John Herdt : Blog

The 2002 Tommy Bolin Music Festival

In 2002 I played in drummer Bobby Berge’s band at the 2002 Tommy Bolin Music Festival held in Sioux City on August 10, 2002 in Chataqua Park. Bobby (drummer for Tommy Bolin, Buddy Miles and more) pulled together a band of players from around the country to open the show on that Saturday afternoon as the first of six bands including headliner Rick Derringer. The lineup for Bobby’s band included:

• Bobby Berge: drums
• David Hare: vocals
• John Herdt: guitar
• David Napier: baritone sax
• John Birch: tenor sax
• Sam Irish: bass

Johnnie Bolin and Jim Dandy Mangrum from Black Oak Arkansas also sat in for some tunes, and each spoke a bit.

TO HEAR THE SHOW CLICK HERE

I had been in a near-fatal motorcycle wreck less than a month before the fest and was playing with pins holding my right thumb together. In some pictures from the fest weekend where I’m not playing I can be seen wearing a molded removable plastic cast, and I had stitches in my face and hair torn out. The motorcycle wreck was bad, I was making a short trip across town without a helmet on on a hot day and a woman talking on a cell phone pulled right out in front of me and I flipped on my face as I frantically tried not to rear-end her. I was taken by ambulance to an emergency room, and a week later had surgery done on my right hand. I wore a hard cast up until two days before the fest, but practiced using the nail on my right middle finger for a pick because it stuck out of the cast well enough to do so. The day the cast came off I played for hours trying to get my stuff back together, then the next day I drove from Denver to Sioux City and had a rehearsal that night, a very challenging set of circumstances. Right after the wreck I had called Bobby and told him what had happened and that I couldn’t play a show, and bless his heart he said “is there ANY WAY you can do it,” which inspired me to work my ass off as best as I could to make it work out. Bobby liked my original music on CDs I sent him, plus we had some good conversations about road stories from days when we both toured, but his kindness and support will always remain at the core of my feeling of friendship toward him.

One interesting thing is that I had the motorcycle wreck on the way to deliver a raw recording of Tommy Bolin’s last show before he died in 1976 to Mike Drumm at the Tommy Bolin Archives for evaluation to see if it was good enough to restore, master, and release as an Archives CD. That led to me producing five CDs for the Archives and rebuilding and maintaining their web site. But the relationship started hard with the wreck. After I got home from the emergency room Mike Drumm came to my house to get the tape and what he saw of me for the first time was what I looked like in the damage photo on this page.

I left Denver on the Thursday before the fest so I could party some on Friday and see the Friday night acts. I left Denver into the dark and drove into the first of many sunrises on the way to Sioux City. That trip was my first to Sioux City, and my painkillers made the drive an adventure with some CDs of custom mixes of some great tunes. Getting stopped for speeding twice didn’t help though, after which I have kept under 10 mph over the speed limit for that trip. In both cases the officers saw my torn-up condition and sympathized with the bike wreck story, plus were into me playing at the Bolin Fest after they queried me about my guitar and where I was going, so in both separate stops they let me off with warnings! Rolling into Tommy’s home town was very exciting, especially knowing that I’d be playing a big show and seeing lots of friends that I’d met through the internet but not yet in the flesh.

When I got to the Hamilton Inn, a perennial fest fan enclave, I ran quickly into a bunch of friends, which was cool though I wanted to shower before rehearsal. It was a hoot with people coming by. David Polhemus shot some video interview of me that I’ve never seen, would be a trip to check it out. After showering I split for rehearsal, which the band Str8jackit kindly loaned us their space for. We only had one rehearsal but made good use of it, stopping tunes if needed to work out parts. Some friends were there and the rehearsal was recorded and videotaped. It was my first time playing with any of the guys but it felt like a band real fast, great and talented guys. John Birch, the sax player was interesting, he would stop during tunes to write parts out on paper. He was also very good, I had a ball digging his grooves. After the rehearsal I went back to my hotel and played through everything we covered twice, until about 1:00 a.m. smoking one of the celebration cigars I brought.

On Friday we had a blast partying all over town, with some time at Johnnie Bolin’s famous Stately Manor on Court Street. On one of the trips back to the hotel I see this guy naked except for gym shorts and shoes standing out on a second-story balcony playing bass with a racket coming from his room. My first in-the-flesh with Big Jim Wilson. Jim is well known among Bolin fans, both for his peerless party attitude and his long hair dyed like Tommy’s. Jim’s cousin Mike Milici was in their room playing guitar, and they were both cranked up to club volume. Rock & Roll. Bobby Berge was with us, so he grabbed a snare drum and jammed with me on Mike’s guitar and Jim on bass. Bobby and Johnnie both really like to play whether there are a bunch of people watching or not, and it was a hoot to watch Bobby grinning while we jammed out.

Also on Friday I was in Bobby Berge’s room, he was in the shower and came out in a towel, so I got to see Mr. “Post Toastee” stripped down, ha ha ha. Bobby’s wife Karla was a peach and gave me some coffee they had brewing. With us were a few of the guys, I think Reed for sure, and David Napier, a sax player who had recorded with Tommy. David had heard that it was a good rehearsal and wanted to play with us on Saturday, so we picked up a second and excellent sax player. David told us stories about recording with Tommy, just the two of them together, of which a bootleg exists which astounded everybody except Bobby.

On Saturday we mainly spent the morning getting ready for the show because we were playing early, I got in a couple of hours of warmup which I especially needed because of the condition of my hand. While I was showering I mishandled the extremely heavy bottle of shampoo and dropped it on my big toe, opening a gash. It bled profusely and I spent a while getting it stopped, but later when I was walking around in boots it started bleeding again and my sock got pretty soaked, especially after we played and I was walking around the fairgrounds.

The stage was a large box with a front that would flip down to keep the elements out. Unfortunately it didn’t keep out fine dirt, because the floor was covered with dust like a road. I take good care of my gear so I wasn’t digging that, but I’m also a pro and shut up and got set up. In photos of some of the other bands you can see white circles on their knees where they kneeled down to plug in, with me mainly my cords and effects needed to be wiped down back at the hotel.

All that went out the window once we started playing, and it started kind of hard because during “Teaser” my amp was cranked too loud, plus something had happened to my digital delay and it was turned up too high so I played the whole show with sound ricocheting whenever I’d turn the delay on. I went with the flow on it though and didn’t try to adjust it during the show, I don’t use it often enough to adjust between licks. After “Teaser” a sound man came up and helped me get my level balanced and from then on it was pretty golden.

We did “The Grind” and “People People” next, and by the end of “People People” the crowd was really cheering. I remember during “People People” looking out in the crowd and seeing people’s faces smiling and just radiating support. The band was playing with a lot of space in the sound between the loud parts, and the saxes were sounding great. Bobby was in top form on drums, Sam Irish is a bass ace who gets better every time I see him, the saxes were unreal and David Hare did a great front man.

I saw Johnnie Bolin by my side of the stage, on the side, with his son Bobby Vayne. Johnnie was digging it and clapping. Jim Dandy Mangrum was with him and grinning and animated too. I was surprised to see them because they had a gig out of town with Black Oak Arkansas and weren’t supposed to be there. Jim Dandy got up and spoke some kind words about Tommy Bolin, and then he did “Shake the Devil” with us with Johnnie on drums. I had always thought of Jim as more of an entertainer than a musician, but I was thrilled with the quality of his front work and felt that like me he was a guy who would have fun playing in modest conditions as much as in front of a big crowd. Jim and Johnnie then thanked the crowd and prepared to leave for real, so we continued with “You Told Me You Loved Me,” “Dreamer,” “Stratus” and the seldom-played “Lotus” which I was especially proud to have in the set.

The crowd continued to be very supportive and we look to the side of the stage and there were Johnnie and Jim Dandy again, they were enjoying it so much they hadn’t left yet. The got up and joined us for “Post Toastee” with Jim on backup vocals (excellent and graceful) and Johnnie on drums. Partway through Bobby Berge grabbed some sticks and played some drums from the outside of the kit. It was a pretty good raveup and had the crowd clapping along. Johnnie then said goodbyes again and the main lineup closed with “Bustin’ Out for Rosie.” What a great, great band that was, especially with just one rehearsal. Very musical, some quiet parts, some scary parts. And I was thankful that my hand held together.

After our set the roadies were really excited, they loved the show and wouldn’t let us carry our own gear. To get the crew off is and extremely inspiring thing to me, those guys are there to work and to have a show take them past that dirge is really cool. After my gear was in my car I decided to walk around a little before going back to the hotel to dump my gear and clean up before going back to see the rest of the bands, plus look at my foot which was starting to feel wet from blood from my cut toe. As I walked around almost everybody stopped me to say they had enjoyed the show, it took half an hour to make it to the Bolin Foundation booth to find my people. Todd Seely caught me and did a taped interview, which was fun because he’s fun to talk to anyway, very knowledgeable about music and hip. I also met for the first time soon-to-be friends Terry Edwards and Bobby Berge’s brother Ron Wesdorp.

Since the show was over I went back to the hotel and dumped my gear and took a shower again, then caught a buzz and played guitar for a while longer, actually ran through the whole show again quickly by myself enjoying the legal painkillers without which my hand would have been excruciating. I love to play through a quiet amp or unplugged in hotel rooms on the road. When I left my room to go back to the fest I ran into Craig Erikson coming out of the room next to mine. Craig is a well-known guitarist from Cedar Rapids who has played with greats including Glenn Hughes, and was closing the fest that night at 11:15 p.m. Craig didn’t know me that well yet so kind of shined me on, but we’ve had some pleasant moments since then, including the NAMM debut of the Dean Tommy Bolin Signature Teaser guitar.

I went back to the fairgrounds by myself and my foot was getting worse. I had some fun socializing with some of my friends again and caught some great Sioux City fast food. When it came time for Rick Derringer there was still some light, but it took his sound guy so long to give instructions to the house sound guys that he didn’t play until it turned dark. I thought they were doing good sound for us, but Rick’s guy is like “can you take it down 3db at 250hz?” and such over and over. I know more about mixing and frequencies so now I understand the quality he was going for, but standing there on a sore foot I was getting tired of it. Partway through Derringer I decided to leave for the hotel, walking around the rough ground in the dark had my foot really bleeding badly and I wasn’t having that much fun, playing some more guitar with my last painkiller for the day sounded appealing.

I wasn’t leaving until Monday, so I had all Sunday to enjoy with my friends. On Sunday morning a large group of friends and members of the Bolin Foundation went to Uncle John Music Cafe and record store for a great breakfast, as we were in line to pay afterward I spotted one of the only Tommy Bolin Archives CDs I didn’t have, the Mouzon outtakes, so I had some cool additional music for the trip home. The last time I was at Uncle John they had closed the cafe part and it was just a few rooms with boxes of records, it was like a dream imploded to me because it was a wonderland with the cafe part.

In the afternoon Sunday we went to the fan jam that was held at John Nash’s Crosstown Cafe. This had been the site of previous fan jams, so it was great to be included when I ran down some tunes down with Bobby Berge on drums, David Hare and Craig Adams on bass. That was the wildest jam I ever had in Sioux City, my painkillers combined with some beers woozed me out royal and I played looser than usual, the recording does have some fun spots though. While a number of other lineups played I took care of my huge hunger (I skip a lot of meals at Bolin Fests) with one of the Crosstown’s great Mexican platters. As I was eating and feeling just so fulfilled from the weekend I talked with David Hare, which was great, I haven’t been in a band in a long time so it felt like “here I am with my singer,” took me back to my touring days.

Bands played from the afternoon deep into the evening. Some highlights were Stevie D singing a touching Alexis, and Jim Wilson and Mike Milici pounding the hell out of some Tommy tunes with Bobby Berge on drums. I also enjoyed meeting Sioux City guitarists Gary Gunderson and Jimmy Peterson, Gunz in particular became a friend who I played with more times including the 2006 Bolin Fest lineup of Bobby Berge’s band. All in all the long weekend had been a powerful initiation into the potent music scene that remains in Sioux City, a scene that had been Tommy Bolin’s scene along with that of my Colorado.

Other highlights of the trip were when I visited Tommy’s grave for the first time with a group of friends including David and Chris Polhemus, Reed Wison, Bolin Foundation members Linda Emrich and Jay Denne, writer Todd Seely and Jeff Emrich. I also spent time with Sal Serio, one of my oldest Bolin friends and fellow Rampant Zone featuree, but Sal and I went on to even bigger and more legendary fest adventures. Seeing Johnnie Bolin in Chill Factor on Friday night was also a highlight, with John Bartle on guitar and David Napier on sax.

I left early Monday morning and enjoyed the trip back, great music on the stereo in my 1999 Prelude, long drive across open vistas in the lunar capsule. Shortly after the fest the Tommy Bolin Band: Live in Miami at Jai Alai CD got the go-ahead and I restored and mastered the audio and did the packaging art for that, then I was asked if I could take over the Tommy Bolin Archives web site from Pia Valeriana and I subsequently re-designed and produced the current web site, both actions of which resulted in a Bolin snowball that continues to this day.

TO HEAR THE BOBBY BERGE BAND 2002 BOLIN FEST SHOW CLICK HERE

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 at 9:06 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.