Our Musical Memories: The progressive rock sound of Avian
by Jack Montgomery
Friday, October 30, 2009 2:05 PM CDT
From the late 1960s to the mid 1970s a new form of rock music started to emerge. Musicians started to push the limits of the standard rock song to include complex melodies, musical phrasing and employing new instrumentation such as the synthesizer. Elements of Jazz, Classical and World music were fused into rock’s hard, driving format by groups like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd and many others. One of Bowling Green’s most well-known progressive groups was called Avian which included Randy Goodman, Graham Hudspeth, Mark Keen and David Surface.
How did you come together as a group?
Mark: David Surface and I had been friends since kindergarten. We both took piano lessons, from different teachers, around third or fourth grade. Several of our friends, Gordon Johnson, Bernie Steen and Graham Hudspeth already had electric guitars, amps and had been playing in bands since grade school. David used to play his tennis racquet while watching The Beatles’ cartoons on Saturdays. As a consequence David’s mother bought a nylon string guitar. I met Bill Lloyd in Freshman English class and soon he and Graham Hudspeth began playing together professionally. Bill had a Slingerland drum set and Graham a Fender Mustang bass guitar and amp. Graham had regular “jam sessions” at his parent’s house on Saturday mornings. David and I would walk over and Graham would let David play bass while he played guitar. David Surface wanted to start a band. I used a combination of borrowed and earned money from mowing yards to purchase a Howard Combo Organ from Royal Music Company with a Silvertone amp and the smallest Leslie cabinet made in January of 1971. David purchased an Epiphone Bass and Gibson Thor bass amp from Royal Music. Bernie Steen was available - he had a Gibson SG Jr. guitar and amp. Graham Hudspeth and Bill were friends and weekend (during the day) jam mates, but they were playing in a band called SayYes with two college musicians at the Kentucky Belle Restaurant on Friday and Saturday nights. At 15 and 16 years of age respectively, they were in another league from David and me. David and I worked on riffs in the upstairs bedroom of my parent’s house. We invited Bernie over a few times, but without a drummer he couldn’t muster much interest in our proto-band. We needed a drummer. At the start of sophomore year at BGHS, Steve Hanson, a friend from Potter Gray grade school, who played drums in the BGHS band told me about a new student from Nashville who had auditioned and won first chair in the marching and concert bands and had his own drum kit. His name was Randy Goodman. I realized he was in my first period Chemistry class. The next morning before class I walked up, introduced myself and asked him to "jam". Bernie, Randy, David and I jammed in the upstairs bedroom of my parent’s house. This was late August/early September of 1971. Graham showed up halfway into our first jam session. Graham hadn't been invited, but he wasn't to be rejected. It was a situation not unlike shooting horse with your neighborhood buddies, when suddenly a member of the Junior Varsity team shows up and wants to play. You don't say no. After a couple of weeks of driving my parents crazy, Randy volunteered his parents converted garage as band practice space. We moved to Randy’s, lost Bernie, and settled in for what was to be 5 years of creating, playing and recording original music together.
When Randy’s parent’s tired of us we moved practice to the basement of my father’s office on Ashley Circle, then to the Episcopal Church Sunday school building next to the BG Public Library (David’s dad was the minister and hey, the church has always supported the arts!) and the last practice location was at Kyle Frederick’s parents house on Sherwood.
David: As far as I'm concerned, the group really started with Mark and I sort of "woodshedding", just the two of us, keyboard and bass, in this room at the top of the stairs in his parents' house, trying to come up with some sounds and riffs that felt like the "progressive rock" we were into at the time. We were very into 'Tarkus' by Emerson, Lake and Palmer and we made up this really annoying, dissonant riff that we kept playing over and over because we thought it was very ELP-ish. Every time one of our rock & roll guitar playing friends dropped by to jam, we'd force them to play it.
Graham: Mark, David, and Randy were already working with another friend (Bernie Steen) at Mark's house. I don't remember if I was asked to set in or if I asked to set in but we started working on some tunes together. Eventually Bernie bowed out which left the four of us.
How did you decide on “Avian” as the name of the band?
Mark: Our original moniker was Tongue. We used it for our first two gigs in 1971. I know David's parents didn't like that name. I loved to read science fiction. I first encountered the word 'Avian" in a story by Colin Kapp called 'The Subways of Tazoo' part of Kapp's series "The Unorthodox Engineers". I liked the way the word looked and sounded. At the next band practice I mentioned to Dave, Randy and Graham that I had discovered a good name for an album. David asked me more about the word Avian, what it meant, etc. and we returned to practicing. I had given Dave a ride to practice at Randy's that evening. It was cold January/February night. After practice, as I was driving Dave back to his parent's house, he stated to me in no uncertain terms, "I'm not playing a gig as Tongue again. We need to change our name to Avian or I'm out." And we became Avian at the next practice.
David: I'd totally forgotten. Mark never forgets anything. It was great to be reminded!
Graham: The band was originally named Tongue. As I remember Mark had been reading a Science Fiction book in which there was a creature described as being "Avian like". This stood out in his mind and he mentioned it at a band meeting. It seemed a much better name.
From which bands did you draw your inspiration?
Mark: David, Graham, Bernie Steen and I saw Led Zeppelin in concert in August, 1970 in Nashville. We were 14 except for Graham, who didn't turn 14 until the next month. David had worn out Led Zeppelin's first and second albums. When the concert ad ran in the Nashville Tennessean David insisted his mother buy four tickets that same day. David called me later and told me I had a ticket. The cost of the ticket, $6.50 was two weeks lawn mowing money for me. I paid it happily. We (David, Graham and I) subsequently saw Emerson Lake and Palmer on their Trilogy tour, Pink Floyd on their Dark Side of the Moon Tour, Yes on their Fragile Tour and King Crimson on their Starless and Bible Black Tour. Jethro played WKU. We never saw Genesis live until after the band broke up. We anticipated, purchased, collected and wore out all of these bands (and more) records. Randy and I also enjoyed listening to jazz and jazz fusion.
David: ELP at the very start, primarily because we were thinking of ourselves as a keyboard band (since we didn't have a guitarist at first, and wanted to turn that handicap into an asset). Later, though, all the usual suspects of prog rock; Crimson, Tull, Genesis. But Yes was the gold standard for us, the holy grail, etc. We really thought those guys had the keys to the kingdom. But we were also into a lot of oddball music. Mark and I were true record geeks, and we listened to weird bands like Family, a really amazing, overlooked British band (with one of the weirdest singers of all time).
Randy: David and Mark reference the progressive rock and more broadly classic rock scenes and they are, English progressive rock specifically, truly our cornerstone however, as evidenced with our fascination with King Crimson and for me in particular the era of Bill Bruford's tenure with Fripp et al, there was always a definite funk element to Avian.
If one listens for instance to our improvisations live we always would swing that way, as well I'd say that the American jazz-rock fusion phenomenon of the 70's heavily influenced us as well, in particular myself being the drummer. Mahavishnu, Return to Forever and Weather Report all made their impact, maybe not so much in the actual songs but more in our approach, playing and again how we improvised and that we did a lot and loved it. I think it’s one of the key elements that bonded us as musicians.
I remember one jam in particular when Ed Marsh was playing with us and we were rehearsing in Mark's dad's office basement, we took off on a bit of improvisation that lasted for close to an hour and it was truly one of those transcendent moments where the music and the energy of all of us together, the spirit if you will, took us, I know at least me, places that technically when I heard the playback, that I wouldn't have ordinarily been able to play. I was as I said, in the zone, transported there by my band mates. The push to keep up, to improvise, when it’s really working is kind of like the Tour de France where a pack takes off and then one takes the lead and pushes the group eventually spending themselves and then another and so on till the power of the pack and the emergence of different leaders allows them all to crest the mountain.
Graham: Mostly from the progressive rock bands of that era, King Crimson, Yes, Pink Floyd, Genesis during the Peter Gabriel years, and a hint of Jethro Tull.
With regard to your sound, what were you trying to achieve musically?
Mark: We liked Yes’ sound on record and were impressed with the way they tried to reproduce their recorded sound live. I think we felt like we could create and play anything within the progressive rock format. We had seen Led Zeppelin in live performance blow everyone's hair back, then pull up some chairs, sit down and play an unplugged acoustic set, then get up and knock everyone's socks off again. I wanted to create music that would make me feel the same way I felt when I listened to records by all those exciting artists. I think we all wanted to write, play and record great music like the bands we admired.
David: Oh, you know--just the transformation of earthly matter into transcendental spirit and energy---the usual stuff. Seriously, though, we just wanted to shake things up, blow people's minds. People tend to talk about progressive rock like its all stiff and snooty, but that's not how it felt to us. Not at all. For us, it was this big blast of energy and imagination that was here to blow away all the old, dead stuff. In a way---and this is hard for some people to get---it was almost like punk rock. In fact, in terms of sheer rock & roll attitude, Avian might be the most punk rock band I ever played in (synthesizers and gongs notwithstanding).
Graham: We were shooting for more than just the standard 1-4-5 or three chord groove. We wanted to provide something more cerebral with dynamics, odd time signatures, and syncopation.
Randy: I think if truth be told those were the moments that we all as Avian lived for and that our public persona was our attempt to establish some kind of market or commercial foothold, and in our later years I think we really began to go in that direction which was more commerciality at least for Avian. David's songwriting in particular really began to manifest that and other more American, more roots influences began to take hold and as well I think Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was a watershed of sorts to see that one might have their cake (or scone) and eat it too! Ah but it was not meant to be for us. No Money if you will.
Did you perform a lot of original material?
Mark: We started out imitating our idols - in many cases their music was too technically difficult. Thus we learned their earlier, easier music as covers, while improving our playing and composing skills. Covers included Uriah Heep ('Sunrise', 'Sweet Lorraine'), Bloodrock ('Lucky In The Morning'), Argent ('Hold Your Head Up') as well as earlier, less technically-demanding progressive rock by Yes ('Beyond and Before', 'Perpetual Change') , Jethro Tull (‘Locomotive Breath’) and King Crimson ('21st Century Schizoid Man').
Our goal was to perform all original material, record an album and tour to support it. We were learning on the job but also having lots of fun. Initially, David and I would improvise riffs, then cut and paste them together. Our first few compositions sounded like first experiments (Between Time) and were soon replaced. David came up with the first complete song, ‘All the World’ - very much in the style of Flash. Remember we were 15-16 years old. The first worthy song David wrote (We played it until 1976) was "Crusader" - it was very short - I took over and arranged it by joining instrumental bits together - some from me, some from David and some from Graham to fill up the middle with the verses at the beginning and end. The progressive rock format encouraged long instrumentals with abrupt shifts in time signature, style, etc. so we felt no constraints. Also, from the outset we liked improvising. At practices we would often turn down/off the lights and start jamming on a spontaneous chord progression, listening to each other and finishing when we finished. By the time Avian broke up we could have easily played an hour and a half’s worth of original music.
David: We loved playing all those covers, but after a while, our goal was to crank out many albums worth of original material, create a real serious body of work. And we got pretty far into it. I was probably the most traditional songwriter in the group, but Avian wasn't about doing traditional songs---we were committed to the group arrangement ideal, with everyone coming up with a little piece of each song. That was the really exciting part.
Graham: Starting out we did mostly covers of some of our favorite groups with a few originals thrown in. As we progressed it became mostly originals with a few covers.
Who were the songwriters in the group?
Mark: David Surface wrote all but a couple of the songs that Avian performed. Every progressive rock band eventually produces an opus - A 'Close To The Edge' or 'Dark Side of the Moon' - a long, juggernaut, piece music. David had written a great song called 'Flamekeeper' which painted a picture of a post - apocalyptic world similar to that in King Crimson's first album, 'In The Court of The Crimson King'. I thought it would be a great first movement of a suite of songs about the future. From that premise, 'Future Tense' - a progressive rock suite including a song written by Graham ('Old Man') and a song written by me ('Sevenths') was developed. David and I collaborated on ‘Alma Mater’ but it was mostly Dave’s songs and the arrangement was developed as a group. Ed Marsh taught us his song ‘Blinded’ and after he left we retained it and played it as an encore.
Graham: David was the primary songwriter followed by Mark and myself. What usually happened was David would bring the skeleton of the song and together we'd all put the meat and flesh on it.
Were you able to do much touring? If so, where did you tour?
Mark: No. We were young and in school. Plus, the opportunity never presented itself.
Graham: As we were in High School/College we weren't able to do any touring.
Did you work with a management company? Who did your booking?
Mark: We listed a schoolmate and friend on a band brag sheet as a manager, but we negotiated our few live performances ourselves.
Graham: We had a brief encounter with an exec from Opryland Corp. who wanted to make the band into something we weren't so that quickly went by the wayside. As to bookings, we all took part in that.
I’m sure you had many experiences as you were performing. Can you tell me about one or two that stand out in your memory?
Mark: David recalls a high school victory dance at Warren Central. We set up our equipment on the gym stage, went out to grab something to eat and returned a half hour prior to our start time. No one recognized us - why would they? This wasn’t our school. So we sat in the bleachers and started yelling for the band to start playing, "Where are they? Let's hear some music!" and provoked the waiting crowd into yelling and complaining. About three minutes before we were scheduled to start - we left the bleachers, rambled up on stage, plugged in and took off on our first song. - Insouciant youth...
David: It's hard to top the one about the dollar bills falling from the airplane and getting stuck to that statue of Jesus. What Mark left out was all the men, women and children who charged across the Scottsville road, right into traffic, grabbing at all that money, tackling and clawing at that statue of Jesus while we watched. That was very rock & roll.
Graham: Several come to mind;
We were performing at a fundraiser for tornado victims of the 74 outbreak and at the ending of Crusader our road crew set off several smoke bombs behind Randy. Naturally they didn't think about Randy not being able to breathe and he came running out to the front of the stage coughing and gagging.
There was also a blustery outdoor gig at Vanderbilt in which we later found out there had been a tornado watch issued. But I think the gig where the band was the most in sink was at Centennial Park in Nashville at the band shell. We just seemed to click as a unit that day
I've heard you opened for Doug Kershaw at Van Meter hall? What was that like?
Mark: Yes, we opened for Doug Kershaw - the Ragin Cajun who merits a footnote in Rock n' Roll history for his cameo appearance as "The Fiddler' in the first (and only) Rock n' Roll Western, 'Zachariah'. We were contacted by Ron Beck at WKU and negotiated our performance contract with him. Our performance contract is quite a belligerent document upon reflection – it contained clauses asserting our control over what we played and what we wore - not than anyone told us what to play or wear other than our parents and a few peers. Beck was concerned about the clothing clause - Were we going to show up naked? I guess we could have scooped The Full Monty! We assured him we weren’t planning on playing undressed. I added a special clause asking to use the Van Meter’s Steinway grand piano - it was well known to have a cracked soundboard which didn’t affect its sound but made it uninsurable and thus negligible in the eyes of Ron Beck. I could use the piano. We contacted Russ Sturgeon - a fledgling professional sound man Randy had befriended in Nashville who had run sound for us at our David Lipscomb concert - to come up to BG and run our sound at the concert. We showed up hours early to Van Meter and attempted to unload our equipment.
At this point I must stop and acknowledge the hard, thankless labor performed by Marc Owens, Allan Watkins, Ernie Minton and Kyle Frederick as our support crew. We would not have lasted long without their friendship and belief in the band and its music.
The Louisiana Man’s crew told us they were performing a sound check and we would have to wait to set up. As it turned out they kept us off the stage up until moments before the venue doors opened and we never got a sound check. Russ had set up his own sound board and speakers – he didn’t like the look of the Cajun’s PA equipment - and this unknown sound man from Nashville immediately aroused the suspicion of Kershaw’s crew. Who is the local band? How can they afford a sound system from Nashville? When we were finally allowed to set up, I went to move the Steinway grand from the wings onto the stage and two of Kershaw’s roadies stopped me - a thick trunk of sound cables was lying across the stage between the piano and where we were to set up in front of Kershaw’s band’s equipment. There was no way to skirt around the cable. The roadies stated we could not roll the piano over the cables - it would damage them - so we had to lift the grand piano over the cables or leave it off stage. The roadies smiled contentedly - Kershaw’s piano player had an upright piano with a built-in pickup already on stage. I left the stage and walked out to the Kershaw sound board. Once there, I found the extra length of their trunk of cables coiled up beside their sound board. I slowly and carefully pulled out 6-8 feet of this trunk away from the sound board and moved it caterpillar-like, in lengths, up toward the stage. Once onstage, there was enough slack in the cable to roll the Steinway grand underneath the trunk. Suddenly Kershaw’s roadies ran onstage and grabbed one end of the Steinway grand. This standoff lasted for only a moment because the Kershaw crew realized we had them. As they let go, one of them exhorted,” You can’t mix acoustic instruments with electric ones!” “Watch us.” I replied with a smile.
Graham: The band kept hassling WKU entertainment (Ron Beck I'm thinking was in charge of it) for an opportunity to perform. So in a "be careful what you wish for" move they put Avian fronting The Raging Cajun himself, a mismatch in anybody’s book I'm thinking. None the less we knew it was a put up or shut up situation so we did it. We did a fine job that night. Kershaw's road manager said we were the best Damn warm-up act they'd had by far, even though some in the crowd were a bit taken a back with our music.
Learning to record is always and experience. How was it for Avian?
Mark: One thing I would like to add to this interview was the band’s learning curve on how to record music in a studio. It is a process quite different from live performance and one of the things that distinguished Avian from the other bands around BG at the time. We wanted to make records. Randy’s uncle, Willie Rainsford, was a journeyman sideman session and live piano player around Nashville. Uncle Willie was friends with the owner of Leeson Studios International (LSI) on 16th Avenue S. in Nashville. Sixteenth Avenue South in 1975 consisted of a series of solid, modest, brick two-story houses that were, one by one, being refurbished for commercial uses ranging from music publishing to recording studios. Randy convinced his uncle to arrange for us to come down to Nashville and record at LSI. We were exhilarated. What we didn’t realize at the time and would learn painfully later, was that recording is a process. A slow, tedious, pedantic process. It took exponentially more time to set up, mike and record the instruments than practicing or performing live. The whole process was unknown to us; Basic tracks were recorded first. Then instrumental overdubs tracks and finally vocal overdub tracks. And recording studios charged by the hour. We suddenly realized why rock bands spent so much time and money making records. We were set up with a fledgling LSI studio engineer named Steve Messer. It was a blind leading the blind situation, but we were young, enthusiastic and learned a great deal. It was tedious, exhausting, thrilling and fascinating simultaneously. We recorded ‘Icarus’, “Crusader’ and then attempted to record our magnum opus, ‘Future Tense’ - and the multi-track recording tape ran out! We returned to LSI from BG on weekends and at night to complete the overdubs and mixing. Often we would return to BG at 4 or 5 in the morning. Later, we recorded “mobile” with Russ Sturgeon in the basement of my dad’s office in BG and in Nashville in the basement of Randy’s grandparents. We would mix these recordings in the back of Russ’s truck.
As the years passed, how did the band’s dynamics change?
Mark: Randy started college in Nashville after our junior year in high school, but returned almost every weekend to practice. Randy's parents didn't want the band playing dances given their church beliefs. Since we wanted to make records and play concerts anyway, we gave up playing dances which meant we played live less and generated less buzz in town, had less exposure and earned less money. By 1975, we had played a concert at David Lipscomb in Nashville and the opener at Van Meter, but hadn’t received much positive feedback outside of friends and family and didn't know which direction to move into (jazz rock fusion?) and had captured no interest from potential managers or booking agents. Graham (?) invited Ed Marsh to jam with the band. Ed was a couple of years older than us and had led a local band Leatherstocking Tales - playing bass and violin. Leatherstocking Tales played a mix of progressive rock covers and originals. We had seen King Crimson with a violinist and wanted to see what effect that instrument would have in our mix. Ed taught us his original song 'Blinded' and he learned several Avian songs. We played the Little River Band’s Music Arts and Crafts Explosion in Hopkinsville with Ed in June 1975, but by August Ed decided he wasn't a good fit. We coaxed Ed Marsh back to guest on ‘Threshing Floor’ when we played Van Meter Auditorium that fall. The following year Graham invited his cousin Kyle Frederick to play guitar with us. We liked Kyle – he had served as technical support for the band and had developed into a gifted musician. Adding his guitar to the mix gave the band a kick in the pants technically and enthusiasm-wise. We moved to the Frederick's house to rehearse in the summer of 1976. We made our last recording, 'Alma Mater' with Kyle at LSI in 1976.
Graham: I think we were always searching for new sounds which often meant trying to incorporate new people and instrumentation. We worked with violin/bass player Ed Marsh, Tony Lindsey did some vocals with us for awhile, and my cousin Kyle Frederick joined us to add his guitar genius toward the last phase of the group.
What brought about the dissolution of the band in 1976?
Mark: Randy was interested in moving the band into playing more jazz rock fusion where he could participate as an equal in composition. I liked David's songs and couldn’t see changing direction improving our prospects. The combination of work, school and the band demands had become more than I could juggle. I reduced my availability to practice in the fall of 1976 to every other weekend so I could work and study organic chemistry. This reduction in practice time and my lack interest in moving the band in a jazz rock fusion direction led Randy to decide to quit the band. When he left, I took it as my opportunity to focus on school. I don’t know if David and Graham would have continued if I had stayed, but I needed my job to stay in school and my course load was demanding more of my time. We had no interest and no prospects from our attempts to generate “buzz” amongst music professionals. The choice for me was made.
David: Like most of these things, it's hard to put your finger on any one thing. I will say that Avian was a very, very *intense* band. We had this wild, iconoclastic sense of humor, but also this almost evangelical passion about what we were doing. It was very inspiring, but also kind of tough to be around sometimes, and I think maybe we just sort of wore each other (and ourselves) out a little bit. Plus, like Mark says, everyone wanted to try other things.
Graham: As with many bands personal dynamics, differences in direction (musically and personally). Randy was the first one to depart and even though we tossed about other options it was clear it just wasn't going to be the same.
You reunited in 2005 for a recording project. What was that like?
Mark: It was too brief. Twenty nine years had elapsed since David, Randy and I have been in the same room together. Although I have stayed in touch with all through the years, the ability to get Randy and David in BG at the same time has proven to be - a once-in-29-year occurrence. David has lived in Brooklyn for the last 27 years – he visits BG every Christmas and participated in the ¾ Avian performance at the 2001 Jambodian (Marc Owens played drums) – we played 4 songs that evening -one written by long distance collaboration between Graham and David (‘Running for the Sun’). Randy spends his Christmases in South Carolina. Randy, Graham and I played in BGHS 30th reunion band in June of 2004.
The opening number of the last Avian concert in 1976 was a song entitled, “Waiting in the Womb” – it is really great fanfare progressive rock song- written by David and arranged by the band. I thought it represented a peak in our progressive rock output. We didn’t have a good recording of it. It was the focal point for our reunion. Graham had a 1976 practice session recording he converted to digital and circulated around. The recording took place at Marc Owens’s High Street studios in August. I was teaching summer session in NC and traveled over and back to BG quickly. There was lots of joking, laughing and plenty of apologizing for lack of technical prowess. What I hadn’t expected was Randy’s voice- he had developed nodes on his vocal chords and really can’t sing without becoming hoarse. His voice still sounded good. After recording the vocal tracks on ‘WITW’ Randy couldn’t speak for several days, which isn’t good for the president of a record company! Kyle Frederick overdubbed a brilliant lead guitar part. David and Graham stayed on after Randy and I left to work on the mix with Marc Owens. You can hear the result on our MySpace site.
David: For me, it was amazing. I'm still proud of the recordings we did back in the day, but to get a really gnarly track down at Marc's studio felt great. Plus, it was a blast to be in the room with Mark and Graham and Randy again, making music. Kyle too. Plus, everyone's grown musically and sonically, and they brought that into the room too. My favorite "new Avian" moment, though, has to be playing our song 'Charlie's Car' at a Christmas Jambodian show a couple of years back (even though Randy couldn't make it---Marc played great, as always). Graham was all over the bass on that one, and Mark really blew me away by playing the horn part from 'Ring of Fire' as his keyboard solo. If anyone says Avian didn't rock, that one oughta shut 'em up!
Graham: Great fun, though getting everyone together proved to be a challenge. We worked at High Street Studio (Marc Owens) on some old tunes we never had the opportunity to record. I sure hope we can finish it all someday but here again with members living in Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky, & New York it's a challenge.
Is there anything you’d like people to remember about Avian?
Mark: We aimed high and missed- choosing to write original music and perform concerts instead of play dances. And I hope people appreciate the fact we aimed high. I’d like to think it inspired the BG bands that followed us to aim higher.
David: Like Mark said, we aimed high. Even when we missed. That's something to be proud of, I think.
Graham: Just that we loved what we were doing and hope it brought others a bit of listening pleasure.
Thanks so much. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Mark: Thank you for recording these histories. Over the last 35 years I have gone on to a career in science research and teaching, become a husband and father - but I still relish my band experiences and the fellowship of its members and friends – it was the only band I ever played in!
Graham: I'd very much like to thank Marc Owens for always being there for us from the first gig all the way to the reunions.
Jack Montgomery is a librarian, author and associate professor at Western Kentucky University where he handles bookings for musical acts in University Libraries, Java City coffeehouse. Jack has also been a professional musician since 1969 and performs with a celtic quartet called Watersprite. Visit him at MySpace/shadowdancerjack
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Marjk Keen wrote on Nov 1, 2009 9:31 PM:
http://www.myspace.com/theoriginalavian
Hope you enjoy it! "