The White Water Band I

A couple of recent occasions have brought me in touch with my distant past--high school! Having graduated from Madison High School (Marshall, North Carolina) in 1977, I've been away from those halls for almost 30 years. To redirect, it isn't high school that popped up recently but the rock and roll band I was part of in those years. I ran into Terry, one of the guitar players, when I attended my wife's stepfather's funeral a few weeks ago; the guitar player and the stepfather were cousins but of different generations. Then I decided to stop and see Harlan a couple of Sundays ago Cleveland, Tennessee, when I was driving back from New Orleans. Jim was the other guitar player, and Kirk was the drummer. Our crew also included Jobie and Karen and, at various times, Ben and Steve. Others came in and out of the band--and the crew--and should be remembered here, but like I said, it's been 30 years and more.

Jim was maybe eight years older than I, Harlan maybe five older, Terry and Kirk two older. So, when I was 16, for example, all the other guys were old enough to be in the bars where we played. I wasn't. How did my poor caring fretting parents ever let their baby run off into the night with a rock-and-roll band, knowing he would be up way past his bedtime in some Holiday Inn Lounge or redneck dive in those years long before cell phones or even calling cards? The answer: Harlan. He grew up down the road from me, and my parents--Mom, at least--had known his family since she was small. Harlan was trusted, and even though his behavior wasn't always what my parents counted on, for the most part he was a good influence and good at protecting me. As were all the other guys, even though my parents didn't know them as well . . . or at all at first.

Actually, at first, none of these guys were in the band anyway. The White Water Band began in the spring of 1973, when I was in the 8th grade at Walnut School. I believe I played a set of bongos; Dennis played guitar; John played bass; and Kenneth played drums. I might not be remembering this right, but it seems to me that in the last month or so of school we were allowed, for the last few minutes of the day, to go to an empty room up on the second floor and play songs like "House of the Rising Sun" and probably a thing or two by Creedence Clearwater Revival. I don't remember if the guys knew how to tune their guitars, and if they did, I wonder if they knew to tune them to each other. I'm sure we were great! We were Strawberry Funk!

My most vivid memory of this group isn't about playing at all but faking it--like on American Bandstand. We had a record player in our practice room, and I brought a 45 from home (a "phonograph"--use fingers for quotation marks and say in the voice of Dr. Evil--not a handgun). The recording artist was Billy Preston, and the song was "Will It Go 'Round in Circles." We'd put it on and lean out the windows, lip-syncing, thinking that the students going below wouldn't be familiar with the song and might think it was us.

School let out, and Kenneth moved away. Dennis got his older sister's boyfriend, Harlan, who had taught him to play guitar, to help us out a bit, and over the next few months changes took place rapidly. (Again, this is all based on memories now some 34 years old.) Maybe Terry came out to play with us, and Kirk moved to southern Appalachia from Illinois and joined the band. Dennis lost interest (maybe). Harlan switched to bass, and we pushed John out--"just business," as I would later learn to say in Nashville, but I always regretted things like that. I don't know where Jim came from. My educated guess is that he was working at an Asheville music store where we bought equipment and came to us that way. All the while, I was playing blue sparkle bongos and a set of black congas that I'd bought. I saw myself in the same role as that second drummer the Doobie Brothers used.

But we needed a singer. One night when we were in our practice space--which I'll describe next time--waiting for some guy to come and audition, the band was trying to learn a new song. I don't have any idea what the song was, but I remember that for some reason I was singing it for the practice session and tapping away on my congas. My imagination tells me the guys started looking at each other and raising their eyebrows. "Why don't you sing?" Maybe that question was thrown at me when we finished learning the song. The other guy came and auditioned, but I seem to remember just standing behind my drums while he was trying out and thinking, "Wow, I'm the singer!"

So for the most part, that's where the next many years of my life began.

. . . to be continued.


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