I am a fifth generation Texan. My love of music was a gift at birth. On New Years eve 1950, my parents and 4 other couples went to a Bob Wills concert in Brownwood, Texas. Over 5 days in October of that year all 5 couples had children.
When I was a young man I sang with the Texas Boys Choir and studied the cello. I sang folk music in high school and, inspired by the arrival of the Beatles in 1964, I began to write my own music. In 1965 I made my first record with my girlfriend, Billie Heron. She and I were known as the "Two Different" and we recorded for SoundTrack Records.
My passion for theater moved us to Houston in 1967 where I would study with Cecil Pickett. My English teacher was Hazel Thompson and her son Mayo was in a performance group known as the "Red Crayola". I started hanging with a group of freakish types collectively known as the "Familiar Ugly". The Ugly was a sort of Greek Chorus to the Crayola. Mayo took me to meet some suits who had a label that he was recording for. I signed with International Artists in Houston in 1967 and lunged into the exploding subculture. I became known as a stand-up psychedelic folkie.
In 1968, we were all pumped with creative juices and altered states. Clubs like 'Love Street Light Circus', 'La Maison', 'Living Eye' and 'Vulcan Gas Company' in Austin were fertile ground where the music bloomed. Bands like "Shiva's Headband", "Conqueroo", "Christopher", "Sherwood" and "Bubble Puppy" played with such frenzy that the world started to change around us. But we were all in awe of the mythical 13th Floor Elevators. No one who ever saw the 'Vators' play live will ever forget the experience.
In March of 1968 I started recording a concept album, "Suite Mother's Milk". Mayo was helping with the process. As this album was coming together, the Elevators began to deconstruct. Unbelievable pressures had been building up from the ultra-conservative powers of the time. Drug busts and general harassment began to accompany the Elevators everywhere they went.
International Artists had become as much a problem for the Elevators as the law. Their lack of insight and understanding of the times led to Roky Erickson being committed to Rusk State Hospital in a misguided attempt to keep him out of jail. It was all too much, and people began to flee the scene. Tommy Hall snagged Roky and they left for San Francisco. Stacy Sutherland was left to twist in the wind. In the mean time, IA was demanding that there be a new album (so that the band could be deprived of more money). Stacy, Danny Thomas and I rehearsed for a while. We were going to call ourselves the Eagles but It never jelled. I never finished my project. "Bull of the Woods" was finished 'incommunicado', and all the energy seemed to go out of everyone.
In 1969 I broke with IA and went to Los Angeles to sign with A&M Records. A college friend, Shelly Duval, had introduced me to Lou Adler. He brought me out to California and set about trying to make me a star. They put me up in the "Riot" Regency on Sunset Strip. We soon began rehearsing a new band, "Fancy Space and the Rockin' Rhythm Daddies" and the label started to mold me.
Right after Michael Murphy had released "Cosmic Cowboy" my A&R guy came to the studio and asked me if I had brought any boots with me from Texas. When I balked he said, "never mind we can get better boots in LA". What the hell was this? Then, the next week he came and introduced me to my new pedal steel player. Huh? I started to think that I was in OZ. Hell, I was in OZ! Lou granted me an audience and I told him that I thought that it would work better if they let me dress myself and make my music. It was carefully explained to me that no, in reality they knew more about who I was and what I should do than God. So, I should just sit back and ride the wave of their good intentions. Maybe they were right, but it just didn't bode well for my personal happiness.
"The music business is a money trench, a long plastic hallway where pimps and thieves run free and good men die like dogs. There is also a negative side."
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
Lesson learned. I returned to Austin in 1970 and started playing as the "Livingroom Cat Band" in all the best livingrooms. In 1968 I had met a young guy, Fred Mitchim. He played flute and guitar and a nucleus was formed that would become a 35 year musical alliance. In 1971, we recorded at ACA Studios in Houston. These tapes were probably lost when ACA closed - unless they fell into the hands of the unpredictable Roy Ames. I do know that Ames somehow got a hold of a session we did later that year in San Francisco at Alembic Studio. He later released them without my knowledge or permission in a compilation he licensed in the 90's. (You can download one of the songs from that session on this site.)
After the Alembic session we stayed on for a while in San Francisco and later settled in Bolinas. Fred and I went to Ali Akbar Khan's College of Ethnic Indian Music. I studied the sarod with Master Khan and Fred was learning tabla from Zakir Hussein. We would play at the Holy City Zoo and hang at the Lion's Share. For a while we rented rehearsal space in the basement of Jim Jone's Church. Whew!
In 1974 I returned to Texas when my Dad asked me to come home and help him in his business. I moved back to Fort Worth and cut my hair. Fred moved back to Austin. Over the next few years we continued recording with Phil York at Autumn Studio in Dallas and with Robin Hood Bryan in Tyler. In 1975 we had a session at Pecan Street in Austin. We were joined by Sid Page (Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks) - violin, Hutch Hutchenson (Quicksilver) - Bass, David Fore (Bubble Puppy) - drums and a young guitar player named Brad Smith. It rocked.
David Fore's little sister, Becky, was at the Pecan Street session. We had gone together off and on since the 60's. She moved to Fort Worth and we got married. In the mean time, in collaboration with my father and the energy business, I was launched into a world of three piece suits and Halliburtons.
The punk movement had started and it kept my alter ego alive. As "Evie and Basque Redondo", Becky and I became part of the new wave. I produced an EP for local heroes, the "Fort Worth Cats", and a single for my Brother in Law's band, "D-Day". That single, Too Young To Date sold over 50,000 copies and was one of the only singles ever banned in LA. Becky and I, with some friends, would perform as the "Scochies", for which I wrote over two hours of doggie punk songs. This was when I wrote the timeless love song, Chijuajua Amore.
I had become President and CEO of Alternate Fuel Source Development, Inc. but things began to fall apart when Reagan was elected. I divorced Becky and returned home to Bohemia.
By 1983, I was hooked up with a nefarious bunch known as "Decisions Team Limited". We opened the Caravan of Dreams in Fort Worth and there started seven years of the strangest but most magical times. I was Theater Manager and eventually became the Associate Artistic Director. I produced, directed and starred in many productions in the Theater of All Possibilities. In these days, Brad Smith and I were known as "Two White Guys" and made a home of the Hop for our Weird Wednesdays. The "Velvet Monkey Wrench" was born in 1985 and we cut our teeth at the Caravan. [see VMW bio]
Caravan started a record label and I worked on albums by Chief Twins 77, Ronald Shannon Jackson, James Blood Ulmer, and Ornette Coleman. I got to meet and spend creative time with Tim Leary, William Burroughs and Yevtushenko. I got to know Dizzy, Wynton and most of the great names of jazz. But, after six years, it all began to spin too fast. Then I met Scotty.
There wasn't anything I had done in my life to prepare me for the power of love; I had met my Soul Mate. Scotty is a writer and our lives have magically intersected since the beginning. We make good use of our natures. We are so different, yet we make a whole. We got married and left for a sabbatical in the Sangre de Christos. That sabbatical has lasted 12 years and has settled us a beautiful valley in the Texas Hill Country. Rivers and passions run deep and clear here.
Last year, I started recording some 'straight to digital' acoustic stuff with Fred Mitchim engineering and producing. The material on the CD from the Zombo Tapes was recorded the weekend after 9/11. During this period I had been thinking about what I had and had not done with my life. The realization struck me that I had been writing, playing and recording music my whole life and I never finished that seminal project I had started in 1968. And, because of my distrust of the music 'business', I had never released any of my work. In a flash I knew what I had to do. It was time to make the most of what I have and begin to release my catalog of music. In addition to this initial release, "Velvet Monkey Wrench", I have enough material for at least three more CD's. And, l have the energy and hopefully the time to create much more.
Finally, you might be interested to know that I'm also developing a film project to document those heady daze in Texas from 1965-69 that started me down this road I'm on. Please watch for developments and follow the progress on this site.
Life is for living . . . that's my philosophy
Johndavid
