Snow & Sun

A good day to all.

            I was out of the gospel gig after the second performance, an afternoon event at a nursing home, and was more or less free to pursue my girlfriend and spend more time on Juicy Root. Actually, things started to heat up on the band front after Tig bought a new Gibson SG guitar and an amp with twin cabinets that stood nearly eight feet tall when one cabinet was stacked atop the other. It was an impressive looking rig. Tig and I had become very close and hung out while listening to records, or rode around in his car (which had an 8 track player through which we listened to a stack of cheap 8 tracks Tig had bought from the Kayo service station). Things were getting very groovy during the Madisonville Summer of Love.

            We got hold of the guys who’d been jamming with us, The Cobbler and Ears, and added OJB as lead vocalist and began to practice. The guys were really swell and fun as band mates. We concentrated first on songs we all knew, then worked our ways out toward learning new and potentially popular songs. Rehearsals had not been going on very long before Tigs announced a couple of gigs at Hiwassee College, where Tigs dad, and a bunch of his relatives, worked. Tig’s dad was the financial manager of the college, so anything to do with money passed through his office. Hiwassee held camps for high school marching bands every summer. Lots of wonderful young girls, many my own age, came there. That’s where Juicy Root came in. The band was hired to perform at two dances, both held in the gym, on consecutive weeks. I think we made $75, or $15 for each member, for each show. That doesn’t sound like much, but in 1971, $15 had about the same purchasing power as $100 now, so the members were pretty happy about the gigs.

            The turnout for the first of the two dances was the biggest crowd I’d played for at that time. I enjoyed performing, but overall the band sounded uninspired. Who knows why things like that happen? When we played to a much smaller crowd the following week, the band perked up and managed a good, enthusiastic performance. Not that it really mattered since none of the people attending knew us nor would likely ever see us again. That’s show biz.