" Once there was a way to get back homeward..." or so the song sings . I am not too sure about that but there is a way to look back musically and remembering . I met Pete Troutner at the same time that I met Jerry Jeff Walker in a bar coincidentally called "The Clown's Den" in Austin ,Texas. I was auditioning with my classical guitar , playing the originals I had been entertaining myself with as I traveled around the country playing stringed bass in the couple of years before I moved to Austin where I was also working as a bassist . They were playing pool in the back of the room as I sang and played . Afterward they came up front and introduced themselves to me and we all hit it off right away .
Within a week of meeting them , Pete and I were friends . Pete actually lent me his car though I had no license . I will never forget this generous act . I was able to visit a girlfriend that day , Jan. It wasn't too long before I was able to allow Pete to stay with us at our castle on the Colorado River . I had two room mates in a big castle-like place . Pete got along well with the other guys . Not too long after that , Jerry also needed a couch and he came over and broke the camel's back , getting us all thrown out .....haha . In my next place in town , Pete came over and we recorded my tunes on reel to reel tape . Pete was big enough to sing harmony though he was working as a solo folk singer , singing his own material and traveling about the South touring coffee houses as was Jerry . Pete's harmony ("One Damn Hell of a Way to Go) gave life to all of our songs and confidence to our cause .
Pete seemed to believe in me . I will miss him and that wonderful link to my youth . I can't imagine singing the songs we sang without him . We sang for fun , laughing , smiling , and sharing our joy together . Pete seemed to be killing himself over the last few years . There wasn't anything I could say to change his mind and I think that that his decisions really did take a toll , finally , after a medical emergency , he was successful. I doubt that he was trying to really kill himself . He was just having fun as was his lot . Pete always smiled for me in spite of his many dramas and tragedies which are too numerous to start to reiterate . He was a free spirited fellow who was merely searching for his way . We were lucky to have been on the path he chose for a time .
Jerry had some good songs and we recorded some of them . I got a kick out of playing the jingle jangle sound of the Byrds style in several tunes though most of the time I had a Fender Stratacaster. "Lost Sea Shanty" was one of the tunes I liked to play around as well as "Oops I Can Dance". It was easier to play behind the lead voice than to sing myself and play that style . "Time Waits" might have been good to play around but for my vocal getting in the way of my fingers . It was fun to sing in front of the band sometimes like I did sometimes in "Bright Light Lover" . Jerry Jeff's tunes generally lent themselves to my improvisation better than my tunes .
Before I met Pete , Jerry , and Gary I was singing like "Howlin' Wolf" in a guttural voice . I think it was inspired by Barry McGuire from the early protest song " Eve of Destruction". Listening to Bobby Dylan made me think I could sing and there were a lot of issues to sing about . "Questions" was a tune ripe for the pickin' which we recorded with our earlier group , "The Subterraneans". The group had my oldest friend ,Lenny Cohen on drums and Len's brother Jay on the accordion among the musicians. "You Must Know Something" was an anti-war protest song I wrote in 1965 and the timing betrays it as it mentions M14s instead of the later versions used in Viet Nam in that era. "I Can't Accept It Baby" showed the heavy influence of the Beatles in that year (1965).
Jerry and I traveled from Houston and ,after two flat tires ,got stranded in New Orleans .I called Lenny Cohen and he sent us twenty five dollars which eventually got us to Washington DC , after two more flat tires ,where we started reforming when Pete rejoined us and Gary moved up from Houston. We auditioned at a club in Georgetown called the "Peppermint Lounge". The day we auditioned we were lucky to find Dave Scherstrom who had been playing with "We the Jinx" , the band we were replacing . Dave joined us , replacing Lenny on drums,and stayed with into our next adventurous move to New York. Dave , Gary , and Jerry had apartments in the same building very close to the "Nite Owl" cafe where we played every night tll we moved to the "Electric Circus"as the house band . Before we became the "Circus Maximus" our name was the "Lost Sea Dreamers" . Our use of the letters preceded "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by a couple of years yet ,like the spirit of LSD , it seemed intermingled with that era . Our record company insisted that we change the name . The "Clown's Den" came to mind , as well as the "First Clown of the Circus Maximus" from a Houston experience when I had helped Pete through the window of one of our friends, January , who had inadvertently locked herself out , being incapacitated by her drug experience . "Invisibility" was a tune we often played live which was a showcase for me to play sitar -like guitar improvisations . In this later version I am playing the electric bass and guitar . The guitar track and voice was done in 1976 while the bass added later and the electronic seasonings were added in this century .
Those days are long gone yet not long ago it became possible for me to reconstruct the sound of our Carnegie Hall appearance because I got involved with the computer . At that show we were on the bill with the "New York Pro Musica" , a troupe involved in music from the Renascence , and Morton Subotnic , an electronic composer commissioned by the Electric Circus , a psychedelic nightclub and one of our producers at Carnegie .I was directed to compose and arrange a piece by Gillaum de Machaut called "Douce Dama Jolie" and turn it into a modern pop piece to be the center of the show . Morton's music often brought us on at the Electric Circus , the sounds creating a tension , an expectation before our show . After the quintet broke up I continued on the road with a trio keeping the name "Circus Maximus" and after our road trip , We did a demo record which included "Douce Dama" . Bob Cali who worked with us playing the electric bass, sings the lead part that Pete Troutner used to sing while I sang harmony and played , melding into the electronic music with my organ improvisations . Cali was an old friend from another group, "The Novae Police" that used to play the "Nite Owl" cafe when we first moved to New York . Jon Prano played drums for this Electric Mini Show , featuring some original stuff into "Somebody to Love" into "Neverland Revisted" was typical of our road shows in form but here I have computerized the show into the electronic - Subotnic excerpts much as Subotnic used our songs into his electronic constructions for the live show at Carnegie Hall which was never released by the three recording companies involved .Carnegie Hall show .
"Travelin' Round" was a kind of blues staple for me through those years . In the end of 1964 I ran out of money to support myself in college in L.A. and took a job on the road playing the stringed bass and various valved brass horns with a show band . I was a lonely soul and wrote lyrics from the point of view of this wild guy traveling , telling his story . We did this version of "Travelin ' Round" with the "Subterraneans" in 1965 in my guttural voice of that period. In 1966 , Pete and I recorded this version of "Travelin' " in my Austin apartment . " Travelin' " was eventually released as the first song on our "Circus Maximus" album of 1967 but the tune played the most , ironically , was "Wind". In the studio I was able to overdub the piano part in "Wind" as well as the twelve string guitar solo , two things that never existed in real life with the"Circus Maximus" of that era .
There was another blues oriented number I wrote and performed very early with the "Subterraneans" called "How's Your Sky"
We later re-recorded another version of "How's Your Sky , Straight Guy Spy" with the Circus Maximus on our second album ."Neverland Revisited" .
This record was semi- nipped in the bud as we had already broken up the band before it was actually released . This gave me a little more freedom in the studio , mixing over some of the tunes . One of Jerry's songs was ahead of it's time and might even be indicative of the rhyme scheme of later "Rap"music yet it retained a melody and had quick and witty lyrics . I over - dubbed piano and organ over the vocal tracks on "Trying to Live Right".
I wrote a anti- bigotry - semi - science fiction song called "Parallel" which was one of our anthems of those days . I was especially happy with my transition between the tunes "Neverland Revisited" and the next song . In between the two songs was the "Neverland Re-visited" section which was an early jazz - electronic effort . (In this example I have excerpted my first song , "Neverland"
The tension gently builds with jazz and electronics until Jerry's song, " Hansel and Gretel " enters . There is a relief and a relaxing feeling where one can rest in the imagery and piano seasonings between the lyrics . I meant for these songs to be heard all at once and not separated so this link is the entire " Neverland Re -Hansel Suite " . ( I haven't uploaded it yet this encarnation)
In conclusion in this salute to the past "Circus" days I want to include this great song by Jerry Jeff which was truly the folk-rock essence of our scene . Jerry had a brilliant idea to put in a doo whippadoo which happened to be one measure of four four in this trio piece featuring Pete on tamborine as he was much of the time as well as whistling along like we are walking away down the lane , smiling all the while .
"Peoples Games" might have been our theme song in a time of not a care in the world , every day is a new , and who cares what comes tomorrow .
The Streaming Mp3s below seem to come and go ,and ,in fact that is why I wrote and experimented the way I did on this page with direct links. The first widget have both albums .The lower one " Lost Sea Dreamers"( a slow load ) has reel to reel tape recordings ,and collections , some repeated , some naked and raw , some reflective , and some with meanings that have been amplified over the years though they haven't been sung . They come from 1965 forward , a history in a way from a dream that once was .
