The music scene around Madisonville suddenly changed. While I was playing and trying to build a fan base as a member of The House, Billy D and The Thumbers started to make noise. Having a keyboard in the band widened The Thumbers’ playlist to around a hundred or more songs, far more than needed for any gig I’d ever seen. The Thumbers could play songs from 1964 to that present. I was amazed when Billy D came around to show me some of the songs he and the band played. The drummer of the band, with some guidance from Billy D, had gone from that strange little beat he used to always play, to a bass pedal jockey who could play just about anything (and beat the shit outta the skins to boot). But the real change came with the opening of The Pug-a-Nut, a music and dance club operating out of a former body shop on old Highway 411, slightly north of Madisonville (that building, repurposed often from clubs and game rooms to several restaurants, was torn down around the end of September 2011).
My understanding here may be faulty, but I believe that Billy D’s older sister and her husband were the adults behind the scene of the club. I think they bailed not so very long after the club began, though the Pug-a-Nut operated for a long time after that. I hadn’t seen Billy D for a month or more before the Pug opened, and once things got going I didn’t see him for awhile longer.
When I heard about the club, I didn’t figure there would be much difference in the scene. The Thumbers were mountain boys and I thought Madisonville to be a little more white bread uptown acting to embrace them. I figured that Thumbers fans would turn out and that the former world order run by The Heroes would continue on.
The Heroes had a really good thing going. After the pool gigs of the summer of 67, The Heroes moved down the hill to the Farm Bureau building. With the help of their parents, The Heroes operated dances and used the building like an impromptu teen club. The drummer’s dad, a thick bodied, stern-faced man who always wore overalls (not unlike any I’d seen hippies wear, though I doubt he realized his attire was, at least in some attitudes, cool) sat at a card table just inside the door (I think the table was also outside sometimes, too) and collected a dollar from each of those who requested admittance. The bass player’s dad, who was a member of the auxiliary police force, wore his uniform and stood next to the money man.
The Heroes’ moms worked the inside. Sitting behind a table and armed with plastic cups, a couple of coolers of ice, a few cases of twelve ounce bottles of Coke, and a change box, the proud mamas chatted together, smoked cigarettes, and sold refreshments (and collected about 66% profit per bottle of beverage sold) at a dime a pop to the patrons inside the often overly warm hall. This Coke money purchased a PA system for the band, and eventually paid for some kind of reverb or echo box that enhanced the band’s vocals (three, and later four, great harmony singers).
This family type atmosphere, and the wholesome appearance and reputation of the band were the reasons for its success. On the upside, parents trusted that their children would be safe there. Crowds for the late 1967 dances were very strong and seemed to me to only increase as the year passed. In 1968 The Heroes played for many consecutive weeks to crowded houses, the culmination being the free Christmas dance of that same year. That was a packed house. Even though I attended Heroes dances nearly every week, there were scores of faces there I’d never seen before, and the overall atmosphere was a bit more rowdy for whatever reason.
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