Devils & Blue Dresses: My Wild Ride as a Rock and Roll Legend

desk, a lone chair, a small space heater, and a telephone on the floor that, in light of the exposed multi-colored wires that had been spliced together, had obviously been illegally hooked up. There was no one there so I walked through a door that led to the warehouse. There was a Lotus sports car and way over on the other side of the cavernous building was a small chest of tools. Great, I said to myself, a drug dealer. Just what I need. A fucking warehouse front for a drug dealer.
    I turned to leave through the lobby and bumped into Tom Connor. The last thing on earth that Tom looked like was a drug dealer. He looked like Mr. McFeely, the friendly postman from
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood
. He had the kind of friendly smile that could stop a small child from crying or put a small animal at ease. Tom had dabbled in music, among other things, and had at one time been assigned to the first nuclear powered Merchant Marine ship. He was an impassioned opportunistic entrepreneur whose light hearted view of the world came to serve us very well, considering what I was going to be asking of him.
    We didn’t speak long but agreed to meet at a restaurant for a strategy session that included young Billy. I was nervous about the meeting and hadn’t yet gotten to know Billy and Tom very well, so I ended up drinking way more than I should have. That probably would have killed any deal I might have made had it not been for the fascinating and convincing plan I laid out before them.
    I had been drug and alcohol free for almost five years and had only started drinking again while we stayed at Kim’s parent’s home. Her father loved to drink rum and coke, and that quickly became my drink of choice. In the past, sometimes months––and several times in my life, years––went by without drugs or alcohol.
    Kimberly’s father actually became something of a surrogate father to me. He was ex-military, decisive, and seemingly in control, and I gravitated to that in a big way. Compared to my father, Russ was powerful. Even with his advice in hand, I approached the recording task in front of me with a great deal of caution.
    The first recording I made with Billy and Tom was nothing more than a vocal over-dub on an already existing track called “Long Hard Road.” The lyrics had been written by someone else. This was the nature of my relationship with Tom for sometime, as we struggled to understand each other better and worked toward feeling comfortable enough to start a partnership. A little project here and there to test the waters, measuring and testing each facet of our individual strengths.
    Eventually we came to the point where, even though my demands seemed excessive, Tom was willing to work within the framework I had insisted on because he believed in my talent. Now feeling comfortable with Tom, and Tom with me, we agreed that there would have to be new product and we formed a record company together called Seeds and Stems.
    Tom had set up shop in his farmhouse out in the country and had been nurturing an idea for an album even before he met me. He wanted to do an album called
Michigan Rocks
and wanted to market it by mail order only. He set about acquiring the licenses and rights for a variety of songs by Michigan artists and our first release became a reality. Although it had been greeted with small success, we were inspired enough to begin discussing my first album. We were dealing with seven different independent distributors, and they all had to be organized in a manner that allowed for coordinated promotion, a recording budget, and a synchronized method of payment to preserve a tolerable cash flow.
    As far as the band was concerned, Billy and I, with Tom’s help, assembled a group that was made up of Billy on keyboards, Wilson Owens on drums, Mark Gougeon on bass, and Joe Gutc on guitar. Next to the Detroit Wheels this configuration, with a few interchangeable years between Wayne Gabriel and Rick Schein on guitar, proved to be the most powerful and talented group of musicians I had the pleasure of recording and performing with to this point. In some instances they excelled beyond the Wheels because of their versatility and openness to experiment. I also had Billy Lee.
    Billy Lee, as a member of the Peps and the Detroit Wheels, lasted three and a half years. The big band, Spirit Feel, never realized full potential and lasted roughly two years, The band Detroit, a powerful but destructive entity, also lasted around two