Blackfoot

The Beginning
1969-1971
(Click on the underlined links for related photos and stuff)

    Spring, 1969: While living in Jacksonville, Florida, I meet Rick Medlocke and Greg T. Walker. We form the band Fresh Garbage, with Ron Sciabarasi on keyboard, Rick on drums and vocals, Greg on bass, and myself on lead guitar, playing mostly at The Comic Book Club on Forsyth St. in downtown Jacksonville, and with our friends The One Percent at the Sunday afternoon "be-ins" in the local parks.

    Fall, 1969: Bands collide when Ron leaves Fresh Garbage and lead guitarist extraordinaire Jerry Zambito leaves the 3-piece band, Tangerine. We form a new band, Hammer, with Rick Medlocke on lead vocals, fronting the band (surprisingly, playing almost no guitar); Greg T. Walker on bass and vocal; Jakson Spires from Tangerine on drums and vocal; DeWitt Gibbs, also from Tangerine, on Hammond organ, Fender Rhodes electric piano, and vocal; and myself on lead guitar (one vocal, one time, never again)! We move to Gainesville, Fl., to be the house band at the near-legendary "Dub's", a topless bar on the outskirts of town.

    Rick, Greg, Jakson and DeWitt were close friends, having grown up together on Jacksonville's westside, going to school together and playing in bands together since they were little kids.
    I, on the other hand, had been born and raised in the Westchester and Long Island suburbs of New York City, and had moved from there to Jacksonville in 1963, only 6 years earlier. Although we played really well together right from the start and were musically very tight, when it came down to personalities I was an outsider, and as hard as I tried, I just didn't quite fit in.

    We played at Dub's in Gainesville through the rest of 1969 (including New Year's Eve), and through the first two weeks of January, after which we were scheduled to take a 2-week break, and then return in February.
    A couple of days before the break was to start, the guys came to me and said that they had decided to replace me with Dennis Holmbeck, the guitarist from one of their earlier bands (The Livin' Ends). I moved out of the band house, and Dennis and his wife moved in.
Instead of getting mad and going back to Jacksonville, I offered to help Dennis learn the songs he didn't know. After they started back at Dub's in February, I went by the club several times to see them, sometimes playing with them on a few songs. I really enjoyed those times.
    They must have enjoyed it too. At about 2:30 in the morning on February 11th, I was awakened by outrageously loud yelling and banging on my front door. When I opened the door, I was gang-tackled by a roaring, drunken horde: Rick, Jakson, Greg T. and DeWitt, welcoming me back into the band with a good pounding. That was one of the best birthday presents I have ever had.

    About the same time, we received a letter from a young woman named Nancy O'Connor. Nancy, a Gainesville native, was now working for a music publishing company in New York City, and, while home for the holidays, had seen us play at Dub's on New Years Eve. She had liked the band, and told her boss about us when she returned to Manhattan. He told her to have us send him a tape of the band, which we promptly did. He liked what he heard, and told us to come on up to The City, and he'd see what he could do for us. That's all we needed to hear!

    Early Spring, 1970: The band, renamed Blackfoot, moves to Manhattan, living in Nancy's one-bedroom fifth-floor walk-up apartment on St. Marks Place in the East Village. There were seven of us living in that two-room apartment: Nancy, the five of us in the band, and our first roadie, Rick Moulton, who had come with us from Florida.
     Within a few weeks, most of the band's equipment is stolen from our van (and generously replaced by our first manager, Nancy's boss, Ira Sokoloff).
    Nancy's apartment lease runs out in June, and we're all looking for a place to live. Ira arranges for the band and Nancy to stay in the basement of his uncle's house in Irvington, New Jersey until we could find something more permanent.
    Our stay in the basement is cut short when a couple of the guys take Ira's uncle's teenage daughter on a day trip to the Jersey Shore. On the way, their van is nearly cut off by a passing car. One of the guys promptly flips the other driver the bird, and the other driver (in his unmarked State Police car) promptly turns on his lights and siren, pulling the van over. While the driver was getting the vehicle registration out of the glove compartment, the trooper notices a bb pistol, which was also in the glove box. That prompted a thorough search of the van, which yielded two real handguns. (We were from Florida, where at the time guns weren't such a big deal; we didn't know about the handgun laws up North!)
    The guys and the daughter were all taken to the police station. The guys had to pay a fine, and the guns were confiscated. Although Ira's cousin was completely innocent and was never charged with anything, her father still had to come to the police station to get her, over one hour's drive each way. He was really pissed off, and we were kicked out of his basement. What a surprise.

    A few days later, we're all living at the Royal Hotel, a rundown hotel in Mt. Freedom, N.J., bartering room rent in exchange for playing in the hotel's "nightclub" and occasionally helping with maintenance work at the hotel. We heard about a benefit concert that was being held at the Unitarian Fellowship Hall in nearby Morristown to raise money to bail one of the locals out of jail, and we volunteered to play. That was really the first time we played to any kind of crowd in that area, and they loved it. Soon we were playing sporadic local concerts, but gigs, other than at the hotel, were few and far between. We survived the summer with the help of our new friends the Whitesell family (thanks, Mom & Pop, Carol, Jane, Joan, Ray, Rich, Nancy, and Deb) and many others, who fed us and were otherwise very supportive.
    We meet North Carolinians John Vassiliou and Ricky Reynolds, living in their van in the woods behind the hotel, and they become our second and third roadies. We part company with manager Ira, and Nancy becomes the band's new manager.
    By late summer, 1970, keyboard player DeWitt Gibbs and roadie Rick Moulton quit the band. Rick Medlocke starts playing rhythm guitar full time, and the lineup that most folks know as Blackfoot is born.

Fall, 1970: We all leave the Royal Hotel and move to a house in the country outside of Hackettstown, N.J. Gigs are more frequent now that school was in session, mostly high school and college concerts, and Princeton frat parties. Bar gigs were non-existent.
    The band gets arrested immediately after our set at a concert at Morris County College (with Dover, New Jersey band "Tom Barth & Brother"). We were bailed out of jail the next day with cash donated by audience members in the college parking lot after the show. The charges of "defrauding an innkeeper" and "larceny of hotel room furnishings" were thrown out of court. (DETAILS)
    Other than that, we were having a ball, playing out once or twice a week, and rehearsing constantly in the basement of our farmhouse.

    Late Spring, 1971: Times are getting lean again (eating Cheerios and water). The schools and colleges are winding down for the summer, and so are our gigs. Once again, we are getting by only with the help of our friends the Whitesells and the Lorets (and more others than I can name). Roadies John Vassiliou and Ricky Reynolds decide to go back home to North Carolina. We can't keep the band farmhouse in Hackettstown any longer, and we move in with the band "Yiege" in their house outside of Princeton, N.J.
    With Blackfoot's gigs dried up (no bars to play, schools out for the summer), tensions were high with two bands in the house. Then one evening, Ronnie Van Zant phoned from Jacksonville, looking for a new drummer for his band the One Percent, now re-named Lynyrd Skynyrd. Medlocke took the job playing drums, and Greg T. signed on as their new bassist. Rick, Jakson, Greg T., and Nancy went back to Florida, I stayed in New Jersey, and Blackfoot was history. Or so I thought.