You have to start from somewhere and in 1972 I composed a half hour cassette of "songs" that were basically me bashing on toy drums and cymbals. The cymbals never seem to last long.
I remember bits and pieces of making cassettes but all of them have been destroyed or recorded over with classic rock tunes. I do remember a crazed version of Ring A Ling done with brushes after my mom took away my drum sticks.
First proper cassette album was something called Talking Book and basically your run of the mill 12 year old fucking off and calling it music. I did a cover of Ray Charles Never Seen Enough Of It, and doing some goofy stuff like Ramshackle Cadillac or The Killers.
I had a guitar but couldn't play it. Most guitar numbers were noise but some did have a bit of melody. The Flyer comes to mind so was Do You. In 1975,somebody threw out an old two string acoustic guitar so I took that and made more noise and made a 8 track that I still have but nothing to play it on. No biggie.
In 1976, my dad was responsible for me continue to record although by that time, I was banging on coffee cans yelling into a microphone and calling it KROD. On August 20, 1976 began the echophonic years. It was learn as you go and in November I mastered the art of overdubbing on something called Beautiful Renditions, hey it had guitar and had percussion. It sounded like rock to me.
Thoughout the 70s I continued to make tapes of such primitive noise and foolhardiness and even thought about getting a band going in high school, even though I couldn't play well. One fateful night at variety show at high school, something would change my perception of music. A cover band featuring a couple dudes, the bass player would actually play in some better known cover bands across the state (forgot his name) but the drummer was Lonnie Washburn, a steller pounder on drums and as they tore through a couple Ted Nugent numbers he got me started to seriously play drums in a better way. I just had to get out of my coffee can phase.
In 1980 my best friend Russ Swearingen and I went to Keneey's Music Store off First Ave in Cedar Rapids and he purchased a Music Man bass and Old Man Keeney sold me a clear blue Zickos for 300 dollars! My first actual drumset and we started to practice and learn to play drums while still making echophonic tapes. Paraphernalia, the album title had a couple sides of me and Russ with Darren Johnson playing guitar wreck Same Old Song And Dance and Godzilla and the rest of the project me bashing away on drums but for the first time wrote a actual proper song called Movin On To Better Things (Co written with Steve Willard who thought about joining our little band but decided to get a real job and stayed married to his wife to which they're still together after 35 years). Later in the summer I did another song called Out Of Gas and is kinda catchy if you think about it. But for the most part I spent many a time and effort learning to play drums while taking notes listening to records. The big influence on me was Keith Moon and John Bonham but also Jerry Shirley of Humble Pie too. And Lon Washburn although we never met or hung out that much but his drum style you can hear in the Townedgers Music and other bands for that matter.
1981 bought the world The Power Of Positive Thinking and more memorable songs, All Night Dancing comes to mind and even though I didn't know much guitar, I knew enough of sounds and frets that really beginning to know part of chords but it was still fucking around. But I was beginning to jam with other people, most notably Doug Spinler and his dad in 1981 jam at their place and with Russ and his cousin Mike Swearingen. Although Doug Spinler wasn't part of the Paraphernalia band he suggested another Doug, Bonesteel to take over and Doug got the guitar job by default, he later drafted Duwayne Schiminkey to which DW would teach me enough guitar to become a guitarist that knew what I was doing.
1982 Paraphernalia made an EP that included the infamous Rocky Mountain Way and Rock Me Baby to which I would be smashing cymbals left and right and becoming the wild man drummer that would actually overshadow the more efficient style of Washburn. By then I was playing Zildjian cymbals since nobody had Paiste around (I did have a old 404 that West Music had on sale for 50 bucks) and those Z's took a helluva beating. With Russ back into the Marines, the band went on hold and I did Bizarre Behavior that has perhaps one of the wildest drum solos ever committed to tape and a song called Heart Of Stone that would be reworked to You Were With Me, which was basically a song about Amy Holtz, a girl that I met at Chuckie Cheese playing video games and she was bored with her bubba boyfriend and wanted time away from him I guess. We were together for about 3 weeks till she went back to him. Guess they did get married and had a couple kids along the way but as for myself, I was more into music and making my own music.
Which leads into 1983, Jack Orbit is production a bunch of off the wall drum stuff and things were not going well. He turned the tape player off and simply told me it's time to start actually doing real songs and not this 1 take throw it on tape and see if it stick crap.
During practice at an Open Highway get together, me and DW were messing around on guitar on a song which had no words and I start singing LuWanna, Do You Wanna, repeat both lines, I can tell when your home cuz your always on the phone LuWanna.
Thus began LuWanna, the first song written for a new collection of a real album with real put together songs called So Much For That. It's a silly song but it's was a new beginning.
With Jack Orbit and Ken Miller, a engineer friend of Jack's it became The Route 66 Band. For the most part it was my band, both had other priorities at hand but for the next 22 years it would be that until a name change had to happen since there was another Iowa band that was called Route 66 and I needed something that nobody had.
In 1996 Route 66 was renamed The Townedgers.
And the story begins.
