Snapshot

In the beginning...

In August of 1980, Messenger was kaput. Hopes of trying to keep the band together dwindled as Beth and Steve joined up with Stardust. Again, I wanted to go to Austin, but I guess I got lucky. Beth had always spoken highly of Paula Thompson, but I'd never got a chance to hear her sing. Then I got the call saying they wanted me to play keyboards. Just like that.

Our first get-together was in the nightclub they'd been playing at for a while - the Shadows. They Shadows was a stoned country bar. I remember walking through the rightly lit barroom in the afternoon, getting equipment set up, working on some songs. The band consisted of Paula on vocals and guitar, Dan Dreeben on the drums, Bill "Bear" Middleton on guitar, and Robert Miller, also new to the band, was playing bass.

The gig at night wasn't as bright. The Shadows was a very smokey room and I remember being a bit down, not having much hope that the band would be as good as Messenger. Well, at least they were a steady working band. But I think we were only at the Shadows for a couple of weeks when we got the boot. Wow, fired already. I had the feeling that it was my fault, but nobody ever blamed me. At that time, I was rock and roll, not country - and, as I said, the Shadows was c-o-u-n-t-r-y.

Immediately, however, Snapshot was booked at another club. Stewart Anderson's Cattle Company was just opening up and wanted live music. It was a very nice gig and we stayed there a while.

I realized pretty soon that the good thing about Snapshot is that there was a commitment from everyone to making the band good. Everybody played well, and nobody was afraid to rehearse too much. We started the habit of learning lots of songs - a habit we built on for the life of the band. We performed some great music recorded by Linda Ronstadt, Karla Bonoff and Emily Harris. I brought in material from Lynyrd Skynyrd and Bob Seeger.