Lights

I was a Concert Lighting Director/Designer for around 43 years. I started in the music business around 1979 or 1980 in High School. Some friends had a band and somehow I ended up as their manager and got them a few shows which got me into clubs. In this little club in front of an Army base named Thomas’ (aka MaMa Moon’s) I met a band that played there regularly named “Crystal.” Great band, the guitar player was practically a clone of Jimi Hendrix. So for awhile I was a “sound assistant” where I basically ran their sound effects while the FOH sound engineer did everything else.

After I worked with them for awhile their FOH Engineer Rob Krick started doing other bands and he needed someone to run lights. I had never done it before but he said it’s easy, just change colors at the cymbal crashes. We did a few bands around the region but we worked together for quite awhile for a band named “The Marbles.”

They were a fun band playing great covers (everyone played covers then) and a few originals. We frequently played places like The Bayou in DC (a fairly large very famous club) and a club out in Deep Creek Lake, MD where we would stay in a trailer next to the club and played a week at a time there.

Around this time I started working for a couple of years doing lights for “Rock Angel” another Thomas’ graduate. They had a good following locally and we played around the area for awhile. The band had 3 brothers (Brent Loughry on drums with his massive clear blue drum kit, Brett Loughry on guitars and Bruce Loughry doing sound. They also had a fourth brother named Brian who was not in a band).

I got married to my High School Sweetheart (Valerie) in 1984 so at that time I wasn’t doing anything other than a day job but… My wife worked with a guy (they were mortgage bankers) who was a bass player. She felt they needed help getting anywhere so I became a manager and sound guy for a band eventually known as Driven, a really good rock trio.

They played around locally and became friends with a band called Madhatter who they opened for frequently. At some point Madhatter decided they wanted to hire Shaun (Shaun Donovan, the Bass player) and he agreed if they hired me as well.

They played regionally for awhile and then auditioned a new drummer (Mike Showalter) a diminutive drummer that we thought wouldn’t have the power to match the music. Boy were we wrong! Mike is an incredible drummer and he is still going strong as the drummer for the National act “Any Given Sin.” They also had a friend become their sound engineer (he had a real PA that we used) this was Scott “Skitch” Canady. A great guy, very funny, very skilled and awesome taste in music (he got me into listening a lot of bands). Scott went on to work as FOH for bands such as “Disturbed” “Five Finger Death Punch” and more. They changed their name from “Madhatter” to “Havoc,” and things took off. Got a manager (Scott Cohen, who is kind of World Famous now, partly as one of the founders of The Orchard. He’s started a new business called JKBX.), and, as the band played further and further away, Scott’s (Cohen) friend became the Road Manger (Chris Apostolou, he is also an artist and designed their banner, album cover and all of their T-Shirts).

My parents loaned me the money (I say “loaned” but I never paid them back :-/) to buy a light show from a local guy (Ivan Beaver) that built all his own stuff (and really well too). Scott (Canady) and I along with Shaun formed a sound and light company called SDS Sound and we supplied sound and lights locally for a bunch of bands (This was before clubs started installing their own production gear).

We played frequently at a little club South of DC called Tiki Fala, a chinese restaurant that had bands at night. Havoc got better and better both in talent and audience (sold out Tiki Fala many times).

At one point the band did a show at Manny’s in Rockville, MD and there happened to be an A & R rep from Capitol Records in the audience (she was in town for a wedding). She loved Havoc and they ended up with a distribution deal for their CD “Father Jones.”

Around this time the band began to tour, starting out just driving to California for some shows (and to see Capitol Records) and drive back. However we soon started playing in many towns. These where what today would be called Van & Trailer tours but for us it was 10 guys with gear and luggage in 3 pick-up trucks.

After awhile the band built up good followings in places like Kansas City (we loved Kansas City, we stayed in a weird run down hotel that the people there loved us. They let us use the closed pool all the time, they had a VCR at the front desk that played movies in all of the rooms so we could pick what we wanted to watch. And Kansas City had the cheapest cigarettes in the Nation (like $.75 if I recall!) so we could stock up. It also didn’t hurt that I had an Aunt, Uncle and cousins who lived there and I could visit with them if there was time. We played places such as the Lone Star in Kansas City, a nice club in Overland Park called The Backstage, and of course in Los Angeles we played places like Gazzarri’s, FM Station, The Whisky The Troubador and so on.

They had people to come see them such as Lita Ford at Gazzarri’s and Dimebag Darrell at SAVVY’S in Texas. Havoc had a lot of good luck like the A&R woman seeing them and a lot of bad luck. One time in LA there was flooding, there was a time in Texas that a semi lost a retread and took out the radiator on one of the pickups so we had to stop for the night for repairs. We spent the night in Death Valley one time for a breakdown. A couple of the guys continued on to LA and met one of the roadies (Loren) and brought him back as he was a mechanic. We had another breakdown on the way to LA, just as we were pulling into Las Vegas one of the trucks died (another radiator I believe). We had to stay the night in Sin City and wait for a shop to open in the morning. Scott and Chris got us an inexpensive hotel off the strip and we started wandering. We found a little slot machine place and spent the night getting drunk for free LOL. As long as we were playing slots they gave us free drinks. Chris would play a round or two and pretend to win every once in awhile by throwing some coins in the bowl and we would all yell and cheer. What a great night 🙂 But the most interesting thing was when we had a week of shows scheduled in LA.

As we entered the town we heard some ominous things on the radio, it turns out we came in town the day the Rodney King riots started! All of the shows in LA were canceled but we were able to schedule a few just out of town like in Orange County so it wasn’t a total loss. A few interesting things happened while we were there. One night Scott (Cohen) and Chris had a meeting, on the way back they were stopped by the National Guard (there was a curfew). As the soldiers surrounded them they looked in the back of the pick up truck and asked what was there. Scott & Chris answered that it was T-Shirts for the band. And the soldiers got excited. Turns out they were from Quantico which was just up the road from Tiki Fala and they knew and were fans of Havoc! They let them go back to the hotel after that.

It was interesting watching people in the streets running away with big screen TVs from the local electronic store and other things. The convenience store below the hotel was constantly looted so a member of the band who shall remain nameless also looted the store for beer and cigarettes. (Cigarettes were a big deal to us as most of us smoked and we were all broke.) At one point I was sleeping in the hotel and the band thought it would be hilarious to come in screaming that the hotel was on fire which was of course believable due to the rioting. Woke me up and scared the hell out me… yeah, hilarious LOL.

We were invited to attend a show with our “Label Mates” from Capitol Records. They were a Mexican Metal band (the type with “Cookie Monster” style vocals). They were happy to see us but the interesting thing was they didn’t speak any English. They also made up the lyrics to their songs every time they played LOL. Could not remember their name to save my life. I think the show was at The Roxy.

So that was a very interesting time for us, I’m calling home to my parents from a payphone (no cell phones then) with the sound of gunfire in the air assuring them that I was fine. To be honest I never really liked LA or Hollywood.

There were some good things, we ate at Frank & Mussos which was nice, we regularly went to Barnie’s Beanery which was awesome, a really cool place. But in general everywhere was dirty, we had things stolen by homeless people and so on.

We played at the popular Grunge clubs in Oregon and Washington like the club that Nirvana started in. We once drove 2 hours out of the way to see the Golden Gate bridge that was of course fogged in so we saw nothing LOL. Played SAVVY’S in Texas which was where Pantera came from and the guys got drunk with Dimebag Darrell Abbot. Played a nice club near Salt Lake City that was called Rafters. All told we went through about 44 of the United States.

On one trip we went through Arizona and stopped briefly to visit with the father of one of our roadies Rean Wright. We went into the desert and took turns shooting a pistol at a

target. Typical of a bunch of young punks LOL.

Unfortunately around 1992-93 Havoc went their separate ways 🙁

These days Lead Singer Erik O’Dell is working at a studio I believe. Guitar Player Steve Senes plays with a successful band in Myrtle Beach South Carolina. Bass player Shaun Donovan and his lovely wife own a Chinese Restaurant in Leesburg,VA. And, as previously mentioned, drummer Mike Showalter is in the successful band Any Given Sin. Sound Engineer Scott Canady has done Arena sound for Years. Roadie Rean Wright works on motorcycles. Lost track of Roadie Aaron Wright and Roadie Loren. And I’m doing this 🙂

Scott Cohen had formed a

record company named Sol 3 Records and one of the bands on that label was a great Industrial female fronted band named “Scrub.” The lead singer was a fantastic Petra Brown who used to front a major regional band named “Cracked Actor,” and Mike Showalter of Havoc played drums.

Mike and Lon (the bass player from Scrub) were also in a band named “Suisonic.’ i did the lighting for this video of theirs.

Also on the label was a band named “Blind,” who then changed their name to “Godhead.” After Havoc I was doing lights for all of these bands and enjoying it. I did the lighting (although my part wasn’t much) for Godhead’s video “The Answer.”

Jason Charles Miller was the lead singer for Godhead and he has gone on to a lot of amazing things. He tours as a Heavy Country act, owns a studio and does an incredible amount of voiceover work. Check out his IMDB page.

After working for these bands I started working in clubs. I was one of the LDs at Nick’s Nightclub in Alexandria, VA. From there I was the LD at The Copa/Zaxx/Jaxx nightclub for a number of years. Jaxx was quite famous in the metal area.

Bands that now play to huge arenas in Europe played Jaxx all the time as well as a lot of “Hair” Bands like Slaughter, Great White, Ratt and more.

One of the Managers (Bud Gardner) and one of the sound engineers (Eddie Kaplan) left to work for The Birchmere and they kept saying I should go there. I finally did and my first show was on August 4, 2004. For the next 19 years I worked there until my health deteriated and I had to retire September 1, 2024.