What's your story since high school?
I attended Chico State for 5 years. I majored in Spanish and English. I hitchhiked around North America during the summers. and...Avoided getting a job at all costs!
Also...My high school friend, Joe Joehanson, (LP class of '69) and I began working together as a songwriting team in Oroville.
We enjoyed that so much that we then decided we wanted to start a band. The band was called "Pride and Joy" and included some other local well known musicians, including Cris Bagley, Mark Duncan, (OHS) and Pat Mastelotto, (OHS)
Joe and I really worked well together and wrote dozens of songs. Songwriting just seemed to happen naturally with him. He was an amazing talent, no doubt about it. I still have tapes of some of the tunes that we co-wrote as well as a few of his single works. They are as good today as they were back then!
Joe and I played together for about 3 years and often traveled with Dick Castleberry's light show, playing all over California including some of the better known venues in the Bay such as the Filmore and Avalon. Working with Joe was one of the most rewarding (and at times, "vexing") experiences of my life! What a card he could be! LOL!
In those early days Joe and I both played guitar. In the band he played bass and I played guitar although Joe and I would often double on twin sax for certain songs. We had started out as a folk duo and naturally just gravitated to the rock and roll scene. After Joe moved to San Francisco, I took up the fiddle and played it for a while in my new group. By the way...Here's a link to some of the music from our second album.
http://www.divshare.com/download/5842337-89d
(My Favorite cuts?... "Midnight Friend" and "Doin' it Right")
Pride and Joy played around the North Valley during the years I was at Chico State. After Pride and Joy broke up, and I graduated from CSU, the remaining members of the band changed it's name to "GunShy" and we started traveling on the Western Fair Circuit. We did very well for a number of years and played with a lot of very famous headliners. It was a wonderful experience. The "road life" is a tough racket, however. Not something a person wants to do all their life. I was happy to finally settle down to a more normal existance on a farm in Washington State, where I lived for about 20 years until I moved to Mexico.
