BRUCE HALL TELLS KIM ALEXIS HOW HE JOINED REO SPEEDWAGON

Welcome And Who Bruce Is

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Well, I'm here with Bruce Hall, and you are not only a friend, which I thank you so much for coming on, but you are best known not as Kim's friend, but as the basis for Ario Speedwagon. And what an amazing, adventurous career you've had. And we're here to pick your brain. I want to find out what makes you tech.

Illinois Roots And Beatles Spark

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

So where I don't know, where did you grow up?

SPEAKER_01 0:47

I grew up in Illinois. Oh, you did? Oh, yes, Illinois. Around Champaign, Illinois. And I spent a lot of time in a town called Philo, Illinois. That's where my grandparents lived. And my grandfather was a farmer.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

I was a big kid. And uh he noticed and put me right to work as soon as he could big enough to do anything around there. And uh spent a lot of time with grandpa on the farm until um I was about 13. Well, I saw, of course, like everybody says, but I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, and oh, it was like it changed my life. I mean, I really that's all I could think about.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Yeah. Why?

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Because it was like different. They were different. I loved music at the time. Music runs through the family. Um, my dad, well, I don't know if you can see this thing beside me behind me. That's that's a my great-grandfather made a music sheet. He used to be a music teacher, and he would drive, he would ride his horse from church to schools and things and teach music. Anyway, my dad was a saxophone player, all my brothers played music. We all play music. So my when the Beatles came around and the British invasion happened. I mean, there was we had Elvis and I listened to Elvis some and you know, all that sort of thing, but they were different for me. I they were more of my, I guess, Elvis was older. That was for the older people. This Elvis were uh the Beatles were for me. So anyway, so I started learning more about them, and

First Bands And A Sock Hop

SPEAKER_01 2:20

that's all I wanted to do. And I started practicing and playing music all the time and had bands.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

What was your what was your first uh instrument?

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Uh first instrument was uh acoustic guitar sort. That's where I started. But um in my band, it was like this story. We my first band, we had there was a guitar player, a bass player, I was a lead singer at the time, and a drummer. And the bass player was so frightened about playing live. We we played at this sock hop at school, and he turned his back to the crowd and never turned his amp on. And he did that the whole time. And we went, You're gonna have to go. You gotta go. I'm sorry, but you're gonna and how old were you? How old were you? 13, something like that.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

You're 13, playing in a band, and it was a sock hop?

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Yeah, at school, sure. After school, they'd have these things called sock hops. Okay, yeah, set up like in the auditorium or lunch room. Sometimes they put all the Indian play there, and mostly the girls would dance. The guys stand around watch, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:29

Right. So, what happened to the bass player then?

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Well, I don't well, my kid was his name, and he stayed friends, but he never played music again. But um then my mother made me my first um outfits. We went and picked up fabric at some place, and she made me some velvet blue jeans, some velvet pants, and I look pretty goofy, but what the heck.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

And um you have do you have photos of those?

SPEAKER_01 4:01

I wish. Oh of their little outfit. Well, no, maybe they're somewhere. I suppose they probably are someplace. I did have some photos though. Anyway, so that was that. And I got a Hoffner base, which I still have my Hoffner base, it's up there on the wall. And um I just kept playing. I started moving around in different bands around Champaign, Illinois.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Okay, so and so then how did you get to where you were with REO?

Gary Richrath And REO Takes Shape

SPEAKER_02 4:33

How did how did REO develop?

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Okay, I'll tell you. This is well, first it's gotta go around to Gary. Gary and I, Richrath became friends before he was even in REO Speedwagon. And I was in a band with some older guys. I was still in high school. Okay. They were in college. It was a band called Feather Train. That was the name of the band. Pretty cool name, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Gotta call it something. Anyway, so uh yeah, Gary, our guitar player at the time in Feather Train, had the his parents busted his balls and said you gotta go, you gotta make better grades in school. He was trying to get a medical degree and he was kind of not doing so good. So he had to quit. And we looked for a guitar player around town, but there wasn't anybody that was up to what we wanted. So we heard about this kid in Peoria, and his name was Gary Richrath. And we asked him if he'd come and try out, and he came and uh he got the job, and yep, he got the job anyway. So Gary and I became good pals over time, and uh, but then Ario Speedwagon was a band in the area too, in Champagne, and they were the most favorite band in town. They were this was all during the Vietnam War area, and and there was a lot of protests and this and that, and Ario was like the number one band for all that campus activities and that sort of thing. So Gary, the guitar player in Ario Speedwagon, left for some reason, I don't know why. And Gary says, I'm I'm I'm leaving Peters, I'm gonna join that band. That they didn't even know that they were gonna hire him. Yeah, he was just gonna go do it. So he joined Ario Speedwagon, and then when he was in Ario Speedwagon, from that moment on, he started becoming the guitar player and uh and uh performer he really wanted to be. He couldn't do that in my band because there was we had three lead singers for him, and uh so they took off, they started really flying, and Gary was a big reason for it. And uh he wrote started writing songs.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Oh he did, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yeah, he wrote a lot of good songs, the whole first album. Um yeah, he's he started getting real pro prolific about writing, and uh which he didn't do much before. Uh and if he did, I didn't know about it, but but anyway, he called me. I was so Ario he took off. Ario they went and they started making albums and they left Champagne, they went to California, and uh their manager at the time was Irving Azoff. Maybe you've heard of him. Irving was from Champagne. Well, he lived in Danville, but he moved to Champaign to work for a company called Blython. Anyway, he had he had Ario Speedwagon and he had Danny Fulberg, and he went. There was a big exodus from Champagne at one point in time. Gary left, or well, Ariel Speedwagon left. Uh John Barrick, our original man, then Irving Azov, and all these people that were like my friends and stuff, whoosh, they went out to the West Coast. They worked with David Geffen and all these people out there, and the Eagles, and you know, all these kinds of bands. So anyway, so one day out of the clear blue, well, it wasn't clear blue, it was colder

The One-Week Invitation To Join

SPEAKER_01 7:54

than hell. I was in I was in Charleston, Illinois, at a place called uh Ted's Warehouse, playing a gig with this band I was in, and it was I had a break, and just so happened the phone that somebody came up and said, You have a phone call, and it was Rich Rap. Gary was on the phone, and he goes, he didn't ask me if I wanted to join REO Speed Wagon. What he did is he goes, he just told me. He says, You got a week, he says, You got a plane ticket in a week. Whatever you're gonna do with your stuff, you've got to get rid of it. You're coming out here, we got two weeks of rehearsal, and then we're we're hitting the road touring. Says wow, yeah. I said, he says, yeah. I said, Yeah, I'm in, I'll just go.

SPEAKER_02 8:35

So you didn't even think about it.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

No, I didn't even think about it.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

And how old were you?

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Uh at the time I was 22, 21, 22, something like that.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

Right. But you were moving to a new state, and the only thing you knew was just your friend Gary.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Yep, that's right. Well, I knew the guys, I knew the guys in in REO because they were a local band too, and I knew Alan really well, the drummer, and Neil Dowdy, keyboard player. But I just was getting to know Kevin. I did, he was the new guy in the band at the time, Cronin. And uh he he was in once before, and then they booted him out. Depending on who you talked to about that, but he says he left, but they say kind of gave him showed him the door, and then he came back, and he uh and then they made it one album and then they called me. And I went out there and really immediately we almost went into the studio. We made a uh an album called You Can Tune the Piano, but you can't tune a fish. That was kind of a goofy title, but it was a good record. It was good.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

And you were immediately just their bass player? That's what you went in with.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Yeah, that's what they wanted me for. And sing, I could sing, they knew I could sing, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

Well, so no auditions, nothing. You just you didn't have to you didn't have to go through that.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

No, they they knew me, they knew who I was. Richrath backed me up. Uh it was easy. I mean, it was just like it was another band I fell into, you know.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

But this one kind of was a little different, kind of difficult.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Yeah, well, I I bet you had no idea that it would turn into what it turned into.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

No way, no way. We just thought we would tour ourselves silly for the rest of our lives, you know, go out and play a lot and do the best we could. We knew we were starting to write better songs, I think that was became apparent.

Label Pressure And A New Sound

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Um, and there was a point in time where the record label said, You boys are gonna have to give us a hit. Um, I don't even know if they were say threatening to let us go off the label. That was Epic Records at the time, but um we started trying to not become commercial, but to make songs a little tighter, a little bit more radio friendly, I think you'd say it. And a lot of people bust our chops for that, but but we had to kind of do that in order to survive at the time. And but you know, we got good at it. We got it good, we could write some good songs.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

So, what came out of that? What kind of songs once you had to tighten it up?

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Well, um, it was Kevin mostly. Kevin, he's a he's a syrupy kind of balladier kind of guy. He came up with he came up with this song, keep on loving you. When he first brought it to rehearsal, though, he was banging with and Rich Rath hated it. And he had his Rest Paul on, really, he goes, and and Cronin goes, That sounds great. And then Richreth goes, What do you? Yeah, but we started doing this thing. They called it, I think we kind of invented the power ballot, where you know it's like sweet, do bum bah these great big accents.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Oh, right, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

So that became our first number one. That was on the high infidelity album, which turned out to be a whole pretty damn good record, right?

unknown 12:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

So then you're touring right away. So take me through your 20s, where you were living in LA.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

Do you remember your 20s?

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Kinda. Hell yeah. There's a part of the 80s though, they're a little uh iffy.

SPEAKER_02 12:18

Um little blurry. I agree.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Yeah, I know, honey. Do you remember the 80s? What the hell? Anyway, so yeah, I moved to California, bought a car, used car from Alan, Gratcher. I moved in with him for a little while and bought a used car that he had. Um found myself, I moved into a house with Neil Dowdy. And we just rehearsed when we weren't on the road, we rehearsed and went everywhere. We weren't even, we weren't really an open uh a headliner yet. We were an opening act pretty much. We were we were starting to do some headlining, but mostly it was opening for other bands.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

And and that was fine, right? No, like no, so you wanted to be the headliner.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Yes, we wanted to be the headliners, and and we were not gonna stop until we got there.

SPEAKER_02 13:07

And uh, your mindset, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Yeah, climbing that climbing the mountain. So we did we toured ourselves silly with you can tune the piano, which you can't do with this. We always had a really good following in the Midwest, and there was a radio station down in St. Louis, Missouri called Keishi, and they were like the first radio station that really started playing a songs. Uh back they did they played Ride and Storm Out, um, and uh some of ours, the first songs that we started throwing at radio, they started playing those first. So yeah, we we toured and toured and toured, and we wrote a lot of that. We were young too. You know, we could abuse ourselves pretty badly and not, you know, you feel bad, kind of, but boom, it'd go kind of go away pretty fast. So, you know, anyway, I wouldn't do it now, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Yeah, well, we're older and wiser now, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

So, what was it like when you finally first heard your first song on the radio?

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Oh, that was uh well, we were all in Chicago. Uh the band was playing, we were starting to get big, and we knew uh People in Love and You was becoming really popular on the radios across the country, and we were in Chicago and it's January, and we were playing Four Nights at this place. It was kind of uh not a giant place, but it was kind of a famous kind of like theater kind of place, if like I can remember what that. Anyways, we the album, the single went number one, and the album went number one, and so our manager called us in his room and told us the news, and we were jumping all over the desk and having a big old party, and then we still had to go play gig that night. But uh, yeah, that was pretty that was the first time that had ever happened. We weren't sure if that would ever happen for us because we really weren't we were known mostly as a rock, you know, fast rock and roll, speed wagon thing, and then but we now we're starting to get known for ballads. That's people in love news. Uh people use that song in their weddings and stuff, but I wonder if they've really listened to the lyrics. I mean, the first line of the first verse of that album that song is not very romantic. What is the first verse? You should have seen by the look in my eye. Oh there was something listening, should have known by the tone of my voice, but you really didn't listen. You played games, but you never bled. Instead of something like a snake in the grass all coiled up and hissing. Oh, it's and I wasn't know all about those men. Still, I don't remember. It's like she's got more than another boyfriend or something.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

Right.

unknown 15:54

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_02 15:55

So, okay, so now you're starting to be successful. Now you're headlining, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Oh, yeah, we're headlining, and we're really moving now. We're headlining all over the place and doing great. I mean, we are having a ball, but and we're going to different countries, and that was fun.

Burnout And High Infidelity Secrets

SPEAKER_01 16:14

It was really fun. But at the same time, uh sleeping becomes a problem because you're just traveling a lot, you're doing things you probably shouldn't be doing. A lot of that. And we're doing all that stuff, and I think we got tired. We did, we definitely got tired. There was a time we looked at the manager and we're just kind of going, we have been everywhere, we've we'd need to go home. We gotta stop for a while, right? Because, you know, just burnt. And so we went home and we took some time off, pretty good chunk of time, and then we started rehearsing for the next follow-up album to High Infidelity was a hard one to make because it had become so successful. I mean, we sold over 10 million of those albums, so that was a lot.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

So you felt the pressure like to keep bringing new songs, and right, there's a certain pressure, and does that help your creativity any?

SPEAKER_01 17:12

No, it scares the hell out of you. You don't you don't know what you're gonna do. You I mean, you try really hard to to because honestly, the this is the thing about Hind Fidelity. That album was that we we would rehearse, we rehearsed that had a batch of songs. We went into this little studio called Crystal Studios in Los Angeles. It wasn't far from Sunset Strip, where we were rehearsing at SIR. And um we just were gonna make demos for ourselves. So we were gonna play the songs at a studio and take these demos home and listen to them. And we got in there and we did them, and they sounded pretty darn good, sound really good, in fact. So we took them home and said, okay, we got a batch of songs that we think they're gonna work. So we went into like this proper recording studio, this big one, um, Sound City, I think it was. And we tried to do better than the demo, we couldn't beat the demos. The demos had something, something about them that was better than what we could do again. And we're going, what in the hell? Let's let's just let's mix these and add some background vocals and some parts, you know. And if it all turns out, it'll it'll sound you know good, sound great. So that's what we did. High Fidel used a bunch of demo tapes that we fixed up. Wow, yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

And that that turned into an album, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:37

Turned it into our biggest album ever, yeah. Through the roof, it went crazy. People went nuts over that record. It had Can't F uh Keep on Loving You, it had Take It On the Run, uh what else was on there? There was a lot of songs on there.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Yeah. Anyway, so so we're trying to follow that album up. And we're going. So we we were writing songs and it was it wasn't like pulling teeth, but it wasn't, it was it wasn't uh what do you say? The enthusiasm of the joy of creating was more like there was a tension to it. Right, because the pressure, right? Yeah, the pressure of it, right? That's exactly right. And so we bang away and everybody came up with some tunes and we we knocked them out. We I mean, I think it's a good album, it's not a bad record. I I just think that we could have done better, a little bit better. I wrote a great song for it.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Which one did you write?

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Girl of the Heart of Gold.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

So then what? So now you've got fame and you've got performance, and then we got the houses, we got the cars, we got all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Right. Yeah. I I I had a uh I have two daughters that were born in the 80s. Well, Lindsay was born in 77 and uh Sarah was born in '82.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

So that did you take them on the road with you, your children?

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Lindsay was born in 79, sorry, 79 and 82. Yeah, sure, of course. I'll take them on the road. Yeah, most people can't take it. I mean, they lasted a couple of days, and that's it. That's all they can do. And that's that, you know, their mother grab them and go, we're going home. There they go. But we need to keep going. So yeah, the touring touring is one thing that is kind of either you have to be a little bit mental or you have to be ready to just you have to be some kind of road dog, you know. You just have to be able to take it. You you rather sleep on a bus, you know. We have bonks, you know, it's not like we're sitting up, but they're long trips. Some of them are long trips, you know, it's constantly

Family Life And Staying Grounded

SPEAKER_01 20:57

but you get used to that, you do that a lot, and then you get to a hotel and you try and sleep. I don't know. You try to keep regular hours somehow, but it's not it's not normal. It's not more it burns most folks out.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

Right. Right. And but you've done this for years, probably longer than most human beings ever.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

How?

SPEAKER_01 21:19

I just something about it. I I think I was born to do this kind of thing. I like I said before, it's part if you're gonna be a musician and you're gonna be in a band and you're gonna be successful, you have to play. You have to play for an audience, you gotta play for people. So you gotta go where they're at. So you gotta travel.

SPEAKER_02 21:37

Did did you get to interact with a lot of people, or were you guys just all in your little group and you traveled together, and or were you out schmoozing with your fans or well, sure.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

I mean, I love the fans personally, myself. I never tell them, I've never treated them like badly. I've always, if they want me to sign something, I'll do that. I'll talk. To the kids, I'll do whatever they want. Usually up to a point, you know, I'm not gonna go over to their house and have dinner, but right, but yeah, but during the day, I'm I like to fish, so I I have a bike that I keep on the back of the bus, and we get into town a lot of times, and I figure out a place to go by looking at maps, and I jump on my bike and I take my fishing pole and I take off for the nearest place. But that's just me. I was the only one who did that. The rest of the guys that sleep or mosey about town or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

But so was fishing like a grounding for you, like where you could like think and create your next song or yeah, it was my way of getting away from it all.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

And it got some exercise in it too. Um, which you know, you wanted to keep your you gotta keep your endurance up when you're on the road. If you don't, that's what gets you. Yeah. So yeah, run my bike around, uh go down and find places, but it's it's it's a challenge being uh being in a band traveling all the time. I mean, when you get to a certain age or a certain place in your career, you don't have to tour as much. Um, and I think that's well, I I think older folks don't handle it as well as younger folks. You know.

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SPEAKER_02 23:19

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Fans, Loss, And Getting Healthy

SPEAKER_02 23:48

And did did you find like your fans grew with you, right? So you might have been the fans in their 20s, but you guys evolved. I mean, your music evolved and it could stay the same some of it, but some of it evolved, right? So you were good at reading the times, or you you almost like defined the times, your music.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Well, I think we got good, yes, we we were around for a long time. Um, and through that, and you're right, we got to know our fans. And we saw our fans have their families, their kids, and grow up, and then we see the kids uh singing along with the and then we I've even seen the kids' kids growing up and singing along with the with the stuff. But yeah, we we tried always to to really not just fall back and get lazy. Um that was one thing.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

You know, we tried to always get the best we got every time. So that was one of the things. There was a time when uh there were some changes in the band over time. Gary left, he left the band. Um those darn 80s, they they some of the some of the things that were happening in the 80s kind of got a hold of some of us, uh Gary especially, and uh kind of drug him down.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

Yeah. And you I'm sure you lost some people, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Yeah, you betcha. Yeah, I did. I mean, how about you? Did you know any friends or anybody that didn't make it through?

SPEAKER_02 25:24

Well, it was in my business, uh, there was hair and makeup, and a lot of them were gay, and this was the end of the 70s, beginning of the 80s. So for me, it was the AIDS that got them.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:37

It wasn't necessarily the drug lifestyle, but it was more, you know, good friends you were working with, and they didn't even know what the sickness was, but they would die.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

Trying to figure that out, and just that whole it was a scary time.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Yeah, I remember that beginning. I remember uh when uh who was it? Magic Johnson came out with it. He was like the first celebrity we ever heard of, Rock Hudson.

SPEAKER_02 26:01

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

He didn't know what it was.

SPEAKER_02 26:04

Yeah, so that's hard. So, but obviously, you guys learn to transition and um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

That's one thing you have to do. It the body is really a temple in a way. You have to, it's yours. You have, you know, if you wanna if you wanna treat it like it's a a gunny sack, sure. That's not gonna be really good. You know, you gotta kinda eat kind of healthy and and get your exercise, no matter what. So um that's kind of we kind of went that direction. We had a guy, what was his name? Robert Haas. This he was a trainer for uh Martina Navchalova at one time.

SPEAKER_02 26:43

So did he drink, did he travel with you guys?

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Well, no, but he we he came he he we would meet with him, uh, and he would he eat for eat to win was it he had a book out, eat to win. And uh it was basically it was saying no sugars and this and that, a lot of protein, same thing, you know, all that.

SPEAKER_02 27:04

Did you have your own chefs? Let's say you're in the middle of Iowa or something, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:09

No, we didn't have that.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

You didn't bring your own chefs and your own trainers with you?

SPEAKER_01 27:13

No, didn't have that. You just try to order room service without, you know, as clean as possible. And uh and you weren't supposed to be a boozer and you weren't supposed to be drinking too much or drinking at all. Um yeah, right. Yeah, I gave that up a while back too. Okay, but I had to give up. I gave it all up. I had to. It was getting to me, you ever I it was that life. There was, you know, when you get really busy and you're like famous, and you know, and you're running around acting like an idiot. Well, you know, you people they're clapping for you every night and you're getting all this adulation, and next thing you know, you're partying, and every night you're partying. It's like and and you just gotta go, whoa, I'm forgetting. I I'm gonna forget who I am. I'm gonna for I'm gonna lose all, I'm gonna lose my life if I keep this up. And uh so I did I that came to me that that little second face. Yeah, said wake up.

SPEAKER_02 28:14

That's good, right? That was life saving.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Oh, you bet, sure. Yeah, it was. I know it hit it happens to a lot of guys, and uh some listen and some don't. Right. It's your body talking to you, you know. It's kind of saying, This is not gonna, this is going downhill fast.

SPEAKER_02 28:32

Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

Straighten up, boy.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

Yeah, right.

A Cancer Scare Hits Home

SPEAKER_02 28:36

So um at some at some point, you had a son who had an illness. Can you talk about that?

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Sure, yeah. Well, I'm I'm I live in Florida now. I'm remarried with my sweet baby Kimmy, my little sweetie. And uh she uh has a son. I'm her I'm Tommy's stepdad. And uh and he one day came to us and said, Well, what's nice is that we always had a kid, we like our kids to be able to communicate with us no matter what. We we you know bring us anything you got. I mean, that's why we're here.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

So they he said, I have uh a lump on my testicle. And he he drops his pants and shows, we go, I go, Tom, this isn't good. And Kimmy goes, Oh no. So we go get him checked, and sure enough, he had testicular cancer. And uh and it was regressive, it was moving pretty darn quick too. And so he went in, we saw him on, they saw him on uh I think it was a Thursday, and by the next next week they removed one of his testicles. Anyway, we took him after that to he had to go to Moffat Cancer Center, which is in Tampa. And um we met a surgeon by the name of Dr. Speace. Amazing man, amazing guy. He was gonna go to Chicago and give a lecture on a Friday, and he just met him on was it Wednesday or Thursday, and he canceled everything and just stayed to do an operation on Tom. And he got it, he got all of it. He got uh it was in his lymph nodes and it was in his kidney. Um it was bad. And poor Kimmy, she was and I felt, I mean, I was it hurt me too, but it was it really got her, and but you know, he made it through. And uh we we love those people over at the Moffat Cancer Center, they're really good folks. Anyway, so so yeah, that's what happened to Tom Tom. He's but he's healthy now, healthy as a horse. He's got a little girl. They told him he wasn't gonna be able to have kids, you know. We banked his sperm and all this. He's got he's got one nut, and he and he and his wife had a baby, little our little penny. Oh she's a sweetie.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

So, how old was Tommy when he had the the cancer?

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Um, 17.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

Wow, yeah, that's that's hard for someone that age, I assume.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

It's common. I mean, it's more common than you think, just technical cancer. Yeah, they get on it. If they get it quick enough, you know, they can get it.

SPEAKER_02 31:20

They can, but it's yeah, it's aggressive, so yeah, it's and it's spread on him, so that makes it harder.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

Yeah, it gets into the lymph nodes, and that's when it's bad. Work.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

Yeah.

Back Injury, Surgery, And Band Fallout

SPEAKER_02 31:33

So what are you doing now? So what's it the uh last time I saw you, the band was kind of right trying to figure things out. So what happened and what are you doing now?

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Oh boy, yeah. Well, the band is in a state of well, it's hard to say. It's not limbo exactly. A lot of things have happened. Yeah. Um I had to go in for back surgery. Uh my back was totally back when I was about 17, 18, I was in Winnebago. Uh with one night, one guy asked to drive us to. We were playing at some show in Danville, Illinois. His name was Broderick. He Winnebago. So we're driving back, everybody's standing up drinking beer. He's moving down the it's foggy night. He comes up on another car really fast and slams on the brakes. My feet leave the ground, the and I ran into something in the front, and it hurt like hell. I hit that thing that encloses the motor or whatever up there. Oh anyway, so you know, I wake up in the morning, I can barely move. And but I had to keep going because I had another show the next time. I just, you know, and I didn't have enough money for doctors. I was a poor starving musician at the time, and so I just kept going. And eventually it heals itself. I find out that I had broken my back. Um, yeah, as I got older, in my well, what was I 69, 68, something like that? Arthritis, a new, a new life partner shows up. This freaking arthritis stuff.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

Life partner? You don't want this life partner.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

I do not. I hate him. He moves in and starts finding all these things that were broken before and just starts chewing on them. And one of them was my back, and it was a mess. And uh I I went as long as I could on the road, but then I just had to go get it fixed. It was yeah, I could barely hold my base. So I left for a while and things changed. Let's put it that way. They got a substitute guy in there, and how do I put this? Someone took your place. Kinda, yeah. And and it became a problem. And uh so, but I I can't really talk about it too much because there's lawyers and stuff involved. But anyway, yeah, the band kind of blew up. Um there's details I can't tell you. I got yeah, but anyway, things went down and but then I think what's happening is there's been some new reconsiderations happening.

Charity Shows And A Final Thank You

SPEAKER_01 34:22

Well, for one, my my thing was always I I had there were some friends back in Champaign, Illinois. We did a thing called the A Tribute to the Legacy of Ros B wagon. Me and Neil Dowdy and Alan Gratzer and Terry Lutrell, the original lead singer, and Mike Murphy, one of the lead singers. We and with the help of the guys who of the entire uh community, the situation of Champagne and the radio stations, and they it was this giant show we put on and in the assembly hall there, State Farm Center. Right. Yeah, and it was a big success. We we raised a bunch of money for Moffat Cancer Center, like 50 grand for them too. It was a charity thing. But it was to basically say, I wanted to tell the fans and the people back home, thank you so much for letting me have this wonderful life. You know, if it hadn't been for them, I couldn't have done this by myself. I mean, I can play guitar all I want in a room, in a house, but I gotta have I gotta have the audience in order. That's who makes you. So, anyway, that was for me, that was what I thought was gonna be the very last show that we were gonna play together. And Kevin wasn't a part of that, and he was out on the road doing something else. So um recently we we got some things, they just had a thing in Peoria, Illinois for Gary. It was a tribute to him in a mut at the Riverside Museum. There's a museum, they put an exhibit in there uh with some of his guitars and pictures of him. Really nice, it turned out great. And they wanted to have a nice opening send-off tribute and asked if we would if I would come. And I said, sure. So Alan and Neo came, and this time Kevin came too, and we played a couple songs uh for these folks that were there, and it seems to me like at least we're starting to act like well the thing is if we could get the the four of us together, there's that's how Gary's gone, of course, but but Neil and Alan and myself and Kevin and that's the band that made all the records, right? So I mean I love David and Brian. They were the ones who Dave took over Gary's parts. He she joined the band, he was in the band 36 years, something like that, and and Brian too, but but I think the people I want to go. My biggest thing is I'd like to go out and tell the crowd thank you. That's what I want to do for the fans. I want to say thank you so much. This has been a great life. This is all I could have ever wanted, and it's all because of you, and that's that's why I would like to do it.

SPEAKER_02 37:07

But well, that's a wonderful way to live life too, to be grateful.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

Yeah, and I think that shows up in your work and in the songs and uh the the performance that you guys did is that you did love your fans and you did it for them. And yeah, yeah, so that heart shows up in life, you know, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:28

When you're I'm thankful for you, Kim. This has been fun.

SPEAKER_02 37:34

Yeah, well, yeah, and this is all new for me. I mean, uh it's celebrating how people can change and move and evolve and turn into something else or just expand on something. And you're you may have had the same career of singing and and playing your bass, but in ways you definitely had to change and you had to position yourself and you had to move with the times. And some of us do that by changing careers or locations, and others of us have to do it by what you did. So um I'm fascinated with how people can continue to be relevant and contribute and be in a way useful to others. I mean, we're here to help and serve other people. So I really appreciate your heart and that you were so grateful and that you understand the importance of the life you had. You know, the same with me. I had such a great life and I had such great opportunities. And when we have that, we have to give back to others, right? So now that's how you and I met doing charity events, and we were at Larry the Cable Guys and sitting down smoking a cigar.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

Yeah, greatest. Smoking the pussy.

SPEAKER_02 38:54

So yeah, it's a so yeah, so thank you so much and continued success. And I hope I see you now that you're back, you've had a surgery, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:07

Yeah, that's great.

SPEAKER_02 39:08

Hopefully you're hitting the ball straight and we'll go out and see each other somewhere on the golf course.

SPEAKER_01 39:14

You betcha, honey. You bet. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 39:16

Yeah, so thank you for being

Closing And How To Connect

SPEAKER_02 39:18

on Unexpired.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

Sure. Thanks. I love you, Bruce. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

Okay. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Yeah, bye.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

Thanks for watching the show. If you have any questions for me or you want any more information, go to Kim Alexis.com.