George's musical archive
It all started growing up with my parents Art and Madeline. When we had parties,
music was a natural in our house. But when we had music at our parties it was
not from the radio or record player, it was live music. Both of my parents were musicians and my mom played gigs every weekend.
As for me, I started on a toy sax at the age of three & my mom would take me to some local gigs & I would sit in on a tune or two and the crowd would throw money
at the stage as I performed. Later I started to take accordion lessons. This makes the connect to my first band-duo with my neighborhood buddy, Robb Snyder.
As I got more into music I was really digging the drums because I was hooked on the 45 single, 'Honky Tonk'. I would play this song over & over again rocking back and forth until I feel asleep. In late 63' Robb played the accordion and I played snare and hi-hat at our first gig for an 8th grade graduation as the Rocking Beethoven's! Both Robb and I were in 7th grade and American Bandstand in Philly was the hot TV show to watch for music and we thought we were to.
As the Rocking Beethoven's we gradually changed our sound as Robb picked up
my mom's acoustic guitar and I placed a mic in the sound hole as to make it
amplified. We started to play in the back alley as this swinging duo until this new kid
on the block arrived... Marty Ahearn. Marty knew all the words to the Beach Boys
so we enlisted him to sing lead for a short time. Robb gave Marty a few pointers on guitar and lo and behold we were now a trio... two guitars and drums. Now at this time in 1964 The Beatles were a major influence on us as the British Invasion
took hold of America.
As our new trio were learning all the hits, I would do some gigs with my mothers band and this gave me great insight to play standards and really helped in the
understanding of arrangements. Thanks mom!
Getting back to our trio, playing for the kids in our driveway started to take off as we set up a residency in Marty's garage & performed into the evening. Sometimes the local girls would bring along flashlights as we only had one light bulb to perform with.
Our band and most of the bands I played with until 1973 played in my parents basement often using my mom's equipment as most other parents were not that quick to support our new musical career. Both Robb and Marty played my mom's Gibson and Gretsch guitars for a couple of years.
At one of our garage gigs a local girl, Penny Stubbs, got up & played guitar and sang a song with us and all of the other kids dug it. Next thing you know she is in the band. Now Robb moved from guitar to bass utilizing one of my mom's six stringed guitars but playing the lower strings to make up for a bass.
Again as I mentioned, The Beatles influence lead us to start writing our own songs. Don't forget, we are only in our teens and still in high school. We got together three times a week at my parents basement to work out our new originals plus some of the new hit songs so we could get paying gigs. I would handle the bookings as I learned all of this from my mom.
The first prestigious gig we did in early 1966 was a booking to play at the 2nd of Autumn coffee house in center city. They thought we were 'loud' as we were the 1st 'rock band' to play the place. Our vocal mics were plugged into our small guitar amps so it really was not that loud but they preferred folk music over our electric music. The only song they liked was a cover, 'As Tears Go By' as it was the only ''folk' style song we performed. But what saved our show was the Music City drum salesperson, Shane, who got up on my kit during our first break, and performed a piece with a poet. I never heard or saw a performance like that before and it left a big impression on me, Thanks Shane.
As for the bands name, Stone Dawn, well I really don't know why I put those two words together but for only of the Rolling Stones influence. Also it seemed to work well with the underground band names of that late 60's era.
As our original song list kept growing, we were also influenced by the new sounds from the underground. So I then hit the phones to start booking at the Trauma, Electric Factory, 2nd Fret and more. This lead to a recording contract in 1969 with Groovey Grooves with one single. We did get some air play with the underground radio station WMMR. More gigs at the Electric Factory as co-founder Larry Magid took a liking to us. The single made some local noise but nothing outside of Philly.
We then did some demos with Nick Jameson of the American Dream at their place at 3rd and Cherry. We went to New York and pounded on the doors to every record company but were eventually turned down. Mind you, back then you could go to a record company and play them your two track tape in their office!
Our last attempt at recording, we pooled our money and went to Impact Sound in NE Philly with engineer, Tony Schmidt. I took charge of the production and mixing, my first professional recording project.
During the late 60's I had a British pen pal and she gave me the contact info for Apple Records, The Beatles new company in London. First I sent a letter to Paul McCartney with my bands bio and photos. Within two weeks I got a letter (see side bar) telling me to send our demo to Apple to the attention of one Peter Asher (formally of Peter & Grodon). I thought this was great since I got to meet The Beatles in 1964 in Atlantic City as they were leaving the Lafayette Hotel after their gig and later in 1966 when I saw them at JFK Stadium in Philly, this was a dream come true. After I received the letter, printed on the top in bold was their phone number. I got up the courage to call Apple Records and was blessed to talk to Paul & John on two occasions. Well we never did get a contract with Apple, the band broke up and I moved ahead as did the rest of the members of Stone Dawn.
In any event, all of the work that I started with Stone Dawn lead me to continue my career performing with many musicians & artists, the building of my own recording studio and becoming an award winning film-making.
I now have a great new recording project, Clutch Cargo with my wife Su.
Cheers! |
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