By Greg Johnson
Article Reprint from the October, 2001 BluesNotes
News Flash!!! Drawback Slim won this year's Journey To Memphis Talent Competition, and will represent the Cascade Blues Association in February, 2002 at the Blues Foundation's International Blues Challenge in Memphis. Congratulations, Drawback Slim!!!
After interviewing Drawback Slim for a couple of hours, I found myself overwhelmed with the story of his life. A man who truly loves his profession, has performed with more than 200 bands over his 30-year career, and is celebrating the recent release of his first solo CD. Married to a former Hungarian Bible student named Brigitta, with enough children to form a future band, his life covers many travels and many genres of music. Too much to attempt to relay accurately myself, so I decided to let Drawback Slim tell it in his own words.
"Everybody knows me as Drawback Slim. I'm from San Francisco. I was born there January 1950, so I'm one of those 'Baby Boomers'. As long as I can remember, there was Blues around my house. I think that I was conceived on the Blues. The very first records that I ever heard were in 1953, early Bobby Bland, Jimmy Reed, (Big Mama Thornton's) 'Hound Dog,' and Leadbelly.
"My grandmother was a Gospel singer and had her own radio show in the Bay Area. She'd get down there to the studio about 5 or 6 in the morning and my grandmother's singing would be the first thing I would hear before going to church.
"Our family is cousins to The Mills Brothers and also with the guys from The Larks, the band from the `60s that did the dance 'The Jerk'. My brother was buddies with the guys from Tower of Power, like Rick Stevens. We just kind of hung out together, hittin' the drums. Jimmy Rogers was my cousin, but I didn't know it until I was an adult. I met him at Key Largo on his last road trip. He asked me who my grandmother and mother were, all the pertinent questions. I told him and he said, `Yeah, we're cousins.'
"My mother was an old beatnik. She used to bring all these guys to the house with bongos and sunglasses. They would recite poetry. She always exposed me to culture. The first time I remember hearing drums, my mother was watching the Kraft Music Hour, a drum battle between Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. Yeah! That was the first, that and watching Cabby O'Brian on the Mickey Mouse Club.
"Before she died, my mother told me that when I was about nine months old she gave me a couple of wooden spoons and a pot to keep me occupied. Six hours later she had to pry those spoons from my hands. I was a natural. I was always beating on tables and things. In the first grade, I learned that you could beat on garbage cans and make up rhymes like rap singers do now. I'd race outside every recess and beat on the cans and sing songs.
"When my family moved to Reno, I'd sneak out of the house dressed up as a busboy and go to the casinos to watch the drummers. I was 14, 15 years old. With a dime I could get refills of coffee all night. I didn't kick up a fuss or anything, so people in the casino would just think, `He must be a busboy.' It was a great experience watching guys like Larry London (a great Country drummer and soloist), The Checkmates Limited and Sweet Louie.
"In 1967, at this teenage place we used to hang out at, the drummer got too drunk to play. I had always fooled around with pencils and stuff, so I could actually play. They asked me up to do `Cold Sweat,' the James Brown song. and I could do it. After three or four songs, the drummer sobered up, saw me and said, `That's my set,' and got back up to play. The band said, `You ought to be the drummer; if you ever get a set you're the drummer.' And, that kind of stayed with me.
"I was working for the Helms Construction Company. I had a toothache and was given time off from work to have it filled. The dentist filled it real fast, leaving two hours left that I could return to work. But, a buddy of mine called and said; "There's a Blues band down at the University of Nevada. let's go check them out," so we went. I was watching the drummer when it hit me right between the eyes, `Wow! That's what I ought to be doing.' That was all we talked about for the next three to four weeks, becoming musicians. Finally, he said to me, `Why don't you quit talking about it and just do it!' So I told him, `Okay, I will.' He was good at Latin percussion and we started to teach each other. We were telling people that I was going to play drums and my buddy's going to be a conga player.
"About three weeks later, three hippies came to my door. Word had gotten
around and they asked, `Would you like to play in our Rock & Roll band?' I
said, `Yeah!' My first gig was on January 14, 1972, the day before my 22nd
birthday. I was getting better with the band, but I hated my technique. I could
play beats, but I couldn't do fills. So I asked the guy from the band we saw at
the University if he would give me a lesson? He said, `No. But you can hang
around with me.' And, as time went on, he began to show me how to do this and
that.
"That same band was looking for a percussionist. My buddy had taught me to play congas and I had taught myself the tambourine and other instruments through trial and error. We both auditioned and I beat him out for the job. He wouldn't speak to me for about a month, but we're still pals now. I hated my drumming in the hippies' band and I wanted to get better. So at every gig, I would set up near the drummer to take in his knowledge, listening while we were playing. I also listened to Airto on Miles Davis' 'Live Evil,' the way he played the cowbell and other percussion. Soon I was becoming one of the better known percussionists in town, but I still had the drums in my mind. The band had a warehouse, so I set up my drums in there. After gigs, I would go there and practice from about 2 until 6 in the morning. In July of ' 72, the weather was getting to be about 102 degrees and we were tired of being in that warehouse.
"Fights began to break out between the band members, so we decided to take a break. I drove up to Tahoe for a couple of days and when I returned, they told me that the band had reformed and they were only going to keep one drummer. I began to pack up and they said, `no, you're the drummer!'
"That group was Bambu Louie, after the band's singer Kenny Louis, who used to sing back-up for Billy Stewart of `Summertime' and `Sitting In The Park' fame. He was a great writer, too, for somebody who couldn't read or write. I watched how he would write songs, keeping that in the back of my head in case I ever decided to start writing myself. In August, we went on a road trip, through Salt Lake City, Denver and Boise, then down to L.A. in early '74 to do some recording. That's where the band broke up. I'd been with them for two-and-a-half years.
"I decided I needed to go someplace where nobody knew me, to see if I was really any good or not. I had seen a National Geographic on San Diego, so that's where I went. I was studying a book by George Lawrence Stone called `Stick Control for the Modern Drummer.' That was my bible. I was getting better with rudiments, paradiddles, press rolls and strokes. Everything was coming together. I took any job that they would give me, working with R&B bands and Heavy Metal bands, too. I started to use sleep learning by placing my record player on continuous play all night. Each day I found that I knew a little bit more. I did this with Coltrane's `Live At The Village Vanguard,' teaching myself how to play Jazz. I auditioned for a Jazz band after two weeks of this and won the spot over guys who'd been playing Jazz for 20 years. I began picking up a lot of gigs, sometimes up to three a day, doing Jazz from 4-8, R&B from 9-1 and a show band from 2-6 in the morning. This went on for two years.
"After that, my girlfriend at the time, whose father died, and I moved to Tacoma to help out the family business. I didn't realize that the business was X-rated movie houses. I did that job for about four months; it sucked. I joined the first road band looking for a drummer and told her to take care of the family business.
"I lived in Tacoma for three years, playing with a ton of bands. I then moved down to Salem around the end of 1979 and developed a pool of players in the area that I refer to as my `Willamette Mafia.' I can still call any of those guys and if they're available, they'll jump right into whatever I need.
"My first real Blues gig was with James Cotton, down at Taylor's in Eugene in '86. He needed a drummer, so he had me play on the gig and it was real fun. He asked me to do a shuffle and I incorporated kind of a double-shuffle. He said, `Wow! That's the coolest shuffle I've ever heard. You've got possibilities.'
"That same year, I moved up to Seattle and I was playing with a band called The Stepping Stones, doing Top 40. One day it just hit me, `I'm tired of this. I want to play some Blues.' I'd already played with over a hundred bands by that point in 20 years. I'd always play a Freddie King tape as I drove home after a gig and I'd say, `This is some real stuff., I think I've got the chops, I want to play this. It's emotional music and it gets to my emotions. I could feel every note. When you're playing Top 40 stuff, you're just playing, you don't feel that stuff.
"I used to go to The Owl Cafe for the jam sessions, but they wouldn't let me play the drums. It was my first real experience with the Seattle Blues scene. So, I told them maybe I could sing a song. The very first song I did I laid on my back, kicked one leg up and just sang from there. Everybody just thrilled out. The next song I sang sitting on top of a speaker or I'd run out into the audience and dance with a girl while singing. I became real popular and soon I joined up with a band called Hugh's Blues, where my shuffle playing became more distinguished.
"One day in '89, I walked into The Owl Cafe and watched this band begin to set up. The guitar player looked like an accountant. But, when they fired up I was stunned. `Who are these guys?' I grabbed a girl and danced her until she just couldn't any more. I'd never heard Blues played like that before. This was the way I think Blues should be. That band was The Lloyd Jones Struggle.
"A year later, I moved down to Portland with guitar player Stevie Z. He was a great player, like a Stevie Ray Vaughan reincarnate and we were roommates. We had just moved to town in January '90 and had done two Monday gigs in a row at The Harmony Inn. The first night while I was singing, `Mustang Sally,' this guy runs in and shoots another guy six times. As he's running out. the second guy's buddy shoots him in the face. The whole thing seemed surreal. The next Monday, at just about the same time, the same set, somebody comes in and shoots Stevie's girlfriend in the stomach. I said, `That's it.' I got home and found a message on my answering machine. It was Lloyd Jones. He was offering me the drum spot in his band if I wanted it. When I told Stevie, it pretty much ended our friendship, but Lloyd was the one.
"I played with Lloyd for two years. If I had anything wrong with my shuffle, Lloyd straightened it out the first night. He said, `Turn your stick around. You've got a nice shuffle, but turn the stick around.' And that was it. That was the missing ingredient for me.
"We played a lot of memorable gigs, including a festival in a domed stadium in Vancouver. There were 30,000 people and they'd been listening to smooth Jazz all day, chewing on their arms trying to stay awake. We walked in and went 'Bang!' Everybody just woke up. I looked out and everybody was swaying. I'd never seen anything like it in my life. I could just feel the electricity in everybody there. The most solid rush I've ever had!
"Jones was a road dog. Sick, drunk, mad, hurt, tired, whatever, he would get up there and blow! It didn't matter what was happening before the gig, as soon as we hit the downbeat, he was all the way into it. And, so was I. Working with Lloyd was like natural adrenaline. The two years I had with Lloyd were probably the best Blues education I've ever had.
"We were working at The Tillicum, Lloyd, JC. Rico, Jim Mesi, Dave Kahl and myself. From the very first note until the very last of the night, we would just lay the hammer down! Everybody loved it. I ran Rico's band for a while; for pure natural ability and talent, I've never met anybody like Rico. He wrote two songs on a ten-minute break the very first time we ever played together.
"Robert Cray had us scheduled for a concert at the Paramount on New Years' Eve, but because of black ice, Robert said he wasn't going to fly up and he wasn't going to drive either. So, I had nothing to do when I got a call saying Mel Solomon needed a drummer for the night. It was one of the best times I've ever had. Mel said, 'I love your playing, hang out with me.' He's been like my musical dad ever since. I worked with Mel for most of ' 93.
"I had arranged 'Hound Dogg' while still working with Mel and a guy told me, 'I want that song. You've got a decent voice, you should try to sing something.' So, I recorded it for him and he wanted me to put together a band and come down to Florida. I hired a couple of girls and a four-piece band. The Florida shows didn't happen, but now I've got this band. We did our first gig at the Cascade Tavern and I realized that fronting a band from the drum seat, I needed to have a moving target. That target was dancer, Vandi Houston. She was as sexy as Bambi and could make you write bad checks. She was a great singer, a keyboard player and a great entertainer.
"Melanie Bon Zoff had been watching the band for about a year-and-a-half when she came up and said, 'I'd like to sing with you.' So, I decided to give her an audition. I was in the studio to record 'Crepe Suzette' at the end of '95. I had been writing some songs and wanted to get this one down. I was using Vandi and Lena B. for background, but Lena's boys were running around the studio and finally she said she couldn't take it and left. Melanie said she could do the end of the session and she got up and sang it perfectly. Her voice blended with Vandi's perfectly. I was able to finish the song right there and hired her on the spot. Down at the Candlelight, she sang 'Chain of Fools' and impressed me right off. Vandi saw her and in five minutes quit the band. You can't have two cute girls on the stage together, I guess. Vandi was a great looker and could sing, but she didn't have the Blues vocals going. Melanie could pick up everything, Bonnie Raitt, Aretha Franklin, Denise LaSalle. All of a sudden, I had a Blues singer. I wrote two songs for her, 'Rough Rider' and 'Go' and she said, `Great. Let's get in the studio and get these down! I was doing a video with Chuck Adkins, who I'd been working with the whole time my band was being formed. I came home one day and there were a hundred messages on my answering machine, I knew something was wrong. 'Melanie Von Zoff was killed. She hit the back end of a dump truck at 70 miles an hour.' It broke my heart. I couldn't get up after the funeral for about a month-and-a-half. Other than a couple of things with Chuck, I didn't gig at all and started selling cell phones for the rest of that year.
"The day before my 48th birthday, Robbie Laws called and said he needed a drummer for a Texas and Coast-to-Coast tour. I thought that this would take my mind off Melanie. We played at Disney World and the House Of Blues and at the Grand Emporium in Kansas City, where everybody was shocked, `You guys are from Oregon???'
"In 30 years, I've played with 213 bands. Recently I've been working with five: Mel Solomon, Bob Shoemaker, Chuck Adkins, Marquee and mine. Last year, I worked with Aaron Black and his dad, Johnny, too.
"The CD ('Blues From The Wild West') is getting complimentary airplay from the radio stations here and in different states and countries. Europe is playing a mess of my stuff now. I've gotten letters from Belgium and Germany. I'm just blown away that they like it as much as they do.
"I recorded 'Your M.A.N.' two weeks after Melanie's funeral. We were trying to record 'Hound Dogg' and 'Hootchie Cootchie Man,' but I was having a problem and couldn't get them down. All of a sudden, `Your M.A.N.' comes into my head and I told everybody, `You play this and you play this: We walked right into the booth and got it on the second take. The right place, the right time.
"'Hootchie Cootchie Man,' how many times have you heard that played just the same way? I'd like to feel something different. The beat came to me one day and then a bass pattern. We did it on stage for a few years and people would say, ' That's a great tune, what is it?' When I'd tell them, they'd say, `No way!' But, you've got to do something bright and fresh. You have to take the next step. If I played the same way, the traditional way, I wouldn't play. How many clones are out there? In a couple of years, you may hear me do 'Hound Dogg' as a shuffle.
"I'm plotting a second album already. I've got some tunes written and I'm going to use horns on a couple. I've got an instrumental that I think is the greatest thing I've ever written. I'm trying to bridge across all of my knowledge and background to develop a different segment of the West Coast style. Our style hasn't been defined yet. I'm not from Chicago or Mississippi or L.A. There's no way that I'm going to be able to fake that. I don't want to fake anything. I want to show you that I am everything you see today and tomorrow. Like that old `Kung Fu' TV show, when Grasshopper would go back to his old sage and he was told by his teacher, 'Yes, Grasshopper, you want to jump over a wall, you must learn to fly.' I realized that when I first began to play the Blues, I'd go back to my references, to Freddie King, Buddy Miles and the Electric Flag, Albert Collins, Bobby Bland and of course, B.B. King. I'm an Urban Bluesman. The Country (Blues) guys got no drummers, man."
© 2001 Cascade Blues Association