Thursday, August 28, 2008

Jamie Hoover

My friend Jamie Hoover is damn nutcase. If you’ve been tuning in to the Comboland Radio (link featured right) you’ll occasionally hear his band The Spongetones and his Lennon-esque voice singing lead to their Beatle-y sound or tearing the ass-end out of a guitar lead, or both. He’s a talented sumbitch and I’ve been fortunate to hang around with him on several musical endevours. We first spent time together when The Woods plus him were the backing band for Marti Jones on a European jaunt in April of ’86. This side-spliting 2 weeks was about as much fun as hired musicians are supposed to have. Marti was on A&M records back then and we flew to every gig and were greeted and treated by record company reps in every town. The flights were usually all on SAS (or “SASSY” as we called’m) and once we were settled into our seats the flight attendants gave us the option of champgne or red wine with our breakfast. Huh? So you can imagine how stupid this tour was, especially with the knuckleheads that we ALL were! Jamie was good for a laugh on the plane (this is WAY before 9/11, mind you) with his bit in the process of landing. He would convulse, grab the seat in front of him and as he shook voilently would yell “WEEZ GOIN’ TOO FASSSSSS!! Who knew what it meant, some sort of Space Shuttle re-entry thing I guess, but it was damn funnier’n hell!
Jamie was also in on The Woods infamous second record, especially since it was recorded at his home studio. This was the weekend recording you’ll hear later on The Woods box set. It’s also the one where we consumed a gallon of green Jack Daniels in the process…and lived to tell about it, probably the best recording The Woods ever made. Jamie would sit at the board in a train engineer’s hat and shout instuctions. At the end of each day he’d take us out to the Fish Camp in Clover (SC) and show us some good eatin’! Don’t ever ask him how his meal was though cuz you just may wish you hadn’t. His response was usually “It’ll make a turd”.
Jamie taught me some things about life too. We got together one weekend and wrote some really cool songs and recorded them. One in particular, “Wait it out”, should make the light of day at some point. He played banjo on that, bastard can play ANYTHING! I asked him once about being adopted and didn’t he ever want to find his real parents. “Nah, anybody can fuck” ,he said, “I know my real parents”. I was startled by how true this was and how level-headed he was about it all.
Jamie has a way of being a bit gross at times but all in good spirited fun, kinda like how my Mom would never talk about anything gross until we sat down to eat dinner and then she’d go off about some scab bothering her or something. He has a real way of shucking it right on down to the cobb, as we say here in the South. Kinda like when we’d see a fine young fancy lass walking the cobblestone streets in Paris, Amsterdam or Vienna, he’d look back, never miss a step and say “Check the crapper out on that one!”
He’s got this thing he does with his lip that kinda immulates it being pulled by a fish hook. All I gotta say is “Hey Jamie, gimme da lip” and it’s automatic. He’s a keeper, we love him and he is and will always be a true member of The Woods.

4 comments:

Moose said...

There was a barbeque joint in Charlotte that was sort of close to Reflection Sound Studios. We would eat there on occasion and Jamie always referred to it as "Beaks and Feets". "Hey... y'all want sumpin from Beaks and Feets?"

Anonymous said...

You should check out the record he did with Bill Lloyd about 4 or so years ago. Papparazzi it's called and my duty is to tell you that it's a very fine pop record, indeed.

johan

Anonymous said...

If he's adopted that may explain why he looks just like Bill Murray's brother Brian Doyle Murray.

Anonymous said...

FISH CAMP!