Four guys with stars in their eyes! The Stockade was a rock band with high hopes and dreams. The image in our collective “mind” no doubt out-weighed our musical abilities of that time way back in 1966. The matching polka-dot shirts were our “uniforms” for quite some time. The day would come, of course, when the bands that we admired ditched the uniforms for a more “individual” look. We kept it up for at least as long as The Monkees were doing the “uniform thing”, or maybe until we out-grew our polka-dot shirts altogether!
The Stockade had its share of gigs in its original lineup. We found some local churches that had functions here and there. And, we managed to get some bookings at birthday parties (mostly girl-oriented). I remember one such party where our pay was a baseball bat each. Just what I needed. Before I knew what the term “irony” meant, it slapped me in the face! Sure, give a baseball bat to perhaps the worst baseball player to ever walk the earth!
At other gigs we might make a few bucks each. It didn’t really matter. We were happy to have an audience willing to listen. And, even better, we couldn’t be happier when that audience consisted of girls around our age. Were we in this for the music or for the girls? I could flip-flop on this all day and not lose any sleep over it. To be sure, it wasn’t exactly Beatlemania, but again the image in our “collective mind” far out-weighed reality.
In all of our practices and gigs we had been through, somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that there was something missing. I could hear it and see it in every video that I would come across on the “Teen Shows” or even in the teenage beach movies. (yes, there were videos back then in the olden days!). Every band I ever saw had an electric bass guitar, and yet we had never had one, nor could we find anyone that played one.
Until one day, fate stepped in…
Whenever we held our practice at Lenny’s house in Poughkeepsie, we would play outside on his front porch if it was a nice day. I’m sure his parents appreciated having a wall between our “sounds” and their attempt to have a nice quiet Saturday afternoon. Across the road and up the hill was St. Francis Hospital, where I had “come into the world” some ten years earlier. Next to the hospital was a neighborhood where two brothers “about our age” resided.
The younger brother, Nick, was someone I knew from Violet Avenue Elementary School. We were always friends but we never “hung out” outside of school. As it turned out, our practices were loud enough to be heard “way up the hill” from the hospital and into the adjoining neighborhood where Nick could hear us loud and clear (In fact, one time somebody “called the cops” who came and told us to turn it down!).
Now when you write down memories that are more than five decades in the past, you tend to remember them “your way.” If I am embellishing this story for some kind of “wow-factor”, I don’t mean to. I may remember things a certain way and another band member might have a different take. I stand corrected if that ends up being the case, but this is how I recall it:
Nick from “up the hill” had just gotten hold of a bass guitar. I guess he was outside and and heard our band “blaring out” some tunes. I believe he asked his father Dominic (Sr.) (our future manager) to drive him and his bass over to the house “where the music was coming from.” There was probably more to it than just that. Perhaps one parent knew another parent and yada, yada, yada, but I like my version better of “he followed the music.” The stuff that legends are made of!
Anyway, Nick, his dad, and The Bass arrived at our practice. I can’t remember if he had an amp or had to plug into one of ours, but I was thrilled when I saw my friend, Nick, with a bass in his hands (there was no bass case, so when I saw just the four strings, I knew that we had struck gold!).
There was only one problem. He didn’t know how to play it. I believe his father, Dominic, Sr., (who had quite the musical background) got the bass tuned up, so at least I didn’t have to go through that process (what with us being in the era that was devoid of electronic tuners!). Nick asked me if I would show him something on his new bass and so I began giving my first music lesson ever.
First, I had to “quickly” learn how to play the bass myself. The pressure was on. The band was waiting. He let me borrow his bass momentarily, along with this GIANT felt pick. I didn’t know anything about playing the bass with fingers, so it’s a good thing he had the “monster pick” for me to “practice” with. The band was waiting.
We were about to play a Young Rascals song called “Come On Up.” I knew that the four bass strings were the same as the “lowest” four guitar strings. I had to think of the chords I played to “Come On Up” and figure out the bottom note to each chord and then somehow communicate that to Nick. The band was waiting.
Thinking to myself: “Let’s see, Um, Um, the first chord, C, goes (let’s see) one-two-three”…and I continued to count in my head up to eleven times, total. “Then, Um, the next two chords, Um… that’s easy! Once each! (Bb and B).” Okay, I could now play the bass part for at least the verse of the song. I still had to figure out how to teach it to Nick. The band was waiting.
So, as I recall, I handed the bass back to Nick and I pointed to the third string. “The whole thing you’ll be playing is on this string, right here.” I said. “Take this finger (I pointed to his ring finger) and put it “here.” (I picked up his ring finger and put it on the third string, third fret). I don’t think he knew what a “fret” was and I didn’t have time to explain all that, because after all, THE BAND WAS WAITING…
Sez I,”Okay, Nick, play that note that your finger is on eleven times.” He did so, counting it up perfectly. “Now take this finger (grabbing his index finger) and put it here.” (I planted it on the first fret). “Play that note just one time. Next, take this finger (grabbing his middle finger) and put it here (2nd fret) and play that note onetime.” We tried it together, just the two of us while the band was (still) waiting and it worked!
We put it together with the band (who was tired of waiting) and it came out great! More time had to be spent on the next part of the song, but we finally had a bass player! And from those humble beginnings, Nick would turn out to be the greatest electric bass player that I have ever had the pleasure of making music with! So on that day in April 1967, “The Stockade” went from a 4-piece to a 5-piece band, all after 13 notes on Nick’s bass for anyone who needs to do the math.
There we were…Gary, Nelson, and me on guitars, Lenny on drums, and Nick now on the bass. But we weren’t done yet!
And then there were six . . .
Later that week, after Nick became our bass player in “one easy lesson”, he gave me a call: “Hi Jeff. My brother, Dominic (Jr.) just got an organ.” In the background, I could hear a series of chords being “tested” on what certainly sounded like some kind of keyboard instrument. Nick continued,”He’d like to try it out with the band at our next practice. I welcomed the idea! If the Monkees had a keyboard, then dad-gummit, we should have one too!
Just to give a little background, both of my parents and Nick & Dom’s father (Dominic, Sr.) worked at a Poughkeepsie company called “Western Publishing.” The company’s claim to fame was the printing of “Gold Key” Comics (such as “Little Lulu”) and Dell romantic novels by such authors as Danielle Steele. “Western” was quite a large company which had a very large cafeteria for their employees’ lunch breaks. Somehow, Dominic, Sr. arranged for us to hold our practice (he liked to call it “rehearsal”) at this Western Publishing cafeteria.
We always “rehearsed” on Saturdays, so there was very little use of this space on the weekends. We now had a big empty room to make all the noise we wanted for as long as we wanted to. With Dominic, Sr. at the helm, we really started getting stuff done! Again, my memory is a little fuzzy exactly when we began using this rehearsal space, but for the sake of a story line, I will suggest the Dom, Jr. (Nick’s older brother by 2 years) had his “keyboard audition” at Western Publishing.
Needless to say, Dom passed his audition with no problem. He somehow knew how to play virtually any song we threw at him. Best of all, he was a really fine singer. I was actually happy to relinquish most of my singing responsibilities to Dom as time went on. I preferred to concentrate on my guitar work anyway.
There are no pictures that I know of from our earliest days with Nick and Dom. There is one little snippet of tape that I found of the six of us in a very early rehearsal. We are doing somewhat of a “hatchet job” to “Just Like Me” by Paul Revere and the Raiders.
And so our newest line-up came into being at our new rehearsal space, and our two new members came complete with a manager (Dominic, Sr.). Six-piece bands were unusual at that time back in 1967, but as long as we were getting along, it really didn’t feel too crowded. Under the direction and guidance of Nick and Dom’s dad, we started to reach new musical milestones. Many good things were to come for the “six-man” Stockade. But there were still some changes on the way as well…
TO BE CONTINUED…
