The Traveling Dingleberries, or Let's begin again; begin the begin.
Before the later greens and after the earlier greens, there was the Traveling Dingleberries. I"ve
thought about writing this for a long, long time. It's going to be a hard story to write. And it's going to be a hard story to tell.
But it's time to tell the whole story. Or as
I may call it, "Begin the begin."
The roots of The Traveling Dingleberries can be pinpointed
to a single instance. I had been friends with Brad for a while. But while the two of us and our wives associated with
one another and ate, drank and was very merry, me and Brad had never played music together. I guess the nucleus
of that situation is my shyness about playing in front of anyone. But on one particular evening, I was playing
some acoustic music when Brad and his then girlfriend Rena arrived. Me and Brad actually played and sang a little that night.
But more importantly, we made plans to meet later that week and play some tunes. And that is where the seed took sprout.
On the following sunday we met at an old haunt of mine. An abandoned quarry. A Rock Crusher. A fitting name, providing
the noise that would be made there in the next weeks and months. On that particular sunday evening, me
and Brad sat in an old falling in railcar chute, and played together and sang together really for the very first time. This time we
were both armed with guitars and I built my confidence up with a few Bud-Lites. The first song we played on that day was
an old Dylan tune. "I want you".
After that we began to play some acoustic music together. And soon after that we added Brads brother-in-law, Doug.
And Doug brought his friend, Donny, who everyone knew as "Donky". And there was the brief episodes of my
then bro-in-law, Michael playing the bongos. The setting for most of our performances was either in my garage, or at the
end of a cotton field. Both were appropriate, and very awe inspiring. The humble beginnings were just that. Humble.
I played my Alvarez acoustic and sang my Dylan tunes. Brad played his Beatle songs. Doug and Donky
brought their Neil Young, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young tunes. And in no short time we were offering up
our own originals. I had plenty of songs to play, as unorthodox and unconventional as they may have been,
they were mine and mine alone. I was also proud of them. Brad was a very good songwriter and singer as well.
Donky was happy playing his Martin guitar and blowing his harp while he sang those Neil Young songs.
Doug, in my opinion was the most talented of us all. His songwriting was so impressive. His singing more
than adequate, and somewhere below adequate is around the level that I would grade myself. He, more than anyone impressed me so much.
Those early days at the Quarry were some of the finest times of my life, music wise. Fun wise and anykind of wise for
that matter. Beautiful bright sunny sunday afternoons and evenings spent consuming beer after beer and playing our hearts out.
I don't mean to imply that we were a bunch of drunks or anything like that, it's just that that's how it happened. And it was
a very beautiful and fun time.
Some memories that come to mind are: Donky dropping my guitar case and stepping on it.
Playing song after song after song and never wanting to quit. Playing till after dark and then by firelight.
Playing Dylan, U2, the Stones, Neil Young and Jackson Brown, John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen.
Pink Floyd and Tom Petty. Clapton, The Who. And so many obscure artists that it would make your head spin. When I showed up
to play, it meant I was there to play. What I might have lacked in talent I more than made up for in devotion. I guess that's
really tooting my own horn there, but I really did love to just make music. So much so that I even started writing songs
with Dougs voice in mind. I could hear a song in my head, but know that I couldn't sing it, so I would write what I
wanted to hear someone else sing. Mainly because I never felt that I could sing.
It's really hard to put the peices of this outfit back together. I never thought that one day I would be
trying to tell this as a story. I'm thinking back. Going back. The first days of us playing together had to be at the
old rock quarry. I think the first time me and Brad and Doug and Donky played together was a
sunday afternoon. The previous friday the four of us, plus Dougs wife (also Brads sister) went to Birmingham to see Eric Clapton
at the Oak Mountain Amphitheater. This also happened to be only days after the death of Stevie Ray Vaughn. If you recall
Eric and Stevie had been on stage playing together with Buddy Guy and other musicians the night that
the helicopter crashed into a mountainside during heavy fog. Needless to say, the concert was more than a little subdued.
We had fun anyway, and when I came home late that friday night, I had a call from my brother wanting
my wife and me to come stay the night. We did and of course I carried my guitar,( as I always did in those days)
and me and my brother spent some quality time on the patio playing and singing. We made the trip back home sunday morning,
and met the gang aroung 1:00 PM to play some acoustics, drink some beer, and feed our musical thirst.
For the most part at first we played in my garage. I would always sweep it out and sometimes in the hottest days of the year
wash it out with a waterhose and let it dry before the gang arrived. We started at the quarry and got ran off and moved to my
garage. Sometimes it was at the end of a cotton field under a huge
shade tree. We played at Dougs a couple of times, but I remember us playing in my garage more than anywhere.
I've been digging through alot of paperwork to find those old songs. I found the ones that I'd remembered
and several that had fallen through the cracks of my memory.
It's cool how we all had similiar influences but our songs came out so different. Brad and Doug were very good songwriters
and players. Their songs sounded like a polished muscle car barrelling down a four lane.
I think my songs sounded like a rusty Dodge Dart hiccupping down a country road.
Both vehicles got you there.It was just a matter of how you arrived.
I'm not saying my songs weren't any good, I think they were. It's just that we approached and applied ourselves differently
to the task of songwriting. I had my Dylan side, and I also had my stream of conciousness Kerouac style of writing.
I seemed to be on a different page sometimes. I don't remember Donny writing any songs. That's not to say he wasn't
bringing anything to the show. He was. His Martin guitar playing. His harmonica. His voice and a
heck of a sense of humor.
The early 1990s were the times of The Traveling Dingleberries. Named so after
the super group The Traveling Wilburys. We began by playing cover songs of Dylan, U2 and all of those mentioned above and
turned it into a kind of "What do you wanna play?, What did you write this week?" kind of thing. Early, at the quarry I can remember
tuning up and playing while the wives sat on an old couch that Michael had brought in. Playing after dark by firelight. Playing at
the end of a cotton field and grilling hotdogs. Strangers and trespassers stopping by for a listen. My father making a sunday loop through his own property.
Friendly farmers taking a shortcut through my fathers farm. Outlaw 3-wheeler and 4-wheeler guys crossing private property
to rawhide across the terraces. Some seemed happy to hear a tune in a very unlikely spot. And some seemed completely perplexed to
find anyone there at all.
Acoustic strumming soon gave way to electric guitars. I had my Strat and Tele and Brad brought a
Rickenbacker. Lucky bastard. I would one day have a Rick of own, but that's a different story. The songs remained the same, we just added some juice
to the flattops. Our playing became tighter and our songwriting broader. While we meshed well. I think it's safe to
say that Brad and Doug had a closer relationship. Brother-in-laws and they seemed to be on another level. Talented is what they were.
I never felt out of place, I just felt "out there" sometimes. We stayed together
2 and some odd years the best I can recollect. And that's going by the dates on some of the song lyrics that I've found.
We came together out of the blue, and it seems that out of the blue is where we went. For some reason it just stopped.
I heard Brad and Doug were playing with some other guys and were playing out of town and actually released a cassette. They were called The Relics.
I bought it to check them out. It was good but it wasn't the Dingleberries. I was playing with Green again and digging on my roots.
And after the Greens I played with another outfit, which was short lived and just as well.
Now there
is no Greens being played. No Traveling Dingleberries. No Relics. People have moved on with their lives. Guitars sit lonely in their stands. I lose
my "chops" if I don't play regular. And I'm trying to correct that problem. I've recently hooked up with a guy who is definetly on the
same page as me and we've played a couple of times. He's an excellent singer and I plan on having him sing some tunes of mine.
I always did want to be the Pete Townshend kind of guy who just wrote all of these marvelous tunes and bashed the guitar while
someone sang them. So maybe this venture will be an adventure like the others. As I sit here writing, holding this Corona, "that's cold against my hand",
my mind drifts back to the old and young days of the Greens. It seems to be the start and finish of all of my musical adventures. We need to
take and make the time to plow those fields again.
