Tales from the Trails of a Rock ’n’ Roll Bus Driver

by Jerry Fitzpatrick

  Chapter 27 A Calling

  Life is full of moments, some defining and some that pile up in our memory banks. I’ve had my share of defining moments. Sometimes I don’t realize their impact until much later. Having had many instances that have taken me down the wrong path, I took for granted the one that actually changed my life and put me in the right direction. A chance meeting in my younger years secured me a life-long friend and mentor.

  Realizing I had spent seven-plus years in “the system,” where many didn’t even know what the system was, struck a desire within me to never see the inside of a jail or prison again. So many of the people I wanted to be like hadn’t even had a traffic ticket, much less been locked up, and I wanted to change that part of me. I wanted so much to never lose my freedom again. Life could be simple, I realized, with work and music and my new friends who didn’t want or have trouble in mind. I started assuring myself that I would never allow myself to get caught up in the system again. One day I realized if I would just put as much energy into doing good as I had put into trying to be bad, that maybe life’s situations would change for me.

  As the drummer of a bar band, Lightfoot, my money management skills left something to be desired. A week’s pay for me swirled down the drain faster than I could beat the drums. I always seemed to be broke or in debt to someone I had borrowed $20 from. During my bar band days, there were several music stores in Little Rock. Boyd Music Center offered top of the line guitars, drums, wind instruments and accessories matched by no other in town, or the state for that matter. I’d spent hours in their store daydreaming of all the possibilities with drums that I couldn’t afford. I purchased my sticks and a few drumheads from them, but they were also the most expensive music store in town so my selections were limited.

  Bob Boyd, the owner and one of the finest musicians in the state, was a stickler about his pricing and wouldn’t consider financing someone with no credit like myself. Bob can play piano like no other. Even though he performed gigs with his band and seemed like just one of the guys, he was tough to deal with and the rejections he gave to those trying to make a go in a music-poor town were disheartening. There were several other stores in town that fit better with struggling musicians like me, such as Stonehenge in the southwest part of town and another store north across the river.

  Mike Pinner, a young musician, opened Strum and Hum, a music store on the southwest side of town just up the street from Stonehenge Music Store. He had been in several (almost) successful bands. Albatross and Judas, many thought, would hit the big time, especially after they had landed opening slots with some bigger acts like Ted Nugent and Styx. David Dyer, the drummer in both bands, was one of the most amazing drummers I’ve ever seen to this day.

  Mack, the singer in my band, worked at a liquor store just up the street from where Mike’s store had opened. My drum set was in bad shape to be in a band that was playing gigs three nights a week. Mack recommended I go to Strum and Hum to check out new parts for my drum kit. When he told me about Mike having been in Judas, I was enticed.

  The first day I dropped into Strum and Hum, Mike, or Bean as he was commonly referred to, was not there. Steve, his sales manager, was working, and I told him I just wanted to look around. He had a few lines, but they weren’t the top lines that were being offered at Boyd’s. He also had a few used items on the shelf and my eyes were immediately drawn to a five-piece set of Fibes Drums. I’d never heard or seen that brand before, but what caught my eye was the shiny chrome that made their existence possible. Everything on them, except the heads, was chrome, and as they sat in the store, they just glowed. As I wandered around the store, I kept looking their way and couldn’t take my eyes off them. I learned Fibes was a start-up drum company in the ’60s that made drums out of fiberglass. All the major brands of drums are made out of various types of wood like maple, birch, and now even oak, to get different tones or sounds. Fiberglass shells have a unique tone to them. You can tune them to just about any note.

  The hardware on the set was really weak, one of Fibes’ faults. I didn’t care about the faults – I was more concerned with their shine at the time. When Steve told me the asking price, I didn’t have that kind of cash and asked him about financing. He said I would have to come back and talk with the owner. He told me the time frames Bean was usually there and I said I’d come back then. I left, and by the time I made it back to the store to see Bean, I was determined to say or do just about anything to get that kit of drums.

  As I entered the front door of the store, Mike, his wife and mother were standing behind the counter close to each other discussing some paperwork. Steve and Mike’s stepfather were chatting on the other side of the store. Their son was on the counter in a baby seat. He was only a few weeks old. Coming through the door and seeing all of them with the baby almost caused me to stagger. I hadn’t expected a family operation, I remember thinking as I headed toward the drum side of the store. Everyone smiled and seemed relieved that I wasn’t going to interrupt them and went back to their discussion. When I made it back to the area of the drums, I was again infatuated with the glow from the Fibes set. I could see myself reflected in the chrome and could imagine playing them at the bar with Lightfoot. But as I turned watching the Pinner family, I was equally entranced as they simply discussed paperwork. I heard Mike’s mom in a lovely tone encouraging him about what had to be done. His wife was joining in on the discussion.

  Turning from a “rock star” to a businessman, Mike had recently cut his hair for a more tailored look. There were pictures of him and his long hair tied up in a ponytail in that bass guitar rock-star stance. As I stood by the drum kit I had been dreaming about, my focus was on this seemingly perfect family. Suddenly, more important than this shiny drum set before me, was the simple family portrait behind the desk. I was envious.

  Watching them interact, I started admiring them all, and Mike and I hadn’t even spoken yet. A family and a business centered on music. I realized then I would one day want those things, too. I couldn’t even concentrate on the drums that day and left the store to come back the next day more determined to get the glowing set. Our band was becoming a hit at the bar where we played and started to draw in enough customers that the bar owner was making plans to expand the building and build a new stage. I pictured my new drum set on the new stage.

  The next time I returned to the store, I spoke with Bean about the drums. Respecting musicians the way he did, he knew I had a house gig and he wanted to help, but I needed a little more cash for a down payment before he would let me take the drums. After a few weeks of saving money, I approached Bean and worked out a deal to get my drums. I had been visiting the store several times a week looking at them trying to will them into my ownership, while at the same time getting to know a little about Bean and his family. One of the first things I admired about him was his faith. He was a devout Christian and seemed to speak of God in everything he did. I listened intently to his mini-sermons about how God works in mysterious ways and observed his actions, which pretty much coincided with his views at the time.

  Finally, after making a deal with Bean, the day came and I had the pleasure of taking the drums out of the store. The deal included several cymbals and stands from my other drum equipment that I was going to mix with the set to make them even bigger and expand the sounds I was trying to imitate. Included in the deal was a Ghost drum pedal like the ones Alex Van Halen, one of my heroes, was using at the time. Later in 1988, when I toured with Van Halen I gave them to Andy, Alex’s drum tech. Andy scoured the world for Ghost pedals and parts after the Ghost pedal was discontinued by its maker. By ’88, my playing days were over, so I offered it up to him along with several others I had collected.

  I took my new drums straight to the Palace Saloon, where we did our gig on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and sometimes Wednesday, set them up and played them all afternoon driving the afternoon bar customers crazy. I lived in an apartment and couldn’t practice there. The new set certain
ly helped my attitude and confidence to attempt things I hadn’t before; various roll combinations and such. And I looked so good behind that set of chrome drums. At the time, I owned a two-seat Triumph sports car. Anytime I moved my drums, I would load the British green beast down with the entire set of drums. I put them on the passenger seat, behind the seats, in the trunk and on the rack on top of the trunk and then tied them down on the trunk lid.

  Mack had a van and most load-in and load-out days I would borrow it to move everybody’s equipment from our practice place to the Saloon and back on Sunday or Monday depending on how much partying we had done on Saturday night. We performed at the Palace three weekends in a row and would take a weekend off. As the band became more popular, on weekends off from the Palace, we played other gigs. We played in Russellville, Arkansas in the basketball arena for a big party and several other bars in the Little Rock area. Another late-night private club owner felt he was missing out on the Urban Cowboy craze of the day and hired us to play his Urban Cowboy night once a week. He had pop music dance bands play other nights. It was a much later gig not starting until 11 p.m. and playing until 4:30 a.m. It always made the next day’s work miserable.

  In Arkansas the law allowed bars to stay open until 2 a.m. through the week, and midnight Saturday night. After Sunday morning, there were no alcohol sales again until Monday morning. Lightfoot would take the stage at 7 p.m. on Thursday and Friday and play till 1:45 a.m. or close to it. Some nights we were having such a good time we wanted to continue playing. On Saturday nights we would stop performing at 11:30 p.m. to get the bar cleared at the legal time. It gave everyone a chance to hit a private club and party until 5 a.m. when they had to close.

  I have been to hundreds of bars throughout the U.S. and Little Rock had some of the craziest places in America. Streamer’s was a nightclub on Cantrell Road, a late-night club where even a certain future president was known to have a good time. Of course, when said future president’s brother came to Streamer’s he always turned heads and caused chatter. When Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, came in, his state trooper escorts would clear a section of the bar for him to sit. Many others and I were asked more than once to clear a path and a booth. Some local heavies partied there also, city and state government types, lawyers and people working in the medical profession. I, like most, knew to stay out of their way when they were there. It was a crazy party location and the place to go in town for a few years, and then it went away.

  Juanita’s, one of the few still open from the ’80s, has hosted many national acts and continues today. The club itself supports local acts as well, including talent searches. A place north of the Arkansas River, The Checkmate Club, was a notorious place for just about anything associated with nightlife. They had some great regional bands, and I caught a few over the years that came out of Memphis, Nashville, Austin and Dallas. It was in the basement of an old church in downtown North Little Rock and could get several hundred drunken people in at 2 a.m., and during various stages, it could have been a dive bar champion. I loved the place. It was an adventure just about every time I headed that direction.

  The Wine Cellar, an after hours dance (Oh my God, we thought we could dance) club, would be packed shoulder to shoulder with 300-plus drunks from midnight to 5 o’clock in the morning. When we finished our sets for the nights, some of us would escape to the Cellar. It was a big change from the mainstream country music we were doing across town on Asher Avenue. Sometimes it was much needed after grinding out five hours of country songs.

  From the moment I stepped into Mike Pinner’s Strum and Hum Music Store, my life took twists and turns for better and for worse. But I credit Mike and his company, Concert Staging Services, for leading me to the positive path I have traveled since our chance encounter. When I first stepped into his store, I was just beginning to realize my career path. Music and driving were at the forefront of my mind. Mike helped me grasp my life’s passions and make something of them. I’ve been able to make a decent living and deal with personal struggles and joys. Through everything, two things have remained constant: music and driving.

  Chapter 28 The Stage Is Set

  During the months of all my playing and dancing, I missed a few drum payments. The fifty dollars a night playing with Lightfoot and the few hundred I would have left from my day job after a hangover-day off or a “fuck it I don’t feel like going to work I’m too busy with another life” type of day off wasn’t covering the payments. One afternoon I stumbled into Strum and Hum to get some supplies and Bean called me aside to remind me of the payments I had been missing. He mentioned the word “repo” and I got pretty nervous.

  Bean then asked me if I might be interested in working for him. He explained he had purchased a concert stage from someone in Louisiana and he needed someone to work on it for him. I was taken aback. I think some images of Led Zeppelin flashed through my mind and the concerts I’d seen at the local coliseum. I probably had that same starry-eyed look I notice in the eyes of people who approach me or the celebrities I drive. Me a stagehand? He assured me it was not going to be that glamorous. But he also assured me that I could work off my debt much quicker if I worked for him.

  My first task was unloading a stage that had arrived on a semi-trailer from Louisiana and putting it into another trailer that Bean had purchased to transport his new stage. In order to properly pack the new trailer, the stage had to be completely unloaded onto the ground and its order reversed into the new trailer. This way when we arrived at the show destination, we could unload the trailer as we built the stage.

  The stage itself consisted of wooded deck sections that mainly sat on rows of scaffolding. It had a shade roof only that couldn’t hold any weight. Speakers were stacked onto the deck of the stage and Genie Lifts were used to hold the lighting tresses. The stage measured 60 x 40 feet when all parts were used. It could be built in different configurations to meet the requirements of the show and the venue wherever that might be. Bean had the trailers backed up to one another with enough room between them to set the equipment on the ground. All the work was completed behind his music store on Geyer Springs Road in Little Rock.

  Todd, a teenager a few years younger than me, had also been hired by Bean to make the change over. Todd had been a troubled teen, and Bean and his wife had taken him into their home to help him make sense of the world. We became life-long friends after we got to know each other while toting walk boards and all the gear for the stage. It was a typical hot Arkansas summer and working in the back of two semi-trailers and on the ground doing the work, which normally had a dozen or more people doing, was miserable. Just like when I was working for the carnival in my teen years, though, he and I made fun out of the entire situation.

  Todd is an exceptional guitar player, and at that time he was into playing licks from bands like AC/DC and Jimmy Page. Both of us were very naive about the business, and having a good time while doing our work was our main interest. On a trip to a small college in Cleveland, Mississippi, where we built a stage in the gymnasium for a Jimmy Buffett show, Todd and I had a good time working the show. We loaded in the stage the evening before and returned early to be there for the equipment load-in and show. Stage-stagehands have to be available from the time the stage is set up until it is taken down. We were given passes and milled around all day doing odd jobs to the stage. That evening at the beginning of the show, Todd had wandered over to the stage-left steps watching as the musicians went on to perform. The lights went down. Jimmy came out of the dressing rooms and stood in front of the steps waiting for his cue. The vibe was in the air with the crowd cheering.

  Jimmy leaned over to Todd and said, “Think it’s going to be a good show?”

  Todd looked at him squarely and said, “I don’t know, I don’t know who he is!”

  The announcer announced: “Ladies and gentlemen... Jimmy Buffett!”

  Jimmy sprang up on the steps and took the stage. Todd’s jaw dropped. I was so envious of Todd for getti
ng a chance to speak to Jimmy. I loved Jimmy Buffett’s songs and played many of them in our bar band. “Margaritaville,” “Fins,” and “Get Drunk and Screw” always were on our set list, among others. When I asked Todd, “Oh my God, what did he say?” and Todd told me, I laughed my ass off. That was the first time of many that I worked around the Jimmy Buffett organization. I’ve worked on many single shows, known as one-off shows, as well as several tours driving Buffett’s road crew. Todd and I have always had good times working together. After stage work, Todd learned about the sound industry and worked for many big acts like Patti LaBelle and others as a monitor engineer, or a “knob-ologist.”

  When the changeover of the stage gear from trailer to trailer was completed and the new trailer was packed, Bean began soliciting it for rent to a promoter or a festival. When he secured a show in Birmingham, Alabama, at the Birmingham International Raceway, we prepared the stage to ship and the necessary gear to set it up. When we arrived in Birmingham, the week went well as Todd and I did everything we were told to get the stage built. We worked as a team, equally excited about our work while directing a crew of local helpers. When we returned, Bean paid me my salary. It was the biggest paycheck I had ever earned in my life. Considering the fun I had, I was impressed with its sum. I opened the envelope he gave me, and I’m sure he noticed my wide-eyed look as I shuffled through the one-hundred dollar bills. He immediately held his hand out, saying, “Time to pay for those drums.” I gladly handed over the money and caught up on my drum payments.