Seeking Michael Stanley: The Timothy Giles Interview

The Michael Stanley Band was a huge phenomenon in Cleveland and Northeast, Ohio back in the seventies and eighties. They still hold attendance records at Blossom Music Center and the long gone Richfield Coliseum. Although they were on major record labels such as Epic, Arista and EMI and had a couple singles break the top forty ( "He Can't Love You" #33 1980 and "My Town #39 1983) and performed on Solid Gold and American Bandstand, they never broke out nationally. In fact outside of the Cleveland area, they were virtually unknown.

I was in high school in Cleveland at the height of their popularity and I must confess, I was not a fan. At the time, I was a budding music snob and probably thought I was too cool for MSB's Midwestern pop-rock. I was mistaken. I may have been a lot of things back then but cool was not one of them. Trust me, I have photos to prove it.

Regardless if you were a fan of not, in the early eighties, in Northeast, Ohio the Michael Stanley Band was everywhere. All over the radio, featured in newspapers and magazines, seemingly blasting from every boombox at every high school party I ever attended. My high school girlfriend was a huge MSB fan and I dutifully took her to a couple of Blossom shows and I remember attending a free concert in the parking lot of the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Although I was not thrilled about attending those shows, they were much more enjoyable than the Barry Manilow concert we went to. Wow, I must have been a really good boyfriend.

The Michael Stanley Band broke up in 1987 and I left the area not long after and completely forgot about the band.  I can honestly say I literally never heard an MSB song for probably twenty-five

years. I was a radio DJ for many years and every once in awhile I would get a request for “He Can’t Love  You” or “My Town” or maybe, “Lover” and I would immediately ask, ‘What part of Cleveland are you from?’ and the person would invariably answer, ‘How did you know I was from Cleveland?’

Four or five years ago, I ran across some Michael Stanley Band videos on YouTube and was completely knocked out. Once my high school nostalgia subsided, I was pleasantly surprised at how good the songs were. Really great eighties pop music. All these years later, I have finally become a Michael Stanley fan. I even like a lot of his "new" music with The Resonators. The prodigal son has returned to the fold.

Which brings us to Timothy Giles' book, "Seeking Stanley: The Elusive Search For The Michael Stanley Band". A great memoir on the author's thirty year obsession with MSB. Back in the eighties, Timothy Giles was having the complete opposite experience that I was having. Living in the Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia, he not only couldn't find another person who liked the band, he couldn't find anybody who had ever even heard of the band. The book chronicles one teenage fan's search for his hero in the age before the internet.

 Seeking Stanley is a fun read not only for Michael Stanley fans but for anyone who remembers what it was like to be a young person in that long ago time known as the eighties.

The book is available on Amazon and Timothy is generously donating royalties to charity. The initial royalties went to St. Christopher's Hospital For Children in Philadelphia, a reference to the MSB song, "Spanish Nights", and St. Jude's Children's Hospital will receive all future royalties.

 American Bandstand 1983

CASEY:   How did you first hear about the Michael Stanley Band?

TIMOTHY:  I grew up in southern New Jersey across the river from Philadelphia and my town got cable TV pretty early. In the early days of MTV, they were not playing a lot of well known bands and I happened to see the video for the song, “He Can’t Love You”.  I guess I was the original target audience using video to attract music buyers. As far as I know, they had little, if any, radio play in the  Philadelphia market since there were a plethora of local Philly bands that were going to be “the next big thing” at the time like Robert Hazzard, The Hooters, The A’s etc..,

CASEY: What was it about them that caught your attention?

TIMOTHY: As I mentioned in the book, I thought the band in the video were actually factory workers who played music on the side. I found the song to be very catchy and thought the video was pretty humorous. Again, I was like fourteen, so I didn’t get out much. Of course like anything, you can’t start a fire without a spark, so that was my first foray into a thirty year following of Michael Stanley.

CASEY:   You also tell a story about meeting the band before one of their shows.  What was that like?

 TIMOTHY: They played Slippery Rock University’s Spring Fling in April 1986 and it was the first time I was able to see them live and I decided I wanted to meet them. I was actually quite nervous, for some reason, but the band was very cordial and very unassuming. I used the intro about the Tribe playing that day and that got the conversation rolling. They could not have been nicer.

CASEY: You also mention you are not a fan of Jonah Koslen or MSB’s seventies music. Why?

TIMOTHY:  If you listen to the Epic and Arista years the band to me did not really have a pop or rock sound.  I don’t think I have

listened to “Ladies Choice”, “You Break It, You Bought It” or “Cabin Fever” more than once.  Nothing there really grabbed me. I feel on the album “Greatest Hints”, where Kevin Raleigh first joined the band, you can hear them gravitate to a more pop music sound that definitely shows up in their next album “Heartland”.

CASEY:  What are your top five Michael Stanley songs?

TIMOTHY:  “All I Ever Wanted” from the “Heartland” album. “Spanish Nights” from “MSB”, far and away my favorite album.  “In The Heartland” from “North Coast”, the title track from”Inside Moves” and “If You Love Me” also from “MSB”.  Ironically, the song that got me hooked, “He Can’t  Love You”, would not even make the top fifteen.  Michael Stanley’s post MSB recordings have produced some quality songs also, “The Ground” is a great song.

CASEY:  Why do you think the band wasn’t able to breakout nationally?

TIMOTHY:  That is the question that has plagued mankind forty years.  I am sure everyone has an opinion but I feel personally the early eighties were over saturated with the working class sound of Springsteen, Seger, Mellencamp etc..I used to love the two guitar, bass, drum and maybe a horn player type bands and back then there were lots of them. I think the Del Lords should have been huge but they never broke out of the bar band mold either.

CASEY:  I have always had a theory that one of the reasons they didn’t break out was that the band was too anonymous looking.  Nobody really stands out on the album covers. Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen had bands but they were always the main focus in photos, videos, marketing etc. Do think if Michael Stanley had been more the focus they may have been more identifiable and possibly had more success?

Michael Stanley in the eighties

TIMOTHY:  Not a bad observation but since they had two lead singers and two songwriters, Koslen and Raleigh, focusing on just Stanley would probably not have encouraged the other two to write and sing.  Raleigh did write and sing the biggest hit of the band’s career.  If you are farmiliar with the documentary, “MSB Confidential” they discuss this and it seems no one could nail down why.  Maybe having a band name like Styx or REO would have been a better decision.

CASEY:  It seems that Michael has sort of turned his back on the MSB years. I’ve been told he doesn’t play many of his old songs in concert. Why do you think that is?

TIMOTHY:  I personally have not seen Michael Stanley and his band, The Resonators, due to timing or geography. They rarely play outside of Northeast, Ohio. But I do have quite a bit of audio that has been made available over the years and they do play quite a few MSB staples. They do not usually play the songs written and sung by Kevin Raleigh but they do play, “all the hits that you wanna hear”.
There’s a “Midwest Midnight” plug.

CASEY: Do you think they will ever do a reunion show?

TIMOTHY:  No.  They did some reunion shows back in the day. I think nineteen-ninety something was the last one.  Over the years, members of the band have shown up at Michael Stanley concerts but they have not done an MSB reunion since the nineties.

Michael Stanley Today

CASEY: What made you write the book?

TIMOTHY: It's a bucket list kind of thing. 'Who the hell is Michael Stanley?' is the question I have been asked the most.  Followed by,
'How did you hear about MSB?'. It has been in my wheelhouse for quite some time and I finally decided to just go for it.

Thanks to Timothy for writing the book and taking time to do the interview.  You can e-mail Timothy at, timothyagiles@hotmail.com

Although the Michael Stanley Band broke up in 1987, Michael has continued releasing albums and performing live both solo and with his band The Resonators. He has also been a radio personality on WNCX -FM in Cleveland for many years. Most, if not all, of his recordings can be found on iTunes, Amazon and Spotify and he still does shows around Northeast, Ohio. For more information, check out his website http://michaelstanley.com

Casey's Website

Rock N Roll Christmas Party Playlist

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

Casey’s Website

Monster Kid Radio: The Derek Koch Interview

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.

Monster Kid Radio

Monster Kid's Writing Website

Monster Kid Facebook Page

Monster Kid Twitter Page

Casey's Website

Casey's Really Scratchy Record Collection Presents: Chilling, Thrilling Sounds Of The Haunted House (1964)

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.

Listen to the full album HERE

Casey’s Website

Wipeout (The Sufaris) Record Review

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.

Casey's Website

rnrcasey@gmail.com

Christina Watson: Ohio Ghost Hunters Interview

 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.

Ohio Ghost Hunters Facebook Page

Casey's Website

The One Man Band Chronicles #5: Ghostwriter Interview

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.
                                                       
Ghostwriter's Website.                 

Casey's Website