Growing up Bass Player (The Early Seventy's)

For those who may be reading this and were very young, possible not born, when all this was going on, let me give you a point of reference, time and date, when all this (the blog) was really happening in real time. I didn’t write anything down then (wish now I had) but as memoir serves I would say we are now (the blog) in about 1971 or 1972 (seems like only yesterday - hmm sound like the words to an old song, anyone know which one? – (“yesterday when I was young?”)(“Yesterday?”)

This was a wonderful time to be in the music business. The pay was good and there were unlimited places to play. We were, the band, always booked 6 to 8 months in advance. We played in packed bars, full of the young new breed of Montana cowboys who wanted to here nothing but Rock and Roll. It was balls to the wall every Friday and Saturday night, 9 PM until 2 AM.

After finishing at 2 AM Saturday night we would have to pack up the equipment, load it in the trailer and drive between 40 and 150 miles to get home. That was an adventure in its self, for by that time all of us had consumed our fair share of long necked Budweiser’s. This was the days before designated drives and there were no highway patrol officers on duty between 12 PM and 6 AM. Fortunately for us, we usually only had to share the road with the deer. All those years on the road and we never hit a deer.

Here's a list of songs we were playing.

This is just a short list. Remember, we played from 9 pm to 2 am. This involved 5 sets of 45 minuets each. That means we had to have about 10 songs per set (that number varied depending what when on between songs. Ten would be a maximum number. Ken was a BS’er and spent a lot of time talking with the patrons of the bar. This helped slow things down a little and reduce the number of song per set. I was the quite one.

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