Growing up Bass Player (Russ)

Russ was his name and Russ came to us will a lot of miles on him, he had one eye lid that drooped, (he said you got kicked in the face by a horse) and a very weathered face. He also carried with him a lot of baggage. Russ had a wife, a very nice woman with a great heart, and three adult children who were still gnawing on his wallet. He had, up to this point, made his living working a cowboy and playing music. There was not a whole lot of call for cowboy at that time. There was a lot of call for country music bands but you could not support a family on the wages. Russ’s major obstacle though was he was a confirmed alcoholic, a confirmed alcoholic and a mean drunk.

After learning enough of Russ’s song to get us through a 5 hour gig (9PM to 2AM was the standard for the bars in southeastern Montana at the time), we build a band trailer to carry our equipment and hit the road. Little did I know that the trailer would eventually cause the end of this trio.

The trailer was necessary because we had to provide the PA system. There was no such thing as a house PA in the places we played. Our PA consisted of two homemade cabinets, spray painted flat black, with two fender 12 inch guitar speakers in each. To drive the speakers we used an old guitar head and one Shure SM-58. Russ was the only one singing.

We didn’t have a name for the group when we booked the job so the owner of the bar where we were playing named us the “High Lows”. We didn’t argue, which we should have (the High Lows for heaven sakes) about the name. We were just happy to be working. We came to realize that the name of the band was extremely important. The name is what your fan recognizes you by, which makes it very hard to change. We did become very popular and had a fairly large following (not that we were all that good, the people were happy to have live music).

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