I started out 1976 in a band called "Don Hudson & the Royal Kings", changed the name to "Don Hudson & the Desperados", replaced Don with Carlton Tanner and changed the name to simply "Desperados".  In that one year we held house band jobs at four different clubs; 15 weeks at Little Joe's, 9 weeks at the Go-Go Factory, 8 weeks at the Broken Spoke, and 13 weeks at the Dunes Club.  The band lineup as we entered 1977 was Richard (RJ) Jones on bass, Jim Wise on keyboards, Jerry Coker on lead guitar, Carlton Tanner on drums, and Steve Jones (me) on rhythm guitar, banjo, and vocals. 

Just as we were really settling in at the Dunes Club, Bob decided to try to sell the club. He was getting pretty old and didn't really want to deal with the hassles of a night club, even if it was making him a lot of money. We couldn't believe it was really happening. Our fans and friends came out in force for one last blowout party on New Year's Eve 1976 to ring in the new year, and say goodbye to a grand old club. My brothers sat in and did a couple of bluegrass tunes, Jim's sister, Tracey Wise sat in and played flute on "Colour My World", and I think my mom was even there for a while. We didn't want to end the party that night, but the LCB (liquor control board) made sure clubs closed on time back then. It was a sad, sad night but all good things must come to an end.

Jammin' with brothers Chris (left) and Ray (bass) at the Dunes.

I don't know where we ended up that night, but I'm sure we didn't go home until the sun came up. We had no idea where we would play next. Most bands knew how to go out and find gigs. We'd been lucky and always had them fall in our laps. We didn't panic though. We all shared a sense that something would come our way, and it DID! 

Wayne Olive had sold the Broken Spoke to two guys named Ralph and Paul. At least we thought he'd sold it to them. They called us up on New Year's Day and asked us to come back and be the house band at the Broken Spoke. No more Wayne! The new owners love us and start talking about remodeling the club. After two weeks, they closed!  We soon were told they'd closed to remodel and were changing the name of the club to "Turkey's". They even had RJ and me paint the new sign on the front window.  Turkey's never opened. I don't even think Ralph and Paul ever expected to open up Turkey's. I believe to this day that they put us up to painting the sign as a gag. I still have a mental image of RJ and me painting that big sign, and the only turkeys were the idiots painting it!

During the downtime from the Turkey's fiasco, we ended up hanging out at a little club on E. Lancaster in Ft. Worth called "The Hungry I."  It was a small, intimate, classy joint.  Our old pal Don Reeder,   Beltline was playing at the "I" with a band called Tarbaby. They were really hot. Their front man, Leon Ellis, was somewhat of a legend around town. He had a bluesy voice and a stage presence second to none. He was simply cool in a Lounge Lizard sort of way. His big line was "Ain't Nuthin But A Party!" Don invited us to sit in a few nights and many of our regular followers came to support us. Tarbaby had a lot more talent going for them, but we knew how to PACK THE PLACE!  Ok, so we packed the place with wild heathens from the dives of Hemphill, but we packed the place! This made a big impression on the bartender / manager, Sue Robertson. She also liked a lot of the songs we played. And I think she really liked us as people too.  The Hungry I was owned by a well known figure of the day, Bo Yale. He had a couple of clubs in the area at the time, but usually he was hanging out at the upscale "Corporate Image" club in Woodhaven. He didn't bother Sue at the "I" too often as long as things ran smoothly.

As much as we loved the Hungry I, it was too lofty of a goal for us at the time. Besides, our friends in Tarbaby already had that gig sewn up. We were in limbo, waiting to hear if Turkey's was going to open up or not. We decided that if they didn't open up by the last Wednesday in January, we wouldn't go back. We didn't have to worry about it though because our old pal Bob from the Dunes called us up and said, "Hey Boys! I'm back in business. Want to play this weekend?"   That was a great birthday present. I turned 22 years old on that first week back. 

We paid off our Fender mixer, I paid off my totaled AMX, and I met several really nice girls. One of them was Janice Lindsay, a quiet, shy blonde who would be a friend for a long time to come. The thing with Kay ended one night when she thought we were playing and I showed up at her place to find her with a cowboy dude named Ricky. Normally I would have attempted to slit my wrists (with a dull butterknife), but not anymore. I shook his hand and wished them well.  Cowboy dude had done me a big favor.  The party was back on at the Dunes Club!

New Year's Eve at the Dunes Club with Kay.

As we returned in all our glory to the Dunes scene, we knew we were going to have to upgrade our equipment soon. A friend named Dennis Kehagen offered to loan us $2,000 for a new PA.  I don't recall what caused the deal to fall through, but it never happened. We were really excited about the possibilities for a while, though. RJ and I spent many nights in my smoke filled VW chowing down on mustard Jumbo Jacks spending that money in our heads.  Dennis was nice enough, but he ultimately pulled out on the deal. 

Dennis dressed as the Hulk on Halloween '76.

Things were back to normal at the Dunes Club. Richard and I decided to spend a few days checking out the club / music scene in Austin. The progressive country movement was still in full swing and Austin was the home of Armadillo World Headquarters, a big club much like Billy Bob's where you could always find something happening. We saw Walter Hyatt (of Uncle Walt's Band fame) playing there. We spotted Mickey Raphael (Willy Nelson's harmonica player) strolling downtown, and we visited a number of other clubs in the area too. 

We wrote a song on the way back from Austin called "If You Can Stand It." We got the idea for the song from a guy who used to come and see us play on Hemphill in 1977. His name was Steve Bentley and he LOVED to party. Bentley had a house on the South Side with one of the biggest stereo systems I'd ever seen. That room would be so filled with music, people, and smoke that you could barely see. That was where we first heard John Nitzinger's "Live Better Electrically" album. We were absolutely blown away by it, particularly after hearing it on Bentley's stereo system, which took up an entire wall and looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. I was in a fog, both in my head -- as well as literally in the room. The lights were dimmed just right, and between tracks, all that was heard was the sound of a gurgling bong and an occasional "woah!" . How unfair it is, I thought, that so few people would ever get to experience this, and so many other albums, the way they were intended. I sat thinking about how much more music I had at home in my own record collection, than I'd been able to experience because I didn't have a huge, kick-ass, wall-to-wall MEGA stereo system like Steve Bentley's.  But then again, being onstage playing rock and roll five or six nights a week was like LIVING in front of a MEGA sound system. When Nitzinger's "Are You With Me" played, I looked over at RJ and he was already thinking the same thing; "Man! We've GOT to learn this song!"  

I know a lot of us would like to thank John for those tunes! I'm glad it just happened to be his album they were playing on that killer sound system that night.   John Nitzinger is still making great music. Check out his web site at:

 http://www.nitzinger.com/John_Nitzinger_Band_WWWebs_1.html

Steve Bentley's catch phrase was "If you can stand it." That was his snappy comeback to anything. It always made us laugh so we wrote a song about it. It wasn't a very good song, but it was an original! It was the first original RJ and I wrote together. I'd written two songs before that. One was "Atoka", a progressive country tune about the Willie Nelson bash in Atoka Oklahoma, and a ballad called "Broken Man", written  while sitting on the banks overlooking the Trinity River across from Rockwood Golf Course at 3am in the morning, tripping. The party I'd been at that night got raided, and all I grabbed was my guitar as I ran out the back door. I was a little "out of it" and couldn't seem to get my guitar in standard tuning, so I wrote it in the open key of E. The Desperados never played Broken Man. It would be another 2 years before I'd be performing that song with another band.

In March, Doug Wadsworth came home on leave from the service. He'd decided to go in and make it a career after things had fallen apart on Hemphill. It turned out to be one of the smartest things any of us did back then. While in Germany, Doug spent a lot of time practicing the guitar. When he sat in with us at the Dunes we couldn't believe our ears! He played lead on "Down By The River" and knocked our socks off! If it hadn't been for Doug I would never have hooked up with Richard and the whole music scene. I was happy for him.

Our Dunes / Desperados T-shirts sold like hotcakes. Richard got a perm in his hair. We spend our off nights hanging at the Hungry I club where we met a lot of guys in local bands doing basically what we were doing - trying to make a living playing music. Some of those bands were Flight, Free and Easy, Rastus, Sealy Aston, and many others. We knew that most of those bands were better musically than we were, but we were still green and growing. We also had another thing working in our favor - a huge following. Playing the Dunes had given us a chance to build an even bigger fan base. The great thing about our fans was that they didn't care if we hit the notes every time or not. They still loved us. I believe this really bugged a lot of other bands. But it wasn't our fault. We were just very lucky! The talent would take more time to develop.

In April of 1977 we bought a three man raft and spent a lot of our off days out on the lakes, passing the one-hitter football and laying back in the sun. Doug joined in for as long as he could before having to go back on duty.  Things were really looking up and life was an endless party for us.  Then on April 14th we got the news that Bob had closed the Dunes again. This time it was for good. He'd sold it to a group who was already in the process of turning it into a VFW club. Before we had time to panic, the Rock and Roll Gods smiled on us again from the cheap seats, and made the phone ring again. We loved it when the phone rang! And this would be the best call the Desperados would ever get.  It was Sue Robertson from the Hungry I Club. News traveled fast on the East Side and she couldn't wait to put us to work. She actually fired a band in order to put us in for a week to see how it went. She wanted us full time, but the owner of the club preferred rotating bands. So we played our week, packed the place every night, then packed up Sunday night knowing we'd be hearing from them soon. We were in the cat seat. But the Hungry I had contracts with a couple of other bands that had to be honored before we could get in full time - if that were going to happen at all. So in the meantime we had to figure out how to kill a few weeks.  What we didn't realize is that the Rock and Roll Gods had a plan in place for us again. The owner of another club across town had heard about this strange band of fools who were packing clubs everywhere they went. We were about to move across town for a few weeks.

Rockin' At the Rusty Tractor