Tired of the same old Christmas songs? Are you "Jingle Bell Rocked" to death? "Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree’d" out? Then check out Casey’s Musical Dustbin’s Rock N Roll Christmas Party Podcast featuring the hippest Yuletide tunes you will ever hear. Take a listen HERE
PLAYLIST
BACK DOOR SANTA (CLARENCE CARTER) Great funky Christmas tune from the guy who would become infamous a few years later for his risque hit “Strokin’”. Santa’s been a bad boy.
MERRY CHRISTMAS (I DON'T WANT TO FIGHT (RAMONES) Joey and company give Phil Spector a run for his money on this one. Check out the Uber cheesy eighties video on YouTube.What says Christmas more than leather jackets and sunglasses?
THE MAN IN THE SANTA SUIT (FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE) One of my all-time favorite Christmas tunes from the band that brought you the 2003 top ten hit “Stacey’s Mom”. Great jangly guitar pop told from the view of a department store Santa.
SLEIGH RIDE (VENTURES) C’mon, it’s the Ventures. What’s not to like?
SANTA LOOKED A LOT LIKE DADDY (BUCK OWENS) Buck and the Buckaroos at their mid-sixties best.
BE BOP SANTA CLAUS (BABS GONZALES) Hipster version of The Night Before Christmas
ROCK N ROLL SANTA CLAUS (LITTLE JOEY FARR) Great rockabilly from a kid whose sounds about twelve. No relation to the cross dressing actor in MASH
MERRY CHRISTMAS BABY (CHARLES BROWN) Turn out the lights, turn on the tree and snuggle on the couch with your honey. Cool late night Christmas blues. Otis Redding would rearrange this into an upbeat funky number a few years later. Bruce Springsteen had a Christmas hit with Otis’s version in the seventies. I prefer the original. Incidentally, Charles Brown also wrote “Please Come Home For Christmas”. You hear the Eagles’ version every thirty seconds during the holidays. Once again, the original is better.
SANTA ON THE ROOF (REVEREND HORTON HEAT) As always, the good Reverend brings us great music, funny lyrics and wicked guitar work.
SANTA CLAUS & HIS OLD LADY (CHEECH & CHONG) Politically incorrect on so many levels but so much fun
FROSTY THE SNOWMAN (LOS STRAITJACKETS) Christmas music in Mexican wrestling masks. How fun is that?
SANTA CLAUS (SONNY BOY WILLIAMSON) Weird blues tune from, perhaps, the greatest blues harpist of all.
HEY, SANTA CLAUS (MOONGLOWS) The Moonglows were a doo wop group out of Cleveland, Ohio. The were discovered by Alan Freed and were pretty big on the pop charts. In fact, they were inducted into the Rock N Roll Hall Of Fame in 2000. This is a fun r&b bouncer with great tenor saxophone.
I WANT A ROCK N ROLL GUITAR (JOHNNY PRESTON) The spoken word tale of a kid who wants a guitar for Christmas. Johnny Preston does his best Elvis impression. He would go on a few years later to have a hit with “Running Bear”
JINGLE BELLS (SINGING DOGS) What a bunch of talented canines. When I had a dog, I couldn’t even get him to roll over.
WHITE CHRISTMAS (VENTURES) Okay, okay, I know we already played the Ventures but c’mon, it’s the Ventures for crying out loud!
TRUCKIN' TREES FOR CHRISTMAS (RED SIMPSON) I have never been a huge country music fan, (I don’t get why they dress up like cowboys) but I always liked truck driving songs. Not that C.W MaCall Convoy country/disco stuff but the mid-sixties tunes by the likes of Dave Dudley, Del Reeves, Red Sovine, Dick Curless and yes, the greatest of them all, Red Simpson. He actually put out a whole album of this stuff called, “Truckers’ Christmas”. It’s worth a listen.
SANTA'S ROCKABILLY CHRISTMAS (SKIP THOMPSON) I wonder why there are so many rockabilly songs about Christmas? There’s almost as many rockabilly Christmas records as there are rockabilly records about flying saucers. Almost. This is one of the best.
LIGHTEN UP, IT'S CHRISTMAS (GEEZINSLAWS) Here is a seasonal favorite for anyone who has had the misfortune to enter a mall during the time of “peace and joy”.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING NEW YEAR'S EVE (ORIOLES) Great Holiday Doo Wop.
Merry Christmas. You can listen to the podcast HERE
Back during my college days at Ohio University, I had a couple of friends in a fraternity up north in Bowling Green. Every few months, a group of us would drive up to attend one of the fraternity’s social functions. These get togethers involved a lot of drinking, the main course being a steady flow of Shaefer and Strohs beer topped off with some cheap liquor. (El Toro tequila comes to mind) Things usually started off pretty joyous but took an unfortunate turn around 2am or so. Here is my musical re-creation of those events. SPOILER ALERT: If the sound of human vomiting upsets you, this may not be the tune for you.
“Party At The Phi Taus”
Written by Casey Redmond:
Casey Redmond: Saxophones, guitars & drums Casey’s Website
Here is my latest podcast just in time for Halloween weekend. Our creature feature on this episode is "The Whole Town Is Sleeping" A 1955 radio drama based on a great Ray Bradbury story. Plus creepy music from the Doors, CCR, The Fuzztones, Count 5, The Deadly Ones, Alice Cooper and more. Perfect for a dark, windy October night. As always, crank it up and BYOB.
Listen to the show HERE
With Halloween fast approaching, I thought it would be a good time to talk with Derek Koch, the host of Monster Kid Radio, about some of his favorite classic horror movies. Monster Kid Radio is a weekly podcast devoted to classic horror flicks. It not only contains lots of discussion about famous and the not so famous movies but also has special guests, interviews, listener polls, trivia, lots and lots of old horror movie clips and some very cool music too.
Monster Kid Radio has won a couple of Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards through the years and will soon celebrate it's 400th episode. The podcast can be heard on iTunes, Stitcher and Libsyn.
CASEY REDMOND: What is a Monster Kid?
DEREK KOCH: It’s kind of hard to answer. The term came about
Derek Koch
several years ago when David Colton of The Classic Horror Film Board and the Rondo Awards wrote an essay that appeared in an AOL chatroom about, What is a Monster Kid?. You know, we are the kids staying up late watching monster movies and making models, things like that. For a long time, it was used to describe people who grew up in the fifties and sixties watching these things and and enjoying these movies. For me, I feel like I’m a Monster Kid. I stumbled into loving these movies when I was younger and it really just stuck with me and has defined me as an adult. A lot of times, I will call myself Monster Kid X because I am part of Generation X.
CASEY: What's the first horror movie that made an impression on you?
DEREK: I think the first one that really made an impression on me growing up was Poltergeist. One afternoon I was flipping through channels and, at the time, we had Showtime and they were showing Poltergeist in the middle of the day. Not really having any experience with horror movies or monster movies at the time, seeing the guy peel his face off in the bathroom really influenced me and affected me quite a bit. That's probably my earliest horror movie memory.
CASEY: Was that the start of your love for monster movies or did that come later?
DEREK: I think it started a little beforehand with those
Crestwood House books that you find in school libraries, kid libraries. I think that is probably what sparked everything for me. Growing up, it's not like I could turn on the TV and see classic horror movies. So, these Crestwood House books were pretty much my in. They hooked me from the beginning. I knew who Lon Chaney and Bela Lugosi were in grade school. I remember distinctly this paper I wrote in class one day in grade school going off about how people who dress up like princesses are ruining Halloween because Halloween should be about Chaney and Lugosi and Karloff. I was a cocky little kid.
CASEY: Explain for those who don't know, what are the Crestwood House books?
DEREK: The Crestwood House books was a series of books, I believe they were published in the seventies, designed for young
Crestwood House Book
readers. They found their way into a lot of school libraries or the kids section of public libraries. Each book, at first, was about a particular film. So there would be a book about The Wolf Man, a book about Dracula that sort of thing. Most of the book would be about the film itself with pictures from the film. I learned later that a lot of those photos came courtesy of Forrest J Ackerman. Then the last quarter of the book talked about who was in the movie, sequals, remakes, influences. I first learned about the silent film, The Golem, from the Crestwood House book about Frankenstein.
CASEY: So you knew about the movies before you ever saw them?
DEREK: My parents didn't really encourage me to watch R-rated movies or horror movies, I wasn't allowed to. But for some reason or other, learning about these black and white monster movies that was somehow safer.
CASEY: When did you finally begin watching the movies?
DEREK: As a film geek, one of the jobs you could have in the nineties was working at a video store. During my working career I've worked at four. Working there and having access to all of these VHS tapes and ordering them, using my employee discount, filled out my collection of classic horror movies and modern horror films too.
CASEY: You prefer old horror movies over newer?
DEREK: I do. For awhile, I was all about the zombie stuff and the modern stuff and the slashers and things like that. But I always had a love for the black and whites and the Hammer's. I even did a podcast about zombie movies for several years. It was called, Mail Order Zombie. The gimmick of that was that I would cover zombie movies that you had to get through the mail. Eventually, we ended up covering any zombie movies.
CASEY: Can you still listen to the podcast?
DEREK: The podcast is still there but we haven't put out a new episode in forever. I got to the point where they just weren't giving me the enjoyment. I suppose burnt out is part of it. I was feeling like there wasn't a lot of substance anymore, at least for me. They just stopped speaking to me.
CASEY: On Monster Kid Radio what is the time frame you cover?
DEREK: I go pretty much from the silents up through the sixties. I typically use 1968 as my cutoff because that is when Night Of The Living Dead came out and it was a game changer. But that being said, I do toe dip into the seventies a little bit. Like I am getting really into Dark Shadows and this December I am going to do a Dan Curtis themed month where we are doing nothing but Dan Curtis properties. We are calling it, Dancember.
CASEY: Who are some of your favorite horror movie actors?
DEREK: We say that we have three patron saints on Monster Kid
Bela Lugosi
Radio; Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and John Agar. Those three are right there at the top of the list. Of course, I can't skip Chaney and I can't skip going over to the U.K and saying I've got a mad love for Peter Cushing.
CASEY: Are you a film fan in general or mainly just horror movies?
DEREK: Yes, I thought I was going to be a filmmaker when I grew up. I went to film school for a little while and did a ton of video production classes at a community college. I love movies. I was a Star Wars kid. I loved science fiction and then I got into horror movies and I was doing special make up effects and making myself up as various monsters. I set myself on fire for a movie once, much to my mother's dismay.
CASEY: Tell me about your writing.
DEREK: I started writing in grade school. I thought I was so clever writing these one page things about a guy who ate so much pizza that one day the pizza ate him. Just stupid stuff. Then as I started writing scripts for little movies that I thought I would shoot stop motion style with my G.I Joe action figures. I remember writing this huge sprawling saga where G.I Joe and the Cobra figures are fighting each other and there were death scenes and funerals and sacrifices. I don’t know whatever happened to that stuff. I was always interested in reading and that led to an interest in writing and creating my own fiction. I started writing horror in high school. Hardly any of that exists anymore. My mother never saved any of that stuff.
CASEY: It probably scared her.
Derek: Or concerned her. (laughing)
CASEY: Do you still do fiction or is it mainly non-fiction?
DEREK: For a little while, I fell away from fiction. Which is sad because I love writing fiction. Recently I was, to use their words, separated from my job. I was working a day job. It was a pretty toxic environment and it really did a number on me mentally. I think it really impacted a lot of aspects of my life. You know, stress levels, lack of sleep, overall mental health and writing. It really impacted my ability to be a creative writer. As I’m away from that now, I’m getting back into it. But I have written non-fiction for magazines. I am a columnist for Strange Aeons Magazine and my first column is available at www.strange-aeons.com. I have also done a few things for Scary Monsters over the years and other places here and there.
CASEY: What projects do you have coming up?
DEREK: Monster Kid Radio is going strong and I don't see it stopping anytime soon. We launched it in 2013 and with the exception of one week, when I was recovering from some health issues, we've always had an episode out. We have episode 400 coming up. I am really excited that we are going to hit the 400 mark. We have Dancember coming up. In December, we will have nothing but Dan Curtis media. I don't know if we are going to talk about every single episode of Dark Shadows, I don't think that's possible. But we will give it a good talking about. And I am working on the Plan 9 By 9 Podcast.
CASEY: What's going on with that?
DEREK: I was asked to be a guest on a podcast that talked about the movie, The Adventures Of Buckaroo Bonzai Across The 8th
Dimension. It was a lot of fun. What they did is they take a five minute chunk of the movie and do an episode about it and then
take another five minute chunk and do an episode about that. I thought that format just sounded fun and I wanted to apply it to what I do on Monster Kid Radio. So, we have created the Plan 9 By 9 Podcast. We take Plan 9 From Outer Space nine minutes at a time. We have at least two special guests lined up and it is hosted by myself and Scott Morris who's been on many many shows over the years. The first episode is available at, www.plan9by9.com. After this is done we are targeting a few other ugly so called "so bad it's good" type movies.
CASEY: Halloween is right around the corner, so can you give us five movies we might want to check out.
DEREK: The Crestwood House books are so important to me because they introduced me to the Universal movies so, of course, a Universal movie would have to be in there and I am going to go with, Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man. I know it doesn't have Karloff, which is probably the one missing ingredient, but it's got Lugosi as the monster and that's still pretty good. But it has one of the creepiest monster resurrection scenes in the very beginning and that scene by itself makes the movie. Now are you familiar with the Inner Sanctum films that Universal did?
CASEY: No, I'm just familiar with the radio show.
DEREK: Universal did a handful of movies inspired by Inner Sanctum and Lon Chaney was in all of them. It was probably the closest Chaney ever got to being the leading romantic man. He was in one called Weird Woman. It's my favorite of the Inner Sanctum films. Evelyn Ankers is in that too and she plays against type. She is not as goody-goody as she normally is in other films. I would recommend that too. For Halloween, I always try to pick something that has a fantastical element. Space aliens are great but that is not spooky the way Halloween is. So, I want to have something that is supernatural like, Thirteen Ghosts.
CASEY: I like that one, William Castle.
DEREK: I was actually just watching that last night. It's wonderful. And then I love my Hammer movies, so I would probably do either Horror of Dracula or Brides Of Dracula. Peter Cushing is in both of those films as Van Helsing but he is a little more "action-heroey" in Brides Of Dracula. That one kind of gets me going. Then for my fifth, I'd probably go with something outside the classic era and pick up, The Monster Squad.
CASEY: I vaguely remember that.
DEREK: The Monster Squad, with exception of one little thing that kind of reminds you that it's in the eighties, I feel it holds up and
it's fairly timeless. It's just a romp. It's The Little Rascals Meets The Universal Monster which is how Fred Dekker pitched it when he was trying get money for this movie he wanted to direct. It's got one of the best on-screen Dracula's I've ever seen, it's got a Wolf Man design that's fantastic. It's got a little bit of comic element to it but it's scary, I mean it's a horror movie. I think it's a pretty good flick.
This record came out on Walt Disney Records back in 1964. It was basically just a way for Disney to make some easy money off of their sound effects library. In fact, side two was exactly that, just a bunch of cuts of ghost howls, thunderstorms, screams etc. But on side one, they used the sound effects to augment a series of spooky narrations by Laura Olsher that were very well done.
They re-released it on Disneyland Records in 1973 and that is when I bought a copy of it at a local drugstore, either Super-X or Cunningham's, I can't remember which. I played it dozens of times on my old plastic red, white and blue record player. My favorite cut being the first, "The Haunted House".
The album was certified gold in 1972, selling over a million copies. Through the years, it has been sampled by various hip hop performers and was performed live in 2014 by the rock band Phish. It is a great record to get you in the mood for the Halloween season. So as always, turn out the lights, crank it up and BYOB.
Here is the perfect soundtrack to your upcoming Halloween party. Listen HERE
PLAYLIST
SINISTER PURPOSE (Creedence Clearwater Revival) Incredible somewhat obscure CCR track. Great guitar, vocals and lyrics. John Fogerty penned some creepy horror/sci-fi influenced tunes; "Tombstone Shadow", "Bad Moon Rising", "It Came Out Of The Sky". This could be his best.
WEREWOLF (The Frantics) Another great Northwest instrumental band. They were on the Ventures record label, Dolton. Cool instrumental, cool sound effects. They also released this song without the growling sound effects and called it, "No Werewolf". No kidding.
I'M THE WOLFMAN (Round Robin) Garage rock classic from a sort of west coast Chubby Checker. The Fuzztones cover version can be found on Little Steven's "Halloween A Go Go".
MURDER IN THE GRAVEYARD (Screaming Lord Sutch) England's answer to Screaming Jay Hawkins.
EXPERIMENT IN TERROR (Henry Mancini) From the movie of the same name.
DINNER WITH DRAC PT. 2: (Zacherle) East coast horror host, dj
and recording artist. This is by far his best. Great guitar and sax. Wish I knew who was in the band. Smoking.
SHE'S FALLEN IN LOVE WITH THE MONSTER MAN (Revillos) Fun cover of this great Screaming Lord Sutch tune. The band started out as the Rezillos, broke up and reformed as the Revillos, broke up and then reformed as the Rezillos. Confused? Me too. The U.K's answer to the B-52s
I AIN'T SUPERSTITIOUS (Howlin' Wolf) Halloween blues courtesy of The Wolf.
FEAR (The Ventures) Great song from one of my favorite instro albums, "Ventures In Space". The song was written by Henry Lubin who composed a lot of the creepy music for the old tv shows, "Outer Limits" and "One Step Beyond". Many of the other worldly sounds were a product of legendary L.A pedal steel player Red Rhodes.
MONSTER'S HOLIDAY (Buck Owens) Buck recorded this as a sort of a c&w answer to "Monster Mash". Sure it's a novelty but Buck and the Buckaroos sound great.
GRIN GRINNING GHOSTS (BarenakedLadies) Cool cover version of the song written for Disneyland's Haunted Mansion.
THE VOODOO WALK (The Panics) This is a great horror rock n roll record. No idea who the Panics were. They were sometimes billed as, Sonny Richard's Panics with Cindy & Misty.
GHASTLY STOMP (The Ghastly Ones) One of the first West coast horror-rock-surf bands. They were discovered by Rob Zombie and signed to his record label released their classic, "A Haunting We A Go Go". This is their signature song.
SHE'S MY WITCH (Kip Tyler & The Flips) Kip Tyler is one of the unsung heroes of early rock n roll. Recorded a handful of singles on a variety of small West coast labels, all of them pretty great. His band, the Flips, went on to become Duane Eddy's backing band.
THE WITCH (The Sonics) The Godfather's of modern day garage rockers. The Sonics at their wildest.
PSYCHO (Laika & The Cosmonauts) Finnish surf band named after the Soviet dog that died aboard Sputnik 2 in 1957. A surf version of "Psycho"? You bet. It is a killer.
Although this is technically a Sufaris' album, the only songs on the record by the Sufaris are "Wipe Out" and "Surfer Joe". The rest of the songs on the album are by The Challengers who are never actually credited on the album. To make the story even weirder, legend has that all of the royalties went to the Challengers and the Sufaris received nothing. Considering how the music business was run in the nineteen-sixties, I doubt either band was paid anything.
All that aside, this is a fun rock n roll record. Calling the Challengers a surf band does not do them justice. These guys were a tight instrumental r&b outfit as evidenced by cuts like "Torquay" and "You Can't Sit Down". Their sense of humor shines through on covers of "Tequila" and Duane Eddy's "Yep" and Richard Delvy's inventive drumming is a highlight throughout the album. Plus on top of the Challenger's tunes you get the two Sufaris' originals.
It is interesting to note that surf music was the first rock n roll genre to bring drums to the forefront. No wonder Keith Moon was a surf music freak in his early days. As always, BYOB and crank it up.
If you like rock n roll songs about convenience stores, monkeys, cavemen, spies and the sun take a listen to this mix HERE. It is good for what ails you.
PLAYLIST
7-11 (The Ramones) Joey and the gang doing their best Shangri-Las impression. From 1981's "Pleasant Dreams" an album produced by the great Graham Gouldman. Hanging out at The 7-11 with your best girl. The Ramones at their poppiest.
IT'S COLD OUTSIDE (The Choir) The pride of Cleveland, Ohio circa. 1966. Three members would go on to form The Raspberries. The Choir is basically The Raspberries without lead singer Eric Carmen.
HEY, HEY, HEY, HEY (Little Richard) Also known as, "Going Back To Birmingham" . Released 1959, Specially Records. Bob Seger also recorded a pretty good version for one of his greatest hits packages.
MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO (Untamed Youth) This is an incredible Sam The Sham cover by one of my favorite eighties garage rock bands. Great vocals, guitar, organ and monkey noises. The original was performed by Sam & the boys in the 1965 teenploitation epic, "When The Boys Meet The Girls"./ The movie starred Connie Francis and featured Sam The Sham, Herman's Hermits, Louis Armstrong, Liberace and, I'm guessing, hardly any plot.
CURSE OF STEPHEN KONG: (Messr Chups) Continuing with more monkey themed tunes (Yes, this one also includes monkey noises) this time from Messer Chups, a surf instrumental trio out of St. Petersburg, Russia. The band features the stunning Zombierella on bass. You can check the video via YouTube. Funny.
SHE WILL CALL YOU UP TONIGHT (Leftbanke) Jangle pop from the same group that brought you "Walk Away Rene".
SATURDAY NIGHT (Bay City Rollers) Why are most songs that spell the chorus so much fun? "Gloria", "Y.M.C.A" and this one. Loretta Lynn's "D-I-V-O-R-C-E"? Not so much.
NOTHING SHAKING BUT THE LEAVES ON THE TREES (Billy Fury)
Billy Fury was huge in the U.K back in the early sixties. Charted twenty-four times in England and starred in a number of British films. The Beatles once auditioned to be his backing band but balked when Fury wanted them to replace their bass player, Stu Sutcliffe.
SHAME, SHAME, SHAME (Jimmy Reed) Shuffle or die!
007 DANCE (Buddy Wayne) Produced by the great Gary S. Paxton, the guy who gave us 'Alley Oop" and "Monster Mash". Trying to cash in on the mid-sixties spy craze by attempting to turn the cold war into a dance.
SHE'S A SENSATION (Ramones) Another cut from my favorite Ramones album, "Pleasant Dreams".
IN THE SUN (Blondie) Surf's Up!
TEENAGE CAVEMAN BEAT GARGANTUA (Zombina & The Skeletones) To think I used to waste my time listening to "serious" artists like Steve Earle and Bob Dylan. Give me a song about a caveman and a monster any day. Fun video. Worth checking out.
CHICKEN RUN (Link Wray) Classic instrumental. I added in stupid sound effects from The Ghoul show. He was an old Cleveland horror host. Crazy fun.
Of ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night, dear Lord, deliver us.
--An old Scottish prayer
Do you believe in ghosts? What is a ghost? If you have a ghost in your house, what should you do? Christina Watson is the Director of the Ohio Ghost Hunters. The OGH is a group of investigators who travel the buckeye state, and elsewhere, in search of ghosts, spooks and and other paranormal activity.
CASEY REDMOND: So tell me about your group.
CHRISTINA WATSON: The Ohio Ghost Hunters is a group of paranormal investigators ranging from myself, who is a physical medium, to skeptics to scientists, the people who like to use the fancy gadgets, to sensitives and empaths. These are people who feel but don't really see the entities. They feel what the entities are feeling. I think we have, right now, close to twenty on our
team and growing. We go to people's homes and help them with their paranormal issues. They seek us out. We have a website,
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. They fill out a form then I call them. I will interview them and we'll get them on the schedule. We will go to their home and perform an investigation. We specialize in cleansing. We burn sage, we say Catholic prayers and nine times out of ten, it works. For about six weeks, you will have some residual negative energy that will continue to leave the home. They might see anything from balls of light to dark shadows and that stuff is just continuing to leave the home based on the kosher salt, the black salt and the red brick dust that we lay down and based on the anointing oil and holy water we use. So these types of things will get them to continue to leave.
CASEY: You mentioned that you have skeptics in your group. Why?
CHRISTINA: Skeptics are the people who help us vet our evidence. These people are very important to our team because they allow us to question everything. I can tell you that personally, when I first joined the group, I was a full on believer. I have always been a believer. But the skeptics have helped me to truly vet the evidence down to, 'What do we really have here?' Is this really a picture of something or is that the flash bouncing off the window behind that person. The skeptics are truly important to the team because they will question everything, so we are providing our clients with the best possible evidence we can.
CASEY: How long has the group been in existence?
CHRISTINA: We have been around between six and eight years. Our founder, Peggy Lynnae, founded the organization and she recently turned it over to myself and kind of stepped down. She still does some things with us, some investigations or if we do a public ghost hunt. We try and do a couple of those a year. We sell some tickets and try to get our public involved because we do have quite a following.
CASEY: Tell me about yourself. Did you see ghosts when you were a child?
CHRISTINA: I can remember being, maybe, about seven or eight years old and I was in my Grandmother's small apartment and I saw a full body apparition of a tall slender man and I didn't know who the man was. At that time, my Grandfather was alive,
everybody I knew that I could think of at that time was alive, and I didn't put two and two together. I've seen a lot of things in my life, they've never scared me, I've never been afraid of it and I've always sought out the paranormal. It's always been a passion of mine because I've always felt we're not alone, not in the UFO sense, as far as entities and spooks and the ghosts, whatever you want to call them. I always feel like, maybe, some people are stuck in limbo when they pass because they have unfinished
business. I got involved with the team maybe three, three and a half years ago and I learned I'm an empath, a sensitive. I can feel what the entities can feel. I went on my first investigation with the team and it was in Harveysburg, Ohio. It's just a small town outside of Waynesville and this town is super tiny, there might be maybe fifty people there. I went to this investigation and it was kind of scary. The entity was large and reminded me of The Undertaker from WWE wrestling. Very tall like seven, seven and a half foot gentleman, broad shoulders, big tall hat and he had on
The Undertaker
like a long trench coat. He was big and mean and very upset that we were there. At one point, we were all outside and there was beating and banging and there was nobody in the home, no animals, nobody. We have all of this on EVP. This was my first investigation and that was the first entity that I could actually see.
CASEY: Were you scared?
CHRISTINA: It was partially scary but when you have these gifts and abilities, you realize that any entity will feed off of fear because fear is a type of energy. So, you can't allow yourself to be scared. After leaving that evening, I threw myself into meditation because it is a great way to grow your abilities.
CASEY: What do you think ghosts are?
CHRISTINA: I think there is a couple different answers for that. It could be if you have a female in the home and she is going through that female change and is super stressed out, she could create a PK manifestation. Which is basically her creating her own, not entity, but energy. And her making things happen without knowing it.
CASEY: What is the second thing you this a ghost might be?
CHRISTINA: A lot of times when people pass they pass rather quickly and abruptly and they haven't had a chance to get their unfinished business in order. They are kind of stuck in limbo or purgatory and they feel like they have to finish something before they cross over. Sometimes my team will come in and that's what we'll find, they don't realize they are dead.
CASEY: How do you know?
CHRISTINA: I'll have a conversation with them. Me, being a physical medium, I can see them and talk to them both. Sometimes, I'll just have to come right out and be very blunt and say, 'Do you realize that you are dead?' Sometimes they will say
photo from a OGH investigation
yes but I have this, this and this I need to take care of and I'll have to tell them, no, you don't have to take care of anything. You just need to look for the brightest light and walk right into it and all of the people who have passed before you, all your family, are going to be waiting for you.
CASEY: And that usually will do it.
CHRISTINA: Sometimes. The more negative energies will fight a little bit and that's where the cleansing comes in and we have to force them.
CASEY: Explain what the cleansing is.
CHRISTINA: Our team uses a white candle and the white candle is known to draw out the negative energies in a room. We use sage. Sage is typically used with a lot of different teams. It's used to also push out negative energies from a room or a space. You burn the sage and you walk from room to room and you burn it from corner to corner and you say Catholic prayers. We say the prayer against all evil.
CASEY: It's interesting that there is a Catholic bent to that. So you draw from different things.
CHRISTINA: Absolutely, we do. We have a pagan, a lady who considers herself a witch, we have Catholics, Christians and people who don't have a faith based belief.
CASEY: Let's say, I think I have a ghost in my house. I contact your group and then what happens?
Ohio Ghost Hunters
CHRISTINA: First of all, I would interview you and make sure you're not on any medications that would cause you to hallucinate. I would make sure that you are not on any street drugs. I would ask you how long it's been going on. I would ask you have you used a Ouija board and you would probably ask me, 'Well no. Does it count if I used one when I was fifteen?' Well absolutely it does. Ouija boards are not just a toy and that's a big issue with today's society. Many people are not educated on a Ouija board, it's actually not a toy.
CASEY: It's funny, because when I was a kid we had one because my parents thought it was just a board game and we actually used to play with it when I was, like, six and seven years old. I don't think they had any idea what it was.
CHRISTINA: I think many of us have used one at one point not knowing or realizing what it really was or what it was used for. But if it's used regularly, even one time, you can open a portal and things will continue to come through and they're not nice. In that instance you can actually get an attachment, that's an entity that will attach itself to the human and then we have to do a detachment. It's not an exorcism because we do not do that but it can be pretty intense.
CASEY: So after you vet the people, what is the next step?
CHRISTINA: I would ask them to give me two dates that they would be available on a Saturday evening. We start our investigations, typically, at 7pm and I would let them know that sometimes they run 'til twelve, one, two, three O'Clock in the morning. It just depends on the amount of activity we are getting, how receptive the entities are. Sometimes we get there and the word is mum. Sometimes we get ready to leave and then all the activity starts to happen. We've gotten ready to leave and my whole metal case of equipment has physically picked up off a chair and been thrown. There have been cases where we've arrived and everybody wants to talk.
CASEY: Now do the home owners stay or leave?
CHRISTINA: We leave it up to them. Sometimes it's good to have them as a trigger object so they can stay and ask questions and we can get more out of the entities. Other times, we don't need them to stay.
CASEY: Do you charge a certain amount for the service?
CHRISTINA: No, everything we do is free of charge.
CASEY: Are there areas of Ohio that have more paranormal activity then others?
CHRISTINA: Hamilton is a really haunted place. Cincinnati has an incredible amount of haunted locations. The Cincinnati Music Hall it is incredibly haunted. I think it has been featured on tons
Loveland Castle
of shows but if you ever get to go their it is an incredible place. There is also a particular place in Loveland, the Loveland Castle, it is also haunted. There is also some legends like the legend of Lick Road and that is around Kemper Road in Cincinnati and that is a fabulous place to go and investigate.
CASEY: How would someone go about joining your group?
CHRISTINA: Just reach out. I believe there is a link on our website. A lot of people just go through Facebook and they post something on our Facebook page randomly and I give them our
e-mail. They can e-mail me at christinawogh@gmail.com and tell me why they want to join, if they have abilities or not or if they're skeptics and we'll interview them and bring them on a trial investigation.
CASEY: Do you have any events coming up?
CHRISTINA: We are working in collaboration with the Boy Scouts of America and the Knights Of Columbus for the Mount Healthy Haunted Hall. We will be doing a meet and greet there on September 28th.
Ghostwriter (b. Steve Schecter) is an Austin, Texas based singer/songwriter multi-instrumentalist. Born in an Oregon ghost town forty-something years ago, he has been traveling the highways of America as a one man band for the past fifteen years playing his own distinctive hybrid of punk-rockabilly-folk-blues-roots -whatchamacallit music in bars and concert halls all over the U.S.
I met Ghostwriter a few years back when we were both performing at The Black Sheep Cafe in Springfield, Illinois as part of Evan Mitchell's Onemanpalooza festival. We shared a drink at a bar across from The Black Sheep where he shared a few amusing road tales. I found out just how extensively Ghostwriter has traveled when he revealed that he not only knew where the small Ohio Appalachian town that I live in was located but that he was actually good friends with another musician from the same town! Small world.
In addition to spending a good portion of the year on the road, he is a prolific songwriter and recording artist having, to date, released seven full length albums. His latest, "String Noise And Dust" , is a roots rock rave-up featuring twelve great original tunes. "Folks" ,"Ohio " (Okay, I may be biased on this one), "Shoreline" and "Gdmt" are a few of my favorite tracks.
Ghostwriter is gearing up for his upcoming tour which will kick off in late October. You can check his website, www.endofthewest.com for details.
CASEY REDMOND: Tell me about your early days.
GHOSTWRITER: I grew up with one older brother in a ghost town called Friend, Oregan. We went to school in a town called Dufur, fifteen miles away until my family moved to the Portland suburbs when I was in the sixth grade. Growing up in Friend in the late
"Downtown" Friend, Oregon
seventies and eighties was free and easy. We didn't watch TV because we didn't have reception and it wasn't important to my parents. We rode BMX bikes on gravel roads and shot at bottles and cans with BB guns and .22s. There were a lot of hours with just my imagination in the woods. The only downside was an extremely long bus ride to Dufur School where I never really wanted to be. But all my friends were there, everyone knew everyone, and there was nowhere else to go. Dufur was a town of about 500 people and Dufer School had about one hundred and fifty kids, K-12th grade all in one building.
CASEY: Tell me more about Friend, Oregon. What was it like growing up in a ghost town?
GHOSTWRITER: Friend is a rural community thirty miles south of The Dalles in the Columbia Gorge, so it's a couple hours east of Portland on the other side of the Cascades. My parents moved out there from Portland around 1970 with a few other friends of the back-to-the-land mentality and worked in the woods as tree planters and fallers. I was born in '76 and I am actually the last person ever born in Friend. That is only because I was a home birth. After me, people have opted for birthing at the hospital in The Dalles. Friend really is an Oregon ghost town with just a few
buildings and homesteads still standing. But through my life the area surrounding the former town is still Friend and usually has twenty or so people living there. No store, no gas, no cops. Nothing. So the move to the suburbs was a bit dramatic, in hindsight. My sixth grade class had more kids than the entire Dufur School. I took it all in stride for a couple of years but by the end of eighth grade, I was in full rebellion mode. I went to high school for two years and a couple of months before getting my GED. I managed to get kicked out of enough classes that staying in school was a moot point anyway. But it was in high school where I met my first bandmates and where I first started to perform and record. I always disliked school and I did poorly enough that it had become a real negative thing. Once I moved on, I was able to focus on positive things like work and music.
CASEY: What was the first record you remember buying?
GHOSTWRITER: When I was growing up in Friend, the stereo was a real focal point. I always loved listening to music and I think my parents had pretty good taste which was fortunate since we were pretty isolated. Albums by The Blasters, Rank & File, Dave Edmunds and Elvis Costello are some of my early memories. That's what they were listening to when I was five and six years old. I vaguely remember my mom playing Everly Brothers stuff when I was really young. I was always interested in what was being played and remember being enamored with record covers way before I could read them. Oddly for a kid from rural Oregon, one of the earliest bands I remember relating to wholeheartedly was the Ramones. My brother and I watched Rock N Roll High School on Beta when I was like in the fourth grade. It slayed us and we saw that our dad had the albums, Rocket To Russia and Subterranean Jungle already in the house.
For me it was like, 'Is this real?' I got way into those records. Living in Friend, you had to travel pretty far to buy a record. When we had a reason to go to Portland, like visiting my Grandma, we would sometimes stop at Djangos Records on Burnside. It was a great spot and my dad was always way into it. I remember going down there shortly after my Ramones kick and finding Too Tough To Die. On later visits, I found Road To Ruin and their self-titled album from the year I was born. Djangos was mostly secondhand records and because my brother was so analytical, I always marveled at the year albums were released. I remember buying Animal Boy brand new on cassette the same year it came out, in like '86, and being so happy that my heroes still existed. I basically listened to everything I could find by the Ramones for three straight years starting around the fifth grade. Those are my earliest record store memories. It sounds cool in hindsight but I was totally in my own bubble. I had long hair, for a kid, and wore tattered jeans. The Ramones were ugly and the songs were catchy and I just loved it. They weren't cool at that time. It was a band that my dad listened to. My brother and I grew up listening to tapes but we would usually buy records and dub then to cassette using my Dad's stereo. Store bought tapes
were pricey and didn't always sound that good. He taught us to use a tape deck where you can set the record level and that it sounded best to bring it right up to that red line, saturating the tape. That's a principle I still rely on, saturating the tape.
CASEY: What other bands were an influence on you when you were growing up?
GHOSTWRITER: By the time I was in high school and playing music Mudhoney and The Jesus Lizard were probably my top two. I got to see them numerous times and still listen to them both today. I had dabbled in hair-metal/hard-rock in the late eighties but by the stroke of luck, this was now the early nineties in the
Pacific Northwest. Through my bandmates, one in particular who has remained a close friend, I was turned on to a lot more underground stuff that was happening. It seemed like an endless amount of prolific bands were recording and touring at that time. There were a couple of all-ages venues in Portland where we got to see Northwest bands like Mudhoney, Gas Huffer, The Melvins and touring bands like the Jesus Lizard, the Cows and Reverend Horton Heat, who came through at least once a year. Within a
Ghostwriter
couple of years, I was getting into older American roots music through gateway bands like Flat Duo Jets and Bad Livers and revisiting stuff I heard as a kid like the The Blasters. It became important to see the bands live and I was in a good spot for that. I even got to finally see the Ramones on their Adios Amigos tour. I was seventeen or eighteen by then and they killed it.
CASEY: What was the first guitar you ever owned?
GHOSTWRITER: My first electric was a Hohner Stratocaster copy. Yes, the harmonica company. It was a cheap knock off of the day that came with a practice amp and a free lesson for $250. I bought it with summer wages just before my Sophomore year in high school. Before that I noodled around with a nylon string acoustic of my Mom's. After quitting high school, I started working full time and soon bought my first "good guitar" a 1974 Gibson SG and sold the Hohner.
CASEY: Tell me about the first time you played in public.
GHOSTWRITER: Some friends and I started a band called, Darwin's Grab Bag when I was fifteen years old. We were too young to be very good but we wrote original songs and practiced a lot. Right away, we started playing parties for kids at our high school. Most everyone thought we were terrible. Then we started to play clubs in Portland. I was sixteen the first time we played "New Band Night" at Satyricon in an area called, Old Town. Satyricon was a bar, the other guys in the band were only slightly older than me, but you could perform in bars underage back then. At the time it was a well known punk rock dive, if there ever was one, and we were teenage suburbanites wearing flannels. Our shows there all blend together now but I remember it was always really intense and often rough. We were bad at our
X-Ray Cafe. Portland, Oregon
instruments and even worse at performing. We got heckled regularly by crusty, intimidating assholes ten years older than us. One night when it was going particularly badly, I remember a guy shouting, 'Play a song about my mommy', in this meanacing voice in an otherwise silent, dark room. It still sticks in my head and it's hilarious now but I remember being petrified at the time. As rough as it could be, over the next couple of years, we worked our way up to some weeknight opening slots at Saryricon and eventually played The X-Ray Cafe. I was nineteen and living in Austin by the time of my second band, a drums guitar duo called, Billy Swamp. We were fearless on stage by comparison. Maybe too much so, but more learning needed to be done.
CASEY: What made you move to Austin?
GHOSTWRITER: I was nineteen and just wanted to go somewhere new. I had been out of high school for a few years and was keenly aware that I had been in Oregon my whole life. I knew a disproportionate amount of music I was listening to came from
Texas. From singer/songwriters and roots rock n roll to noise-punk and everything in between. In hindsight, it seems Portland would have been as good as any for a musician but the music scene was fledgling compared to Austin at that time. To this day, the Northwest's music doesn't cater as much to my overall tastes as the sounds coming out of Austin. Especially back in the late nineties and early two thousands. My intention was not to stay that long but the living was pretty easy and the decade seemed to fly by.
CASEY: When did you start performing as a one man band?
GHOSTWRITER: I started playing solo in the form that would become Ghostwriter in two thousand and two. My band had a short tour booked but dissolved at the least opportune time. That had been my experience with bands up until then, just when things start to get rolling something happens or somebody leaves. I decided to do the tour myself. I played a ten date tour with a foot rig that scarcely resembles what I use today. I had played solo acoustic sets quite a few times by that point but that was the first time I tried to bring the volume and intensity that would work in the louder, rock n roll barroom type venues.
CASEY: What do you like about playing solo?
GHOSTWRITER: I think what still appeals to me about playing solo is the independence and self-reliance, not to mention economics and creative control. There are sonic compromises but the other elements make up for it. I also like driving and being by myself, so it's been a lasting fit.
CASEY: What other one man bands had an influence on you?
GHOSTWRITER: I loved Hasil Adkins and even got to see him a couple of times. I discovered him delving through early, weird fifties rockabilly type stuff. I saw Bob Log III and thought he was cool but he wasn't a big influence. There was also a local guy named Homer Henderson that played as a one man band with
The late great Hasil Adkins
drums and guitar together. He's really good and really fun to watch. Homer Henderson still plays occasionally and is totally worth checking out. But beyond that, the one man band wasn't something you saw very often. For the record, as much as I dug Hasil and Homer, I never wanted to follow in that vein. I still don't dub Ghostwriter as a one man band unless I have to. I prefer just to say, "solo". I derived a lot from the self accompanied singer/songwriters of the pre-rock era, like the twenties through the forties. I was listening to the Harry Smith Folk Anthology around the time I started developing the Ghostwriter sound.
CASEY: What was your initial one man band set up?
GHOSTWRITER: It was pretty similar to now. I used two mics in the last couple of bands I sang in, so I kept that. I played guitar and banjo and used a pretty primitive version of foot percussion rig that I still use today.
CASEY: How would you describe your music? If you had to explain what you do to someone who never heard you, what would you tell them?
GHOSTWRITER: I'd say edgy roots-rock or punk-blues or some form of post-punk American roots music. There's never a quick description but I like to stress that it is rooted in well worn genres like blues and folk, even though more modern influences are incorporated too.
CASEY: Tell us about your new album.
GHOSTWRITER: It's called String Noise And Dust. It was released on vinyl and CD earlier this year on my own label, End Of The West Records. It's all me, no other musicians. I recorded it at
home in Austin using the same one inch tape machine that I used on my last couple of albums but with better mics and outboard gear. I recorded it last summer and did the post production work in the fall. I would say it is stronger and more diverse than my previous releases. It is a good group of songs and I'm really happy with the outcome.
CASEY: Where can we buy the new album?
GHOSTWRITER: You can buy LPs and CDs directly from www.endofthewest.com and it's available from all of the download and streaming sites like, iTunes, Spotify, CD Baby and the rest.
CASEY: What new projects are you working on?
GHOSTWRITER: Right now I am mainly trying to spread the word on the new album. The upcoming tour will be in late October and November. I am working on putting that together and promoting it. On the side, I recently put together a three piece band here in Austin called Beautiful Delilahs. It's a straight up rock n roll thing, heavy on covers of fifties and sixties stuff. The other players are killer and the few shows we've played have been a blast. We are hoping to release a seven inch soon and hoping to generate a little more activity locally.
Delyn Christian has been playing music in Columbus, Ohio since the early nineteen-seventies. He has played solo and with countless central Ohio bands including King Barbecue, McGuffey Lane and, for the last twenty years, The Fret Shop Band. He has opened up for countless national acts and has played just about every bar, restaurant and music venue in Central, Ohio over the past forty years. He also spent many years on the Columbus radio scene playing everything from John Coltrane to Metallica. Delyn moved to Tennessee a few years ago but he still plays regularly in Columbus
I first met Delyn back in the early nineties. I had just gotten my first radio job at WNKO-FM in Newark, Ohio. Fresh out of The American School Of Broadcasting in Columbus, I was told by the program director that I would be trained for my first shift by someone named, "D'Lynn".
As I waited nervously in the station lobby for "D'Lynn" to arrive, I wondered who this woman was? Hopefully, she was a kind and patient person who would help calm my fast rising terror of going on the radio for the first time.
About a minute before the start of the shift, a big bearded long
haired guy wearing a cowboy hat burst through the door and said, 'Hi, I'm Delyn Christian.'
If you happened to be anywhere in the Newark area on that fateful day long ago and were lucky (or unlucky) enough to be tuned to 101.7FM, you would have been treated to one of the worst air shifts in radio history. Dead air, lots of dead air. Songs played that had never been heard on that station before. The same tune played back to back. Two songs playing simultaneously. The disc jockey stumbling over every third word in a shaky unaturally high voice.
It was the longest six hours of my life. Meanwhile, Delyn sat in the next room, occasionally coming over to the studio and calmly saying, 'Dead air, man' or 'Same song, man' or 'Two songs playing, man'. My favorite piece of advice came after I mistakenly identified the station as being located in Columbus instead of Newark. A moment after turning the microphone off, a shaggy head popped in the doorway and said. 'First rule of radio, man, always know what town you're in.'
I survived that first shift and would go on to work three years or so at WNKO. I was doing overnights while Delyn was the mid-day jock, so our paths only crossed once or twice a month. Every time I ran into him though, he always had an amusing story to tell about his radio or music career. We both eventually moved on but I would hear him on CD 101 or see he was playing at some bar or club in the area. I saw him play live a few times. (Anyone remember, Fear Of Toast?)
We would work together again, almost fifteen years after my first shift in Newark, at QFM 96 in Columbus. I had lost my previous radio job and Delyn put in a good word for me at Q, helping me to get hired. Proving, once again, that Delyn Christian is not only a really talented guy but a really good guy, as well.
Casey Redmond: Tell me about your early days.
Delyn Christian: I grew up on the north side of Columbus around the Sawmill Road/Godown Road area. We moved to Columbus, I think, in '68. I was born in Rome, Georgia and we moved to Columbus from Louisville, Kentucky.
CR: Do you have a lot of memories of Kentucky?
Stingray
DC: Oh, absolutely. I've got songs about it. There is a song on one of the records, "Kentucky Stingray". It's all about my Stingray bicycle when I was eight. When I moved into that neighborhood, it was all eight year old kids. That's the first time I ever saw a Gibson guitar. There were these brothers, the Shield brothers, that lived in what my parents called, the hippie house. They wanted us to stay away from that because they had leather jackets and motorcycles and had a band that used to practice in the basement. Me and my one buddy would always get on our Stingrays and ride over. We'd hear the band cranked up and we'd go up to the basement window, look in there and watch them do their thing. That was the beginning of the end, I guess.
CR: Do you remember the first record you ever bought?
DC: It was probably Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen. I had
other records like my dad and mom's. My parents had Duke Ellington records, Boots Randolph, Buck Owens, that kind of stuff. So, I had all that. But as far as going out and walking to the record store, it was probably Mad Dogs.
CR: When did you start playing guitar?
DC: I had a friend named Kelly Shoemaker. His mom played guitar, taught us both how to play G, C and D. Once I found a capo, I had a job.
CR: What was your first guitar?
DC: My first guitar was a Fender six string my dad bought me when I was eight. I still have it. It hangs on my wall and it's still in tune. I played a lot of gigs on it. The first one I ever purchased, I guess, was an old Epiphone twelve string. It's gone, somewhere now. I used to take six strings off so I would have a six string because I couldn't afford both.
CR: When did you start playing in public?
Bernie's Bagels
DC: I was thirteen or fourteen, '73, around there. I would always walk down on High Street and play on the corner by Bernie's Bagels. Artie Kegler was the manager of Bernie's, before The Distillery and all that, and he would always walk by and drop two or five dollars in my guitar case. That is still huge today, when somebody gives you a five dollar tip. He finally said, 'Why don't you come in here and play Friday night.' So, I'd go down and play and I'd make twenty-five dollars and a peanut butter bagel. I was happy.
CR: I didn't realize you started that young.
DC: I was taking guitar lessons at Chuck Bailey's Guitar Center in Graceland. You can talk to any musician my age in town and they probably bought their first guitar from Chuck. He's still around. Saturday afternoons he would get all his students together and they would set up equipment on the sidewalk at Graceland and you could jam, you could play. Whether you were good or not, it didn't matter. That's how I met a couple of the first people I started a band with. They're still lifetime friends. You'd work a day job at Kentucky Fried Chicken or Ponderosa, make enough to get gas money to get down to a gig and make no money.
CR: What was your first band?
DC: Wow, I must have been in Junior High School. We were called, Exodus II., which had no real religious meaning. I'm not sure how all that came about. We played pool parties at Sycamore Hills or Indian Hills, these neighborhoods in the area. The high school dances, those kind of things.
CR: Do you remember what was on your setlist?
DC: Even then we did originals. I was even writing back then. We
would do like, Johnny B. Goode, Creedence, Alice Cooper. I was a huge Alice Cooper fan. We would do as much of that stuff as we could. At least we thought we did. You know kids, listen to the record and try to figure it out and make some kind of noise. And then when I was in high school, our band would play at WMNI's Country Cavalcade on Saturday nights. It was a radio show, kind of like their Grand Old Opry. Ron Barlow was the host of that and that kind of got me interested in radio. But we were kind of the house band. My high school buddy Tom Marshall, he played guitar for me for a long time, his dad was a fire chief in Columbus. He was the singing fire chief. We would back him up and then if somebody's band didn't show up, we were the band. We'd play with, like, Charlie Rich, Loretta Lynn, whoever was coming through.
CR: You guys must have been a pretty good high school band.
DC: Well, we thought we were good. We worked. A lot of that was three chord stuff. Country music back then you could follow. It meant something.
CR: What was Columbus radio like when you were growing up?
DC: Columbus radio was very cool. It was right at the beginning of the FM craze and kind of underground radio. WCOL-FM was my favorite radio station. It was religious from six am until midnight and then it was album oriented rock. AOR, that's what they called it. And it was, playing side 2 of Tommy, you know. You could listen to the djs and they had something to say. They could pick their own stuff. People like Michael Perkins and Terry Wilson. Radio was the thing. I still have my transistor radio that I would lay in bed and listen to. I'd think, 'This guy's making a living talking about records.' I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Until you realize what the money is.
CR: Yeah, we all know about that sad tale.
DC: You could go downtown and Spook Beckman of WCOL would be in the window. The studio was in the window. So you could watch these guys and stuff.
CR: How did you get into radio?
DC: I tried to do college for a year or so and it just wasn't for me. So I went to The American School Of Broadcasting. That was cool. You'd take maybe six months and you'd learn how to be on the television or the radio. So, I got through that and got a gig at 3WJ (WWWJ) in Johnstown. Did country radio. I'd be doing gigs until two or three o'clock in the morning and have to be in Johnstown at six to do the top one hundred countdown at Denny Datsun-Chevrolet. That was definitely a learning experience. You did everything. You wrote commercials. Voiced commercials. That was kind of the beginning of automation. At night we were automated but it was all reel to reel, no computers. It was all big tape machines. Someone would have to come in at three o'clock in the morning and change the tapes so it would make it to six am.
CR: What station did you go to after WWWJ?
DC: From there I got on at WBBY with Terry Wilson and that whole crew which was a wonderful place to be. Real jazz. Thelonius Monk and Miles Davis. I did midnight to six there forever and loved that.
CR: Did you have any choice in what you played?
DC: Yeah, you did. But at the end there, when it kinda got smooth jazz, it was pretty well formatted. As a matter of fact, I still have a lot of my albums from those days that have the actual grid that the djs would make and tape on the album cover that would say, 'I played cut two at three o'clock in the afternoon on Wednesday.' So, you would know not to play that song for however long. Whatever the rotation was.
CR: So, you were doing radio and playing gigs.
DC: Yeah and I also had a day job. I did everything. I would play five nights a week, doing radio, whatever shift that might be. Eventually, I had to get out of it, raise my son and get a regular job. That's how I ended up at CD 101. Andyman was one of my students at The American School Of Broadcasting, I ended up teaching there. He got the CD 101 gig and was running that and said, 'Why don't you come and do my weekends.' Andyman always called my radio syle, the drug induced seventies delivery that only I could provide. So, I got back into that which eventually led to working at QFM96.
CR: You've spent some time playing with McGuffey Lane who you met at Zachariah's Red Eye Saloon. How did that come about?
DC: Well it's funny because, next week, I'm leaving to play on a
McGuffey Lane
cruise with them and I still do the Zachariah's Red Eye Reunion Show with them every year. When I was thirteen or fourteen years old, I was playing up on High Street. When they would play on Friday nights, I would always be in front of Zachariah's with my guitar and those guys would always put money in my guitar case. Bobby Gene and John and Terry Efaw. We lost Tebes, of course, and Bobby Gene. Tebes was a big influence on me playing harmonica. I would wait until they were ready to play and I'd go around the back of the building with my guitar case and pound on the back door until the bouncer would open it. I'd say I had the guitars for the band. I'd get in the back door that way so I could watch the band. At the end of the show, I'd get my guitar and walk back home. If it was during the week, I would sneak out of my house. I'd go to bed at nine o'clock and climb out my window. Then I would hitchhike down High Street, I wasn't driving yet. I'd play then I'd go in and see the band. Get back home by two o'clock. Shimmy back up the pole to my bedroom and get up and go to school in the morning.
CR: Did you ever get caught?
DC: I did get caught, once. My dad kind of caught my foot as was climbing down asking where I was going. I said I was going to work. They ended up taking me to the gigs, so that was cool.
CR: Who else did you see at Zachariah's?
DC: There was a band called Urban Sprawl that was great. All the national acts would come through. Poco would come there. I remember, one night, Dickey Betts was sitting their playing with McGuffey Lane. That was thrilling.
CR: You've opened for some big acts, I think you told me once you opened up for Donovan.
DC: I did. It was, like, '77. I was young. It was very cool. I've been lucky enough to open for Heart, Arlo Guthrie, Tanya Tucker...there's a long list. The Agora was great for that. You can be an opening act, make a little money and see a great show. Dan Folgerberg was a great show. Dan was very nice. I always loved his music. It was cool to be able to hang out with him. I remember, when I was opening for Heart, the roadies came up to me and said, 'Stay out of their way.' I think all of the dressing rooms were closed, so I was standing in the corner trying to stay out of the way. They were saying how mean the girls were and not to talk to them, not to look at them. So, I'm standing in the corner trying to disappear and Nancy Wilson comes out and says, 'Come in here and have a sandwhich.' Musicians are musicians. Some of them got that break. They were selling the right thing on the right day. But everyone's a couple of bar gigs away from hunger, you know.
CR: You told me about your first guitar, what do you play now?
DC: I have a 1959 Gibson J-45 and a 1990 Gibson J-200 which is what I usually play on stage. I'm a Gibson player. I love Gibsons.
CR: Tell me about Rick Waters, you guys have played together a long time.
DC: Almost forty years. He was playing with The International Balloon Band and The Vectors. This is like the early eighties when we met. Then we started doing a duo together. We've just been side by side ever since. It's a great relationship to have. I do all my records at his studio. I always say, 'I come in with three chords and a story and he turns it into music.'
CR: How long have you been playing with The Fret Shop Band?
DC: I don't know how long it's been. Twenty years, at least. I would say this band started in the late nineties.
CR: Who's in the band?
DC: Rick Waters on guitar, Phil Maneri on bass, John Bellas is usually my drummer. Pete Carey sometimes plays guitar. John Pollick of Street Players on saxophone. It's a good family of people.
CR: How many albums do you have out?
DC: Three or four. There was King Barbecue and then three with this band. Getting ready to start a new one. I've got the tunes just haven't recorded them yet. Next month I hope we'll get started on stuff
CR: Where can people get your CDs?
DC: Any of my gigs or they can send me twenty bucks. E-mail me
delyn@delyn.com. I'll send stuff out.
CR: You moved to Murfeesbo, Tennessee a few years ago. What prompted the move?
DC: Well, I'm not a young pup anymore. My wife got a job at at
the V.A in Murfreesboro and my parents live in Murfreesboro, they're in their mid-eighties. My son lives in Nashville and our grandkids are in Florida, that's an eight hour trip instead of a eighteen hour trip. We bought a little five acre farm out and about. Just kind of trying to disappear. It's beautiful.
CR You are playing regularly in Tennessee but you also still perform in Columbus.
DC: Yeah, once a month. I've got about four or five clubs that book me once a month. On Thursdays, when I'm in town, I do Victoria 's Restaurant in Powell. I do The Blarney Stone on Linworth Road, DeArinis Tavern & Grill, Roop Brothers out in Delaware. I'll be at The Bogey Inn this summer. And The Creekside Blues Festival.
