Saturday, February 25, 2006

Back to the Future

I’ve been playing music with David Enloe since Mrs. Tynes handed out recorders to our 4th grade class and tried to get us to play “Mary had a little lamb” together. You know what recorders are right? They are those sticks you blow through with about 7 or 8 holes in the top.We stayed in touch and hung out even though I had Mrs. Bryant (who I remember washing a girl’s mouth out with soap) in fifth grade and Mr. Johnson, a dandruff ridden male version of a Southern Belle (“when you go on trips with your parents, don’t fall asleep in the back seat..sit up, observe… the world around you!”) in sixth. Junior High was a trip. We met Billy Rotchford and he started letting us come over to his house in the afternoon’s after school to jam. There was a line of folks that came through to jam with us but none very impressive. We played together through High Scool as our little 2 piece band that we called Rooster hoping someday to find the right fit on bass. David’s dad died (soon after he came down to the courtroom and got David and I a Prayer for Judgement from the judge after we had been arrested for underage drinkin’..) in the 11th grade so he and the rest of the family had to move to Robbins, NC where his family had a house that was paid for. Robbins is in the Sandhills part of the state which has very sandy soil which is not good for much other than pine trees and azaleas. Other towns in the area include Pinehurst, Fayetteville, Vass, Raeford and of course Southern Pines.
Ahhh… Southern Pines, home of Sandhills Community College where we met again to pursue our search. And there he was, Jade Cordero. Or at least, that’s what we thought it said. It was really Jack Cornell, and I still can’t read his handwriting! We spent countless days and nights rockin’ like hell in the “Thunderbird” house. The “Thunderbird” house is the house that David and I rented in our second year at Sandhills. The first year we stayed in Lakeview, which was beautiful but a little far to go to get to school. So we moved to May Street which was almost into town. One Sunday night I came in from visiting my girlfriend and David had three big bottles of Thunderbird. So as a good friend will do.. I helped him with them. Next thing ya know we is TORE UP! I realized at one point during the night how thin the walls in the house were so we started punching them, knocking fist sized holes everywhere that there wasn’t a stud (OOOOWW!!). We woke up the next day with the worstest throbbing in heads in the history of time and with a house full of holey walls! We had two thing going for us though, I was a painter and I knew how to fix the walls and our landlord was 90 years old and couldn’t physically beat our asses! So it worked out and years later as you know I wrote a song about it.
We started The Fabulous Knobs around that time, who would sell out large rooms during our peak. To tell you how popular we were around here, we did a reunion show a few years after our demise for 15 grand! Anyway, The Fab Knobs turned into The Woodpeckers when Debra (the singer) left and The Woodpeckers became The Woods after Dan left. The Woods did a record for Twin Tone and a had a great following in the Triangle and when that was done Jack and I later started The Olympic Ass-Kickin’ Team…playing TONIGHT! (@ O’Donnell’s, 133 New Hampshire Street) in Southern Pines. I’m hoping to go down May Street on my way into town. I wonder if that house is even still there?

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