Kopperfield | Interview | “A thousand warriors on velvet horses moving through the underground”

Kopperfield was a fantastic early 70s progressive hard rock band from Edwardsburg, Michigan. The band self-released ‘Tales Untold’ in 1974.

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Kopperfield started working on their second album and at the same time signed with a booking agency out of Chicago, allowing them to open for groups and artists like Foghat, Country Joe McDonald, Kansas, the James Gang, and H.P. Lovecraft. By 1975, however, Kopperfield decided to disband.

Kopperfield was Jimmy Robinson (lead vocals), Keith Robinson (keyboards, vocals), Chuck Eagan (guitar, vocals), Paul Decker (vocals, keyboards, percussion), Jerry Opdycke (bass, vocals), Tom Curtis (drums, percussion), Bill Wallace (guitar & percussion) (mostly appears on bonus recordings).

“A thousand warriors on velvet horses moving through the underground”

Would you like to talk a bit about your background? Where and when did you grow up? Was music a big part of your family life?

Jerry Opdycke: My background is fairly simplistic. I grew up in Sturgis, Michigan. Right here in the Midwest, the heart of rock and roll. Sturgis is conveniently located between Detroit and Chicago roughly ninety miles or so in either direction. So I had a pretty fantastic music scene to choose from even at a fairly young age. There were many great bands to see and even be part of. I saw hundreds of top named bands over my early years, and many bands before they were even famous. Michigan bands like Alice Cooper, The Frost, Ted Nugent and The Amboy Dukes, Grand Funk Railroad, MC 5 and many many others. I even played softball with a few members of the Bob Seger band back in the day in Kalamazoo, MI.

My grandmother played acoustic guitar and my father played pedal steel guitar. So there is some music history in my family as well. My mother also played a little acoustic guitar in her younger years and one of my aunts was a very accomplished pianist.

When did you begin playing music?

I began my musical adventure in 5th grade playing the trumpet in the early 60s and I picked up acoustic guitar in 6th grade for a few months but quickly grew bored with it. I started playing bass in 7th grade around 1964-65. I was actually a true bassist. Meaning that I never really played much guitar before bass. A lot of my bass player friends are actually guitarists that were often in bands with three or even four guitar players and naturally had no bass players at all. So eventually one of the guitarists had to switch over to bass playing duties. Seems that being a bass player is somewhat of an acquired taste. But to me it’s all about that bass.

Like most young boys in the 60s, I loved rock in my early years and it still remains as my core music direction. Which is no surprise here that I actually started my music career with a typical power rock trio, guitar, drums and bass.

Of course overtime I was greatly influenced by the Motown sound coming out of Detroit which would eventually add playing funk music to my gigs.

Of course most everyone back in the mid 60s was heavily influenced by bands like the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, even The Beach Boys. The blues was also really big in the music scene back then. I have been lucky and developed a very diverse style of playing over the years including a more healthy diet of modern alternative music these days. As a session bassist in today’s music environment, one has to be relatively well versed in several music styles. Rock of course, definitely funk, a touch of fusion jazz, even pop if that word has any true musical meaning at all. And dare I say it? Yes, even a little bit of contemporary country as well. But sorry folks, no polka music here. That’s where I draw a line. No hard feelings though.

When did you decide that you wanted to start writing and performing your own music? What brought that about for you?

It just seemed like a natural transition for me. I had only been playing bass for about six months and was trying to understand the fundamentals of the instrument as I had not taken lessons for bass at all. So it was still pretty new as well as a fascinating time for me. Finally, not knowing any other bass players in the area, as bass players were rather rare on planet earth. So I had to ask a couple older guitar friends to show me some scales and cool rock lines. So that helped. But the real fun began after I played only one gig at the end of 7th grade, a show with my first power trio. From that single show I was suddenly introduced to a whole new five piece band and I decided to join them. It was indeed a strange transition going from a three piece power rock trio to a more diverse five pc pop-rock oriented band that had keyboards. Of course this new band was doing a lot of different styles of music than my little power trio was. So I jammed with the new band once to make sure it was a good move for me. I did one official rehearsal learning about twelve or so songs out of the roughly thirty some songs they had accumulated as a set list. On the very second rehearsal I was actually playing at a junior high school gig and pretty much jamming on over half their material. It was quite the experience for sure being in only 8th grade at the time, plus being on a really big stage with dozens of colored stage lights in your face and playing songs I didn’t actually know yet. Me and The Cavaliers band, with my new cherry finished Gibson EB series bass and playing through a Fender Bassman combo amp. Plus there were about hundred and fifty screaming junior high kids to boot. It was actually my very first professional paid gig. I made a whopping $25.

I think I may have written three or four new bass songs trying to keep up with the thirty some songs I barely even knew that night. But one can learn a lot when it comes to being totally forced to play a real live gig rather than just doing a laidback rehearsal. Fun and stressful at the same time. But one cool thing, playing that gig that soon, on a big professional stage and not knowing all the tunes kept me so busy, I never had time to worry about stage fright. Interesting fact.

“The original Kopperfield project was created somewhere between late 1969 and early 1970”

Were you part of any other bands before forming Kopperfield? Any recordings or releases by them?

Very interesting question. So yes, my first power trio of course, called The Chargers in 7th grade 1965, we actually made one live recording. It was rough but still fun as well as enlightening as to what needed to be changed musically.

I moved to the band, The Cavaliers in 1966 but never recorded with them.

Later, around 1967-68, I was in The McDoogle Sprocket Co. that was with an actual booking agency. That band did some really cool gigs such as opening for The Cryin’ Shames at the Shadowland Club in St Joe, Benton Harbor MI. And we did openings for The Grassroots and a couple other well named bands. We did a single recorded song, plus a couple live show recordings as well.

Later on in 1969, my junior year of high school, I did my first real jazz LP recording with a local jazz group called The James Blanchard Trio, consisting of piano, drums and bass. That was my first major experience in a real professional recording studio in Ft Wayne IN.

Then I did a blues 45 single with a band I started, called Touch Of Blue. That 45 record was done at Chess Records in Chicago just a few years before they closed down. Another real eye opening experience.

The blues/funk band Touch of Blue also opened for some cool headliner acts such as Joe Walsh and the James Gang.

The original Kopperfield project was created somewhere between late 1969 and early 1970. It was an earlier four piece version of the band with guitar, bass, drums, and a vocalist who also played flute. It was my first attempt at mostly all original music. It was a very short lived project of less than a year as there were not a lot of places available to play original music in the area. That band also had a few rough recorded tracks done but no official releases.

The final five piece Kopperfield version came into being in roughly 1971. Of course we recorded in 1972 in Chicago (our basement tapes project) and then in 1973-74 in Ann Arbor, MI and Kalamazoo, MI for the ‘Tales Untold’ LP record.

I have of course done majors recordings after my years with Kopperfield. Including the LP record with Alter Ego in 1984, a fun pop-rock band.

I did another 45 singles of contemporary country in Chillicothe, Ohio and Nashville, Tennessee with the Neil Unger band in 1979. And in 1991 I recorded with a band called The Edge. I also recorded several songs with The (FBI) Funky Blues Institute Band in 1998 but never released anything as the group broke up within a couple years. My last recording project was 2003 with The Reality Falls Band. A CD titled ‘Strange Things Can Happen,’ a rock/old school funk and fusion jazz project and is still available to this day. That CD was done with Kopperfield band mate Keith Robinson on keyboards. I did the bass of course.

Can you elaborate on the formation of Kopperfield?

The very first short term Kopperfield version was originally formed by Bill Wallace, a guitarist, and myself on bass as an experimental all original band in early months of 1970 after both Bill and I left the blues/funk band Touch of Blue. The first Kopperfield project was not overly successful so it slowly dissolved. Later, Bill and I reformed the project for the real and final version of Kopperfield in 1971 by adding another local rock guitar player Chuck Eagan to the mix.

I then gave a call to my high school pal, Keith Robinson, keyboardist on Hammond organ. At the time Keith was in a band with a three piece horn section that was in the process of disbanding. So I asked him to join up with me in my new project. He did and brought in his younger brother, Jimmy Robinson on vocals and a good friend, Tom Curtis to be our drummer. I think we may have jammed twice and knew right away we had a rather cool sound. Everyone liked the name we had, Kopperfield, so we just kept it and the rest, as they say, is history. We had a good five year run of it, traveling all over the US doing a mix of our original material, and a few cool cover arrangements.

The album ‘Tales Untold’ was released in 1974 and we even started a second LP in late 1975 that came close but sadly never got released with the exception of two songs recorded in 1975.

That follow-up second LP recording was titled, ‘Back To Bitchin’. Sadly of course, it was never released.

How did you decide to use the name ‘Kopperfield’?

Well, as mentioned before, it was a name we had used earlier on and just decided to keep it. Putting a band together can be major fun but it also has its troublesome moments, like trying to find a damn band name that everyone likes and is not already being used by a couple dozen other bands somewhere in the states. Believe me, finding a band name is one tough project. Luckily we struck gold, in our opinion, with the name Kopperfield, spelled with a K. No other band at that time was called Kopperfield with the possible exception of a single individual, the magician, David Copperfield. But that was magic not music. So that became our name. And we were proud of it, even to this very day.

When and where did you play their first gig? What sort of venues did Kopperfield play early on?

Well, in the early days with one of the band members still in high school, we stayed pretty close to our home area. Doing summer festivals and high schools and college gigs was our main source for playing. We were actually lucky and had a few small local clubs and youth centers to work with. And we did finally manage to make our way into the Electric Circuit, a full blown rock concert hall in Elkhart IN which we played a lot. We also did Holiday Inns and such and managed to play and pack the Mad House, a club we started playing at on a regular basis in Bronson, MI. It was actually called the Madison House but everyone called it the Mad House as it was one of the first real full time rock clubs in the area along with a place called the Nest and the White House in Niles, MI, all really fine rock clubs that we work at often.

We also did opening acts for bigger bands at auditoriums and armories that music promoters could rent out for big ticket concert events. Eventually we hit the road and began our traveling days working through a variety of booking agencies out of Ohio, New York, Ann Arbor, MI and Chicago.

How was the band accepted by the audience?

We were really lucky here, as well as, most of us came from other bands and had already played out a fair amount. We all had friends that followed the other bands around that some of us were in. Plus the fact that Kopperfield was a very progressive rock band for the time and a lot of younger people just seemed to gravitate to that kind of music. Our crowds kept getting bigger and bigger as our name traveled word of mouth and it spread fast gaining a lot of followers. And we were of course doing a lot of original material that no one had ever heard before.

It wasn’t long and we started packing every club we played. Back in the day when we would play a local area club, the normal $2 cover charge would jump to a $5 cover charge for our shows and if you didn’t make it to the club before 10:00, the place was so packed you simply couldn’t get in. Believe me we had a lot of friends get upset when they would travel over two hours to a venue we played at and they couldn’t even get in the front door because it was just too packed. So a few clubs then started the whole reservations thing for bands like us, often selling out a good week before our show. Again a little problematic on the more local scene but not a big issue on the road.

What influenced the band’s sound?

Well for one thing we all were listening to progressive bands like Kansas and Yes, Genesis, the Jeff Beck Group, even straight ahead rockers like Bloodrock, Deep Purple and of course funk music was starting up, and we listened and even played a fair amount of tunes in the rock-jazz world such as tunes by Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express band. Our own music had a lot of drive and a harder edge to it than most local bands. Plus we kind of knew everyone as it was a small circuit at first. We had a massive amount of musical friends. The 70s were just really great music years. Even back then, I saw bands like the early The Yardbirds, where they had Jeff Beck on guitar and Jimmy Page was playing bass in the same band at the time. Just a lot of really cool concerts and great bands, nationally as well as locally. 

What was the local scene? Any other bands worth mentioning?

That is a forever list as it was the 70s in the Detroit area, the heart of rock & roll. There were bands like The SRC (short for the Scot Richard Case) out of Detroit, The Sunday Funnies out of Ann Arbor, The Frost, MC 5, Crazy World of Arthur Brown touring US, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Grand Funk Railroad, Amboy Dukes, Tommy James and the Shondells, The Cryin’ Shames, The Flock, Styx, Alice Cooper, Bob Seger. The list never ends.

There were plenty of bands from our Detroit and Ann Arbor area and even from the Niles and East Chicago area and all points in between. It was the very best of musical times that sadly many people of today will never get to experience.

“We answered to no one with our musical freedom”

What’s the story behind your 1974 album, ‘Tales Untold’? Who was the producer? Where did you record it?

As a band, we all loved fantasy and even sci-fi back then. Our material was a little on the unusual side. Even song titles that never made that second LP record had titles like ‘Distant Stars and Seas,’ ‘Kingdom of The Blind,’ ‘Variations In A Snow Storm,’ ‘Paper Dragon’. So our LP was all about the musical/magical ‘Tales Untold’. Songs about strange things you may never have heard of with lyrics like, “A thousand warriors on velvet horses moving through the underground.” That was what our lead singer Jimmy was all about. Some songs were about unknown places, some songs about impossible places, other songs about unreachable places and a few songs about places of hard reality. With Jimmy, one never knew just what place of adventure he might take you to. Some lyrics were often cold and hard and all too real, others lyrics were fabulously delicious going just beyond the edge of our own reality.

We could also do whatever we wish musically rather good, bad or indifferent. Because we answered to no one with our musical freedom. We were self produced and sadly slightly inexperienced in the recording world and perhaps we did rely on a few individuals here and there that perhaps we shouldn’t have. But life, if anything, is a learning experience. We had a band that played what it truly wished to play, wrote songs that we wanted to write. We took that band and those songs on the road. We put our mark in the music history books with the Kopperfield ‘Tales Untold’ LP record. And we lived that dream. A dream that very few people ever get to experience.

We were young too back then, just out of high school when the Kopperfield band started writing material for the LP ‘Tales Untold’. But a funny thing happened along the way to the recording studio. We, as a band, suddenly became rather popular on the road. We started traveling all over the country, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Alabama, New York, Iowa, South Carolina, Illinois, Ohio, West Virginia, Michigan, Tennessee,Wisconsin Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky and other states.

We just started playing our material so much that the songs began to evolve into different arrangements. The songs became much better over time as we became a much better band. Playing six nights a week for several years will often do that. But because we were traveling so much it was next to impossible to get in the studio to work on the material.

Once the recording was finally finished and we released the LP in 1974, things really took off. Better clubs, better pay, doing more shows with bands like Foghat at places like Morris Civic Auditorium, big city cars shows in Detroit, outdoor concerts for 10,000 people at places like the Ann Arbor’s Blues Festival. The Corel Cables nightclub chain was a big thing we did, we played the Alibi East and the Alibi West, big college clubs like Maxwells in Iowa City, the heavy clubs like the Stone Pony in Detroit and picking up a booking agency out of Chicago.

Things just got real crazy real fast, fun but a lot of work with all the traveling. That’s why we were never able to complete our second LP record, although we had probably eight or nine tunes completely written, but we only ever got two of them recorded.

The cover artwork gives a conceptual vibe to it.

Yeah, it was a time of fantasy artwork on a lot of LP covers. We did everything ourselves, basically being self-produced and all. So we decided to have one of our local artist friends do the cover just for fun. Of course the title is related to songs of adventures and stories untold. So Jimmy Robinson, who wrote ninety percent of the lyrics, gave us the title of ‘Tales Untold’. And that became our LP record for 1974.

What kind of gear did you have in the band?

We had a lot of expensive gear for the times. Les Paul guitars, Rickenbacker basses, Crown PA power amps, dual keyboard players, one on Hammond Organ, the other on tunable electric piano, we used Ampeg amps, massive Gollehon PA speakers, Ludwig drums, a Giant Gong, twin Leslie’s keyboard speakers cabinets for the Hammond, even had a Bach trumpet. We had six large Electro-voice double speaker cabinets for the instruments on stage, three on each side of the drum kit. All the big speaker cabinets on stage were painted pearl white with black and silver sparkle grill cloths. Plus we owned a big 24 foot box truck with a lift gate for moving the bigger heavy equipment and one car pulling a large trailer for our instruments and stage clothes in it.

What was the weirdest gig Kopperfield ever played?

In our early days we once again got very popular very fast in the local area. We were getting all kinds of gig offers from the big car shows to big ticket New Year gigs. Occasionally we would get some big offers falling on the same date that we had already booked. So we would have to decide which gig to say yes to and which gig we would have to turn down or in a few very rare cases actually cancel out of or swap dates if possible. Sometimes someone bidding on a Kopperfield gig got rather heated. An organization would even offer us double the pay that we were already getting from another booking if we would just cancel it out and do their show instead.

Luckily there were times we were able to swap out gigs for the much better pay but always being very careful not to upset a client and certainly not to burn any bridges. During one such bid we got an offer from the Midas Muffler Company to play for one of their big store openings in our area. And as most highly paid gigging bands know, corporate gigs on the average pay out big premium bucks. So it was just such a big ticket gig and a no brainer on our part.

So we took the Midas Muffler offer canceling out another previously booked gig. But the joke was on us as sometimes a band looking at the big bucks picture can fail to think ahead clearly. And for us not paying attention to the details of said gig. We soon realized the gig was in late October. No big deal, a minor technicality. After all, a big paying gig is a big paying gig. We had asked about the size of the stage we needed and gave them the electrical requirements as we had a considerable amount of gear even in our early years. Midas Company management said no problem, we have a big stage for all your gear. Sweet, we thought. So all was good and it was an early show in the music business of 2 to 5 on a Saturday afternoon, I believe.

So off we go heading to the gig, a bit chilly in the lower 40s to upper 30s but not too bad. However once we arrived, there were a ton of cars in the parking lot so unloading would prove to be a bit of a challenge. As we got closer to the new grand opening Midas Muffler shop, we saw that the big stage for us was actually set up in the parking lot. That’s right, barely 40 degrees and it’s an outdoor show we somehow overlooked. Oops, our bad.

So we set up our gear in record time. Got ready to play for a whole bunch of people trying to park their cars in this huge parking lot and it was freezing cold out. We started to play right on time. However, it was so cold and windy that every single person that came to see us at this marvelous grand opening of the Midas Muffler Shop, simply stayed in their cars with their heaters on and windows up. So after every song we played with our icicle cold fingers, if our audience really liked it, a multitude of cars would start honking their horns. Bazar indeed. It was definitely one of our weirdest and rather chillest gigs we had ever done. But we still had a lot of fun doing it and unbelievably, the people loved the concert regardless of how cold the weather was. But they never did get out of their cars.

Would you share your insight on the albums’ tracks?

Well, I’ll give it a shot. One must remember, Kopperfield was a five piece and occasionally a six piece progressive rock band that primarily consisted of a guitar player, bass player, drummer, a Hammond B3 player, a lead vocalist and an electric piano player. Recorded songs on the double Kopperfield LP collectors album released by Gear Fab Records has material from three different studios and time periods.

1972 songs recorded at Pumpkin Studios in Chicago, Illinois.
1974 songs recorded at SRC Studios in Ann Arbor Michigan.
1975 songs recorded at The Sound Machine in Kalamazoo Michigan.

Songs:
‘Brain Rot’ 1974.
‘Anatomy’ 1974.
‘Gonna Get Stoned’ 1972.

As it was with the times back in the early 70s, some songs like these three were drug related. However Kopperfield’s three songs were mostly warnings about bad habits or unhealthy avenues taken by some of the young people of those days or just an alternative to drinking.

‘Watching The Time’
This song was also a bit of a heads up warning that time travels fast and our youth often slips away before we realize it. Best to savor the youth of our lives while one can. 1974.

‘Keep on Trucking’
Simply a fun dance song more or less. It’s about people in general moving around the country, including the band as we traveled the music world. It was about the one day we would make it back back home and maybe bring a friend to settle down with. 1974.

‘Wiseman’
Just a song based mostly on the power mongers of the world, with power so great often driven by hate and was about wars we as a nation often bring on ourselves. In other words, war in any form is never a good thing. 1974.

‘Moonride’
This of course is a song about our adventurous spirit of traveling back to the moon to colonize. So if you’re traveling by the moon please stop in and see us soon. 1974.

‘Red Neck’
This is just a rowdy song from the basement tapes collection about once upon a time in redneckville. It’s when some of us good old boys used to be rednecks or simply trouble makers. And we’re not talking about the redness on your neck from too much starch in your collar. 1972.

‘Can’t Fine My Wine’
A more mellow basement tape recorded song from our Chicago adventure. It’s a song with an attempt at a Latin groove about our singer, Jimmy’s misplaced wine. Not sure if he ever found it either. I personally think one of our roadie friends just drank it. 1972.

‘People Are Leaving’.
More fun older tunes from our basement tapes again. We wrote this in late 1971 and recorded it in 1972. It was our first time in the studio on a budget plan and we really had no idea what we were doing other than having one hell of a lot of fun. This song lyrically talks about people leaving our planet pretty much dissatisfied with current affairs. Kind of like the world today, come to think of it. 1972.

‘Dreams’
This of course, is our band song about us following our own dream, and band wise that was playing music for a living. And it was a total blast for as long as it lasted. Nothing lasts forever. 1974.

‘A Thousand Warriors’
Hey it’s a thousand warriors moving through the underground. It could be a fantasy song of warriors from the past with a little J. R. R. Tolkien tossed in the mix. Or it’s just a heads up on the next zombie apocalypse thing happening before you know it. 1974.

‘You Pulled The Lights’
‘Down’
‘Naked Tears’

Two of Kopperfield’s very last songs, which were composed and recorded by the band in 1975. These two songs were for our second never to be released LP simply titled ‘Back To Bitchin’. Both really great songs about one’s own undoing. You’ve got to watch yourself before you wreck yourself. Meaning you brought this on yourself. Perhaps a lesson well learned. Luckily these two songs were actually recorded. Sadly the other nine tunes we wrote were destined to never see the light of day or the light from the flashing red sign on the wall, “Recording in Process.” Life can be such a bitch at times. 1975.

‘Katie Love’
This is a live show cut of a mellow late evening song the band put together in 1975. It’s a song primarily written by our singer and pianist, Paul Decker about lost love. It was also set to be added to the second LP recording but never made it to the recording studio either. Lost love is something most all of us have faced at one time or another in our lives. It can be totally devastating or just another well learned lesson in life. 1975.

‘Magic In Your Mind’
This is of course a song about the possibility it’s all just magic in your mind. Or sadly you really are just living in the matrix. 1974.

‘Wake Up People’
What can be said about this old basement tape song? Listen to the lyrics and see if you are one of these people. You may find the need to wake up my friend. But then life is just a dream isn’t it? So “dream on” as Aerosmith once said. 1972.
 
‘Nothing Left To Give’
I think this is when you are at your wits end and you have given all you can and simply have nothing left to give. Sounds like a good title to a song. Hey you gotta have nothing if you want to be with me. Then again this could simply be a song about the taxman visiting. Remember The Beatles? Yeah, yeah I’m the taxman. Do you have anything left to give? I didn’t think so. 1974.

‘Tales Untold’
Now this is a no brainer. It’s the LP album title song about the meaning of all the adventurous songs that you may never have heard if Kopperfield had never told them. Hence, it gives new meaning to our LP ‘Tales Untold’. So please, kick back and give it a listen. Enjoy songs from a journey that started fifty years ago. Use that magic in your mind. 1974.

‘Jam It’
Oh, and last but not least the song ‘Jam It’. It could be just a very rude saying. Or it’s simply just a silly fun musical jam the band did after we ran out of time, money and real songs to record on our basement tape project. “Hey, what can I say? We were young, in Chicago and recording. We simply didn’t want to go home. So live dangerously for once and jam along with us on this Mega Crazy tune JAM IT. There is no real reason I can think of as to why this song should even exist, but it does. Life is funny that way. So jam on friends. It’s good for the soul.” 1972.

The record self-released. How many copies were pressed?

Well, we were poor boys for sure back in our high school adventure days. We paid for everything record related. We pressed off a few thousand copies and I believe Gear Fab Records may have pressed off a few thousand as well. It was a fun trip with a limited LP record that eventually became a serious collector’s item. That’s the world of rock and roll. You become a classic before you even know it. Enjoy.

How pleased was the band with the sound of the album? What, if anything, would you like to have been different from the finished product?

That is a can and a-half of worms to be opened. The instruments and most of the basic tracks on the record from the origin ‘Tales Untold’ were all recorded in Ann Arbor at SRC studios in just a couple short days over one weekend basically. It was the same studio that bands like Alice Copper and Scot Richard Case did some projects in. But like most young people and most bands in the beginning, we did not truly understand all the ins and outs of the recording world.

Inexperience during some of the recording with tuning and timing was an after the fact issue that you truly can’t fix in the mix. After years went by and all of us got the old vinyl Kopperfield record out, we realized that the mix-down done at the Sound Machine Studios was just way too thin sounding. And if we had a real producer at the time, many of those issues probably would have been corrected early on. But again life is a learning experience. And we certainly learned a lot, whether we like it or not!

The band members were way happier with the last two songs we recorded in 1975 for the ‘Back To Bitchin’ LP. ‘Naked Tears’ and ‘You Pulled The Lights Down’. These two songs, although not perfect, had a much fuller, richer sound. And I believe if we had actually recorded the remaining nine tunes for that second LP, they would have been even better sounding. But luckily these two songs still did make it on the Kopperfield re-release LP project under the Gear Fab record label.

Tell us about the Gear Fab release.

That is really just material we wrote in and just out of high school. Early experimental stuff that we called our basement tapes was done in Chicago in 1972. Some songs were fine, others mostly just interesting. And above all it was an opportunity for us to at least get an idea what the band really sounded like. When a band plays on stage all the time, one does not get to hear the overall sound the crowd is actually hearing out front. Recording is a good way to see what works musically and certainly what doesn’t work. But it was all for fun nonetheless.

What happened after the band stopped? Were you still in touch with other members? Is any member still involved with the music?

We all moved on to various projects in life, some were musical, others were not. But it was a good five years before we all started to reconnect again. Keith Robinson and I remain the most musically active members of Kopperfield and still to this date remain in the music business. We both had our own projects and worked with other bands over the years. Occasionally we would team up and do fun projects together from doing recordings to just playing out again in bands.

I’m currently in a band called The HippoSonics. I’ve been working on this project performing live at local clubs, concerts, festivals and the big casinos in the area for the last eleven years. Keith Robinson, the Kopperfield keyboardist, also worked with me in this HippoSonics band project for roughly seven before he semi-retired from the music scene.

Looking back, what was the highlight of your time in the band? Which songs are you most proud of? Where and when was your most memorable gig?

Well, obviously the last two songs Kopperfield recorded in 1975 I found to be the best sounding. But I would have to say there are so many live gigs that come to mind that were pretty incredible shows for Kopperfield. Opening for bands like Foghat and dozens of others heavy hitters back in the day, the huge Detroit style car shows we did, Morris Civic Auditorium gigs, the same stage that Cream played on was majorly cool. Playing for a crowd of 10,000 plus people at the Ann Arbor’s Blues Festival was totally wild and mind blowing. Even the many nights on the road, when the band just had one of those magical moment shows were everything and everyone just clicked perfectly. Those are the shows you never forget and make all that hard work worth it. And it definitely was a lot of hard work traveling and playing hundreds upon hundreds of nights clubs, outdoor concerts, military bases, major concert halls, festivals.

Even after all these years, I often get asked, “If I had it all to do over again, would I? The answer is a definite, hell yes, and in a heartbeat.” Just not sure at my age these days if I’d be able to live through all the craziness the second time around. Playing music for a living in Kopperfield was pretty cool and one of the highlights of my professional music career.

It can be said that it was the best of times and even the worst of times. The band was playing tons of nightclubs all over the country, there were gas shortages everywhere in the US, we dealt with trucker strikes in towns we played. We were playing as many as 30 shows in a row and often driving all night long to get to the next performance. Stage gear breaking down, vehicles breaking down. Playing when you’re sick and with broken bones. No calling in sick while traveling the club circuit on the road. It was some totally crazy times, and just maybe the most fun times I have ever had in my life. We traveled to a lot of cool places, played fantastic clubs, did incredible shows with famous bands, met a lot of really great people, and certainly made a ton of new friends. But most importantly it was our dream and we certainly lived it to the fullest. Yes, a once in a lifetime experience. We grabbed a hold of it and we ran with it. That was the Kopperfield dream. And we were Kopperfield.

Is there still any unreleased material?

Yes, there’s some ok live recordings still floating around, possibly a few more tunes from the old basement tapes, and even some raw song writing ideas that became nice tunes on a dozen cassette tapes lost somewhere in time. Might even be an 8-track or two lying around in an old dusty box. There are definitely live recordings around.

So yes, I am sure there are a few lost tales yet untold somewhere in all that mix just hiding from the world waiting to be discovered.

You also were part of al′ter e′go*?

Yes, the music world continues to move forward and evolve. The Alter Ego Band was a project I did out of South Bend and Elkhart, Indiana. It was a band I recorded another LP with back in 1984. A very fun, talented and enjoyable band that did a pop-rock LP record and a better sounding recording yet still done on a budget of course. That particular band, maybe, lasted for three years and did a fair amount of live shows. It was another fun time for sure.

Thank you for taking your time. Last word is yours.

In closing, I often find it interesting that the Kopperfield record, ‘Tales Untold’ became such a collectors item. I have seen the original unwrapped LP sell for as high $1000 to $1200 for very rare autographed copies. And it’s a record from 50 years ago. So, I would like to thank our old friends who took that journey with us through all the years. To the many new friends we made along, even to this day. I certainly thank all the wonderful collectors that do the collecting and the fabulous people that helped support and have carried us, the Kopperfield band through all these 50 plus years. You all are as crazy as the Kopperfield boys are and that my friends are truly a good thing. So keep collecting and keep enjoying life and listening to music.

Also a special thanks to our friend Roger Maglio, owner of Gear Fab Records for helping to put Kopperfield back on the map for one last ride into the sunset and to all those people who so kindly helped to vote Kopperfield into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame. We are humbled for sure by your generosity. I hope all of you have enjoyed our records and CDs over the years and continued the journey since 1974. And a nod perhaps to those who may yet someday still come to enjoy the Kopperfield recordings and hear ‘Tales Untold’.

I can only hope that perhaps some day a handful of those great collectors might find our Reality Falls CD titled ‘Strange Things Can Happen’ and take it for a whirl. It’s another strange adventure in itself. It’s musically fun and mysteriously interesting, and time worth investing in as well. It’s a CD from 2003 that fellow Kopperfield band mate Keith Robinson and I made because we just plain love music and love recording in a studio. So please check it out if you like. Just search iTunes under ‘Backseat Driver’ by Reality Falls or look for it as another rare item, our CD on the internet somewhere in the world. Maybe someday it will make it to vinyl as well just for fun. It’s another fun crazy CD full of great stories and music of a rock/old school funk and a slight touch of progressive fusion jazz. With Keith Robinson on keyboards and Jerry Opdycke on bass, that’s me. I have seen the original CD selling for $80 to $100 bucks nowadays. It was another few thousand releases only so not too many copies floating around out there these days, if any. It is a different kind of CD. So as it is with many things in life, musically it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But hey, that’s ok with us, we’re coffee drinkers anyway.

And last but not lease, to all the Kopperfield fans, there is the very real possibility that four of the original members of Kopperfield may have a newly re-recorded modernized version of songs from the ‘Tales Untold’ LP as a 50 year anniversary CD coming out later this year or early 2024, which again is 50 years from the original 1974 LP release date. Might even have a brand new song or two from us that no one has ever heard before. The mystery deepens so keep an eye out for it, as it should be a whole lot of Kopperfield fun. So enjoy life and live your dream my friends.

Klemen Breznikar

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Headline photo / Source: Keith Robinson

Gear Fab Records Official Website