I found my style of guitar playing gradually being stifled during this
period. Also, although we had continued to play a selection of original
songs, I found myself at loggerheads with some members of the band with
regards to songwriting credits with the possibility of recording on the
horizon. My contention was that whoever writes the song owns the copyright
and ultimately the performance rights benefits. The others felt it should be shared.
I countered with the fact that if the band gets a hit record with the
songs, everyone would benefit - from sales as well as live shows. My opinions did not go down well and caused some very heated debates. Still, however, we did some sessions at Tommy
Banks' Century II Studios being produced and
engineered by Les Bateman, yet another Witness Inc alumnus,
but nothing came of it.
Craig became disillusioned and was replaced by Bob
(Herb) Ego of Edmonton, another Witness Inc alumnus
as well as having been the former drummer in Painter. We
moved to Edmonton in late 1975. Craig has since played with the likes of the Downchild Blues Band and Ellen MacEllwain.
Kenny, Daryl and Ken (who was dubbed Spider
by a fan) became increasingly tight with our manager, Gary Stratychuk, and in
spring '76 he called
a meeting in which the band was given notice of it's dissolution. We finished off our run
in July at The Penn in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and bid
our adieus. This was where George met his wife-to-be, a medical student from
Saskatoon.
While in Edmonton Guy Scott
had begun mixing our sound as well as running our lights as Dave Lynes went on
to work with The Great Canadian River Race.
Guy, Spider, an old buddy of his and I shared a house with a
couple young ladies at the time, one of them being the former Katie King now known
to her viewers as Kathleen Petty, a news anchor on CBC-TV
Newsworld.
During the last couple months Gary, Kenny, Spider and Daryl set
on their path to start up a new band. Upon the demise of Witness they moved back to
Regina and set their wheels in motion. Their plan was to put a group based on dual keyboards
ala Gino Vanelli and had recruited Jim Folk
(formerly of the Regina band Eden, which had once
included Ken Sinnaeve, and later worked with the Jack
Semple Band). The drummer of choice again was Matt Frenette,
from The
Great Canadian River Race, who met up with the band for
a few rehearsals there and then returned to Edmonton without a commitment. The guys all
returned to Edmonton to wine and dine Matt. They returned from their
meeting, to the house where I still resided, feeling quite despondent at Matt's passing on the
proposal. My recollection is that over a few beers Guy Scott and I discussed their situation that evening and between us figured
that they should forget about this keyboard based concept and go for a guitar player the
obvious choice being Paul Dean who was Matt's buddy in The
GCRR and also the former guitarist with Scrubbaloe
Caine. I laid the idea on Kenny that they should go for Paul as the
guitarist and Matt would complete the package. This turned out to be the case and thus
later that year Streetheart
was born. George moved back to
Saskatoon, spent a period of time as Streetheart's road manager, and putting his
music career behind him, went back to school to acquire a degree in
accounting.
Flip Flop Fly
The
Old Gold, Regina, Saskatchewan sometime in early 1976. This section was part
of a jam on 'High Heeled Sneakers' in the middle of the song. One of the
band's busier tunes. There were lots!
Les
Bateman Spider
Bob Craig
Guy Scott
Kenny Don Hergott (one of our agents)
At Century II Studios,
Edmonton
