The Raisin Band: Bends in the road

From the memories of former Homewreckers band front man Steven J Athanas

A Poem

It really seems so long ago, so long as to almost be someone else’s life . . .

I wrote You Get Used to the Bends in the Road in some hotel room, somewhere in the Deep South on May 28, 1977 (according to an old sketch pad of mine). It was while I was on my only road adventure with The Raisin Band. I say “only,” but that adventure went from sometime in 1975 to sometime in 1978, to the best of my recollection (and with a little help from my friends).

Certainly no competition with Maya Angelou or Walt Whitman, the poem nevertheless encapsulates a very important portion of my life.

We were all young, mid-20s or younger, our first real adventure away from family and friends. But it was everything you’d expect from a bunch of testosterone-engorged male animals, sent to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting world – or Southeastern USA, to be more exact. Lock up your daughters!

None of us had done this before, taken a working, untested rock’n’roll band “on the road,” but there was nothing Kerouac-ish about this. Not much artsy, cerebral or introspective about it at the time. Yeah, there was a “beat,” but it was the beat of a drum, not a counterculture quest. We were a cover band, looking for a way to find our original side, our own voice, our own music, but meanwhile playing cover songs in bars, drinking liquor and kissing girls.

Allow me to make a distinction between the band I am writing about here and the band it morphed into later. The Raisin Band was a band that started in Toledo/Sylvania. It gathered its core members from a “blues” band, Strongheart. The morphed version (The Raisins) – with two members of The Raisin Band – are a Cincinnati-based quartet, who have recently regrouped to respond to the desires of a rabidly hungry fan base in Cincinnati, performing 99.9 percent original tunes. They are/were a force to reckon with.

There were a few different incarnations of The Raisin Band, what with people quitting for various reasons. This, as we learned, was to be expected, as the road took its toll on one’s psyche, endurance and the wallet.

Initially, there were seven of us: “Jukebox” George Leist (drums and vocals), Rex Rutter, RIP (keyboards), “Bad Bob” Nyswonger (bass and vocals), Rob Fetters (guitar and vocals), and me (vocals). Our repertoire included Beatles, Motown, Peter Gabriel’s Genesis, Steely Dan – we were all over the place. We did NOT stoop to the likes of Skynyrd, Aerosmith and that ilk, or disco. We also had a sound man, Glenn Marx and a light man, Jon Close. All traveling in a beat-to-shit station wagon (more on that to come) and stuffed into two rooms in various hotels throughout the South. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

We were represented by Ajaye Entertainment, a booking agency out of Cincinnati, Ohio, run by two guys, both named Stan. They would plan our route, predominantly down I-75 to Pensacola, Fla., with offshoots to the Carolinas, Virginia and Tennessee. We would play for a month or so in Toledo, head south for about eight weeks, work our way back to Toledo, play Toledo again for a month or so, and do it again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

And though I look back on it now and think, “Sweet Jesus, how did I survive?!” I had a riot at the time. We all did! Sleep till noon, explore our surroundings or hang out with friends, grab a bite, nap, shower, rock the clubs, after hours’ parties…what’s not to like?

There’s no way my body could do any of that nowadays, but then? I was young, I was virile (boy was I!), and I was hungry for the adventure!

OK, alright, so there were down times, times of missing home, missing girlfriends, driving full days in a car and a van, to get to the next gig, the same smelly people (us) in the hotel rooms, bad food, sharing beds.

The tales that could be told! Like the time Bob inadvertently ate some shellfish (which he was allergic to) AND got horrendous sunburn, but insisted on performing that night. With a strategically placed bucket onstage, he would every once in awhile turn his head to the right and let loose. I remember while we were playing “Lo Rider,” turning and seeing him vomit in the bucket. It was kinda like that guy in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life. Projectile vomiting, but he never missed a note! What a trooper!!

Once I got mononucleosis. For about a week, I slept for the whole day, woke up in time to get to the club, perform (as well as one could with mono), then go right back to sleep. Another time in Chicago, Rob ate some Chinese food that was cooked in peanut oil (his allergy). The reason I/we pushed ourselves like that was the same reason Bob did it. The fact that we were all dependent on each other to get paid for the gigs. One guy down? The whole band’s out a night’s pay.

I honestly can’t remember a time we missed a gig. We took care of each other (if not us, then who?) and grew strong together. There were also a couple of times I had to visit the STD clinic to clear somethin’ or other up, but let’s not dwell on that!

Although I remember those times fondly, there were definitely times of tension. There was a place we played called Club 68, and I HATED it. In the middle of nowhere, a long drive from wherever we were coming from, just a big hall in Kentucky out in the sticks, that was BYOB. The crowd yelling out “Sweet Home Alabama” and Aerosmith, neither of which we’d do.

George remembered a time when he went back the next day to get something he forgot, and there were people just passed out on the floor. When he asked what the deal was, an employee told him “Oh, they’ll get up eventually and leave.”

It was at this club that Rob and I got into a fist fight in the break room before we played. I was raging. Maybe I needed that. The weird thing was that after we got that out of our systems, we played like mo-fos!

According to Jon, our light man, there was a “division” within the band: There were the partiers (me, Rob, Bob and Glenn), and the non-partiers, or as they came to be known, “The Woodchucks” (Jon, Rex and George). That’s how the rooms were divvied up. Sometimes we’d switch sides, but as a rule, that’s usually the way it was.

You may well ask, “How did y’all get from point A to point B?” Good question, nice to see you’re paying attention! I would truly be remiss if I didn’t mention the vehicle that transported the boys around (there was a van that transported the equipment, driven by Glenn and Jon).

Before we started  our road adventures, Bob had sold his car, a ‘71 Ford Country Squire station wagon with wood panels, to Jon. When we hit the road, Jon magnanimously offered the car up for the road. Because of its share of breakdowns, the car eventually came to be known as “The Deathmobile.”

One day The Deathmobile inevitably broke down on a country road on a beautiful sunny day. None of us were mechanics, still we opened the hood to see what the problem was – as though we would’ve known! Upon closer inspection, we noticed an ominous crack in one of the rubber hoses.

After scratching our heads for a bit, someone suggested “Why don’t we take a lighter and melt it shut?”

Had we done that, the news that night would’ve reported “BAND MEMBERS DIE IN FIERY CAR EXPLOSION – FILM AT 11!” It was a gas line.

Gone, but not forgotten. Deathmobile RIP.

This, as you can imagine, is just the tip o’ the iceberg for road adventures (like when we opened for KISS and Ted Nugent, or getting a drummer to quit high school so he could go on the road with us, girls with diamonds in their teeth, girls…). I’m sure I’ll revisit this era.

We’ve all stayed in touch, lo these many years (those that are still vertical to the planet, that is), which means a lot to me.

But that chapter ended with a kinda mutual decision that me and the rest of the group were going in different directions. Rob and Bob continued and brought in Chris Arduser (RIP) on drums and Tom Toth (aka Tom Caufield) on guitar/keys and vocals. They started writing their own tunes in earnest, and it’s stood the test of time.

I moved to New York City, waited on tables and had a ménage á trois  . . .

LONG LIVE THE ROAD!!!

Thanks to Jon Close, Bob Nyswonger, George Leist, Michael Kirby and Jeff Dietsch for helping me jumpstart some of those sleeping brain cells for me.