A Long and Winding Road — Chautauqua Road Band

As mentioned in the previous entry, the idea for the CRB reunion started when our old friend, Bill Fish, suggested a CRB get together on Facebook. It’s quite possible that we would have gotten together eventually, but for the three original members, we will always appreciate the little nudge to get it going sooner than later.

To say there was a lot of water under the bridge since the last time Chautauqua Road Band played in public is an understatement. The last gig played by the three ‘originals’ was in June of 1977 on the porch of the Roy Martin house, where Mike’s family lived. It wasn’t a paid gig, but a celebration for our fans, family and classmates. Copious amounts of beer were served (legally, the drinking age was 18) and a few of us watched the sun come up the next morning from the front yard. There is a tape recording of part of this event that may see the light of day… if it survives the recording process. We are in the process of transferring it to digital media to be preserved for future generations.

A few days after the party/concert/kegger, Mike was on a 747 headed to Sweden for the next two months. Gregg and James went to their summer jobs and started getting ready to attend college in the fall. There was some intermittent contact over the next few years between the three amigos, but their college careers took precedence over any thoughts of playing together again… After that summer, the idea of getting CRB back together was probably never more than a whisper in the back of their minds. However, for many years Mike teased his wife that when he retired, he was going to go back to playing ‘classic rock’ for the people. Perhaps it was little more than a whisper…

Before we start blogging about what the band is doing now and our plans for the future, we think our readers may find it interesting to hear a little about how we got to this point. In the next few postings we will talk a little about the paths our lives have taken over the past 4 decades. Not only some of the fairly interesting information about personal lives but our musical journeys. When we started talking about the reunion last spring, we all realized that our love for music had grown over the years and our tastes have expanded since the days of playing Led Zeppelin and Dobbie Brothers songs. Don’t get us wrong, we will always love “Rock and Roll” and “China Grove”, but we also appreciate “West Coast Blues” and “So What”, by Wes Montgomery and Miles Davis.

We will also talk about the newest member of the band in this discussion. Paul has had his share of interesting life and musical experiences and we will tell his story, too. For many reasons, Paul is a perfect match for the band and we will talk about the road that led him to be the drummer for the next (amazing) version of CRB.

We appreciate all of the support our old and new fans have shown us at the beginning of this next phase. We hope you look forward to getting to know us a little better. Stay tuned for more!

Rock on... Mike