Since these were two different technologies they didn’t have the same compression or noise gate properties (for all you ancient technology geeks) and the songs fade in and out a bit with the noise reduction not able to compensate for the tape hiss in the same way. Sort of like speaking French and English at the same time.
As an aside, The song by Chicago “25 or 6 to 4”, was titled when recorded because someone in the band looked up at the clock when asked what time it was and someone said “about 25 or 6 to 4 AM and thus the title of the song was the born-true story.
Every song ever written has a story behind it, so I’ll tell you a quick story behind
the inspiration to these four songs. Can’t Dance Alone – Keith, our guitarist at the time, wrote this song as our hopefully break out single (not). He was from Birmingham England and was very gifted and had a knack for song “hooks” The horn parts were made up on the spot and never written out just played from memory.
Keith also wrote the next tune “Christy” this one was about an old flame of his that he somehow could never make into a lasting relationship.
Still, the yearning never left him Leigh wrote the “Music Of You” about his wife at the time. I played, unfortunately, a very flat soprano sax on this tune (not one of my finer moments) We overdubbed the horn parts with Leigh back on Bone. Throughout the tunes, the ARP string ensemble (state of the art analog synthesizer, at the time) was used to supply the string parts, Leigh, and I divorced our wives later on in life, another whole story, but they were childhood sweethearts that just grew apart.
I Remember You – was written by me in the Chicago/Blood Sweat and Tears/Tower of Power genre. It was about a dear friend that was probably my soulmate. In my high school days, we were never intimate beyond passionate petting, but we talked for hours on end and cared for each other. Time went on she moved away we kept in touch over the years but lament what could have been with no regrets about where we are I lost track of her years ago, and I think she has passed on. She was instrumental in bringing me back to Christ by giving me Oswald Chambers “My Utmost for Your Highest” daily devotional. I have kept it by my side ever since. What a strange journey we traveled even for just a little while.
I sang the last tune; in retrospect, I should have subbed the vocal out to someone who had a more talented voice, but I gave it my best shot. Also, being in a little eight-track studio and given the analog/tape technology of the time, the double-tracked vocals had to be done by physically overdubbing by singing along with the original track (no digital one takes to add a perfectly delayed and in tune overdub effect). Try doing that some time and sing something the same way with yourself with the exact same inflections and intonation and timing. It isn’t as easy as it sounds, but that’s the way it was done in the ’70s.
Here is the manuscript to the last song that I wrote “I Remember You” that had a big Chicago style horn soli in it, but we ran out of time, and horn chops, so Keith created a killer Guitar solo on the spur of the moment to fill in the hole.
Up until a couple of years ago, when I had my stroke, the band played together in clubs, and on Sunday mornings, pieces of the band showed up at church on Sunday morning to play in praise bands and lead worship. This morning as I sat on my front porch listening on my phone ITUNES, Mercy Me’s, “Word of God Speak,” When I was a worship leader and we did this tune, I would play my EWI (electronic wind instrument that fingered like a sax and produced synthesizer sounds)
that produced the strings so that our keyboardist could devote both hands to the piano. Then to add a twist that most of the time took the congregation by the surprise of wailing powerful alto sax solo of the chorus to plead to God to Speak in the one way I could cry out so much from the heart.
I remember Gary, our last drummer, and gifted vocalist would sing this on Sunday morning after playing the night before with me in the last version of Topaz. Turning on a dime to go into praise and worship with an even greater passion than “eagles,” Mustang Sally” and Chicago just performed a few hours before. But no matter what Topaz, when taking the stage, always discretely prayed before the downbeat.
Topaz was unique because of the fact that not only was it loaded with talent (me being the least talent), but I could keep peace among the varying strong personalities, keep the stage presence on cue, call the right tunes at the right time, measure the emotional flow of the audience and handle the business side and run sound from the stage.
Music is as close as it gets for me to express the passion of God.
Tales from Depression and Dealing with it. 
