Blue Ash | Interview | Frank Secich | “We wanted to do something different”

Blue Ash are an American power pop band formed in 1969 in Ohio by bassist Frank Secich and vocalist Jim Kendzor. 

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Guitarist Bill Yendrek and drummer David Evans were recruited later that summer. The band debuted at The Freak Out, a club in Youngstown, Ohio, on October 3, 1969. They gained a loyal following playing an endless stream of one-nighters over that year. In October 1970, Bill Yendrek, was replaced by guitarist/songwriter Bill “Cupid” Bartolin. Blue Ash continued playing countless dates a year throughout Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia. In late 1972 the band got signed to Mercury Records.. Their debut album ‘No More, No Less’ was released in May 1973 and received rave reviews in the rock press.

“We wanted to do something different”

Where and when did you grow up? Was music a big part of your family life? Did the local music scene influence you or inspire you to play music?

Frank Secich: I was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania June 14, 1951 and grew up there in the 1950’s and 1960’s. My father, Frank, was a World War II Army veteran who served in the South Pacific. After the war he worked as a Slitter Operator at Sharon Steel until he retired in the early 1980’s. My mom, Dolly, worked during the war at Westinghouse and made torpedos for the US Navy. She later worked in a bakery then started her own business making wedding cakes and became very successful at it. All of my grandparents were Croatian immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire who immigrated here before World War I. Sharon was and still is a working-class provincial town on the Ohio border. As a family we went to a lot of Croatian music functions and Tamburitza music shows in Cleveland and Pittsburgh during the 1950’s and early 60’s. My parents were really into that and that music was a big part of their lives. I was never into it that much. I liked Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley in the late fifties and the first record I ever bought was ‘(Marie’s the Name) His Latest Flame’ by Elvis Presley when I was 9 years old in 1961. In the early sixties there was a great rock ‘n’ roll band in our town called Mickey Farrell and the Dynamics. Me and my friends like Beaver Warner, Nick Rock idolized them. My neighbor, Ray Chizmar was the lead guitarist and songwriter for the band. We had a real rock star (Ray) right in our own neighborhood. We often watched them rehearse in Chizmar’s basement. They actually made records in 1963 and ’64 on the Bethlehem label. ‘Baby Mine’ and ‘Wong Foo’. They were a big influence on me to play music. Then The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9th, 1964 and I was all in.

When did you begin playing music? What was your first instrument? Who were your major influences?

I started playing music right after The Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 09, 1964. My first instrument was the harmonica as many of the early Beatles songs employed it. I had an old Stella guitar that my uncle Jack had given me. In early 1965, my mom bought me my first proper guitar (a Harmony Monterrey) and I started teaching myself how to play. My biggest influences then were The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Yardbirds, The Byrds, Bob Dylan and most of the British Invasion bands of 1964-65. I went to my first concert in Cleveland on November 12, 1965 at the Music Hall. My sister, Cindy, who was going to college in Cleveland got me the ticket. It was Bob Dylan on his infamous first electric tour. It is still to this day the best concert I have ever attended. The Dylan concert was the most mind-blowing, eye-opening, jaw-dropping experience I have ever witnessed. I was only 14 years old. Dylan opened the show on acoustic guitar doing ‘Mr. Tambourine Man,’ ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,’ ‘It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding,’ ‘Desolation Row,’ ‘To Ramona’ and many others. That was mind-blowing enough then after a brief intermission he came back out and did the electric set backed by The Hawks (The Band). They did most of the ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ LP and ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ and an electric version of ‘It Ain’t Me Babe,’ but the highlight of the electric set was Bob on the grand piano for ‘Positively 4th Street’ and ‘Ballad of A Thin Man’. I stayed that weekend at my sister’s dorm in Cleveland and returned to Sharon as a 14 year old on a mission. My studies like Algebra and French meant absolutely nothing to me now. School had nothing to do with The Rolling Stones and The Animals as far as I was concerned. I no longer cared the least bit about my studies. I wanted to be a rock star.

What bands were you a member of prior to the formation of Blue Ash?

I formed my first band The Electrons with my best friend Mark “Beaver” Warner in the summer of 1965. Beaver already had an electric guitar and was teaching me how to play. We never played anywhere, just practiced in his basement or on the porch until 1966 when we did our first gig at a party in Sharon, PA. We then formed The City Jail in 1966 and the first half of 1967 with future Blue Ash guys, me, Jim Kendzor and Jeff Rozniata.

 

In late 1967 I joined The Great Hibiscus which turned into The Mother Goose Band in 1968, Mother Goose played the entire summer of 1968 at the Electric Zoo which was the only teen club on the strip at Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio which is a resort town on Lake Erie. We did mostly soul and psychedelic covers like Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, Cream, Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Young Rascals, Vanilla Fudge, Wilson Pickett and things like that. By mid-1969, I was writing a lot of songs and I was tired of being in a cover band and Jim Kendzor and I decided to form Blue Ash.

“We didn’t like the endless guitar jam bands and singer songwriters and heavy metal that were happening at the time in 1969”

Can you elaborate the formation of Blue Ash?

Blue Ash was formed in June of 1969. The original members were me on bass, Jim Kendzor on lead vocals, Bill “Goog” Yendrek on lead guitar and David Evans on drums. All four of us sang harmonies. Right from the start Blue Ash did original material and we mixed them in with covers from the mostly British Invasion. The cover tunes we did were by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Hollies and above all The Who. We didn’t like the endless guitar jam bands and singer songwriters and heavy metal that were happening at the time in 1969. We wanted to do something different. We wanted to make music that we loved as kids in 1965 and 1966. So, we were more than slightly out of sync with what was going on in 1969. But we had a great stage show and very good vocals, so that’s how we won an audience.

When and where did the band play their early gigs? How was the band accepted by the audience?

In our first year, Blue Ash played 100 gigs. Our first gig was at the Freak Out in Youngstown, Ohio on October 3rd, 1969. The Freak Out was a psychedelic themed club with day-glo painted walls, black lights, smoke machines and a wild light show. We fit in there well and drew a lot of people so we became regulars at the Freak Out.

With Geoff Jones as our manager from the beginning we started to get some great gigs like the Bug Out in Transfer, PA, The Valley Cave in Weedville, PA and Champion Rollarena near Warren, Ohio where we played ‘Cold Turkey’ by John Lennon for the first time. We always finished with ‘Cold Turkey’ from then on as we had a wild stage show and we would leap about and smash things up while doing it.

We became really well known for our stage antics and we became very popular. On August 25th of 1970, we did The Who’s rock opera ‘Tommy’ in its entirety at the Steelworker’s Hall in Youngstown to a sold out house.

Also on the bill that day were The Glass Harp and The Steve Bator Band. It was our finest hour in our first year as we pulled it off perfectly and segued all the songs together. We got three encores and standing ovations. A few weeks later, Bill Yendrek would quit the band to go back to college. Then we got Bill “Cupid” Bartolin in the band and Blue Ash really started to take off.

What influenced the band’s sound?

Since we had bass guitar, drums, guitar and lead vocals we were very suited to do covers of The Who. We did a lot of their songs in the beginning like ‘I Can See For Miles,’ ‘It’s Not True,’ ‘Pictures Of Lily,’ ‘My Generation,’ ‘Substitute,’ ‘Magic Bus,’ ‘The Seeker’, ‘Summertime Blues’ and of course all of ‘Tommy’ and later ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’.

Also, we were very influenced by The Kinks of which we covered many of their songs like ‘I Gotta Move,’ ‘Rats,’ ‘Victoria,’ ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’ and many more. Both of those bands really influenced our original songs. For the next two years we played everywhere (teen dances, teen clubs, bars, schools, coffee houses. opened concerts) anywhere that would have us in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, West Virginia and Virginia gaining a loyal following and fan base. We were playing 250-275 dates a year mixing our own songs in with the covers and writing tons of our own songs. By the time we walked into Peppermint Productions in 1972 we were well seasoned, tight and ready to go with loads of original songs.

How did you get signed to Mercury?

In June of 1972, we signed a production contract with Peppermint Productions in Youngstown, Ohio. We started recording demos and Peppermint sent the demos out to all the major recording companies.

Peppermint offered us a great deal. We would have two full days of recording each month for five years and Peppermint would in turn represent us and shop our demos to the major labels. We started recording in June of 1972. Our first demo was a reel to reel tape of ‘I Remember A Time,’ ‘Abracadabra,’ ‘Silver Horses,’ ‘You Don’t Know What It’s Like,’ ‘Here We Go Again’ and ‘It Won’t Be Long Now’. That demo tape was sent by Peppermint to all the major labels in the late summer of 1972. To our great surprise four labels were interested in us. They were Mercury, Polydor, MGM and Metromedia which Merv Griffin owned. Paul Nelson the legendary rock writer worked A & R for Mercury Records in the summer of 1972. One day that summer there was a guy from our neck of the woods named Gary Del Vecchio in Paul’s office in New York trying to promote his own band and get a deal. Gary noticed the Blue Ash demo tape on top of many demos that came into the A & R office every day. He told Paul he should listen to us and that we were very good. Paul put on the tape and loved it and called in Bud Scoppa who also worked at Mercury to listen. They were knocked out by the demos. Paul called Peppermint and wanted to hear more. Bill Bartolin and I wrote ‘Plain To See’ and ‘Day And Night’ that day and we recorded them the next day and Peppermint sent them to Paul. Paul loved them and flew to Youngstown to see us play live. Shortly after, Paul signed us to Mercury Records. Paul also signed the New York Dolls to Mercury Records at the same time. We were all 21 years old.

What’s the story behind your debut album, ‘No More, No Less’? Where did you record it? What kind of equipment did you use and who was the producer? How many hours did you spend in the studio?

At first we were going to record our first album in New York City with Michael Brown of The Left Banke producing but there was some kind of scheduling problem. Then some Mercury people came down to check out Peppermint Productions and liked Peppermint better than their own studio in New York City. So, we ended up recording at Peppermint with Gary Rhamy engineering and John Grazier of Peppermint producing which was fine with us as we loved those guys and they knew us inside out. We started recording the first of February in 1973 and would record all week (about 12 hours per day) then play out on the weekends. Bill Bartolin used his 1968 Gibson Black Beauty Les Paul Custom guitar and a Fender solid body 12.string through a Fender Twin Reverb Amp and a Martin acoustic guitar. I used a Cherry Red 1968 Gibson EB2 bass guitar through an Ampeg SVT amp. David Evans had a custom made Ludwig drum set with dual bass drums and oversized toms. Paul Nelson from Mercury was executive producer and was there for all of the sessions. We recorded for four weeks then mixed the first two weeks of March. The album ‘No More, No Less’ was released on May 15, 1973.

Would you share your insight on the albums’ tracks?

We had been doing ‘Abracadabra (Have You Seen Her)’ live since we wrote it in early 1971 and it was always a crowd favorite and great dance song, so it was a natural pick for our first single. ‘Dusty Old Fairgrounds’ was a never released anywhere Bob Dylan song that Paul Nelson gave us on a bootleg. We loved it and kind of gave The Who treatment when we recorded it. ‘I Remember A Time’ and ‘Plain To See’ was our second single off the album and were more in the folk rock, jangly 12-string vein. They are two of my favorite songs on the LP. ‘Just Another Game’ was a cool little country fingerpicking style ballad and side one ended with ‘Smash My Guitar’ in which I smashed guitar in one take on a big grey brick in the studio surrounded by very expensive Telefunken microphones. On Side Two we started with our cover of The Beatles’ ‘Anytime At All’ then ‘Here We Go Again’ into Jim Kendzor’s great ballad ‘What Can I Do For You?’. ‘All I Want’ is a straight out kind of DC5 rocker while ‘Wasting My Time’ is another of our West Coast folk rockers. The album ends with ‘Let There Be Rock’ which was a tribute to all of our heroes. It was great fun making that record. When ‘No More, No Less’ came out in May of 1973 we received uniformly great reviews in the rock press.

Please share your recollections of the 1977 sessions for ‘Front Page News’. What were the influences and inspirations for the songs recorded?

When Blue Ash was dropped by Mercury Records in the summer of 1974, we had been anxiously looking for another label. In 1975, Columbia Records was very interested in us and flew the band to New York City to audition in the famous Studio A, where many great immortal Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel albums had been recorded. We took our producer John Grazier with us to play keyboards and shore up our sound as we performed live in the studio. They had a dozen wooden chairs set up in the studio. Executives, A & R people and employees of Columbia would filter in and out as we played an entire set. We did a pretty good job and I have heard the tapes from that day and they were quite good. After a few weeks, the Columbia execs passed on us. After that a similar situation occurred with RCA records. Then Nat Weiss, who owned Nemperor Records, got wind of us and flew down to Youngstown to spend the weekend with us and listen to all of our tapes and hear us play live in the studio. We were very impressed with him. He was a cool guy. Nat was the Beatles’ American lawyer and good friends with Brian Epstein in the 1960’s. When John Lennon and Paul McCartney came to New York City in 1968 to kick off Apple with the press and to do the Tonight Show with Joe Garagiola, they stayed at Nat’s apartment. Nat packed up a suitcase and stayed for a week at the St. Regis Hotel to give them their privacy. During their stay, Paul formally hooked up with Linda Eastman there. When Nat returned to his apartment a week later Paul and John were gone. They had written an autograph on the inside of Nat’s closet door “Nathaniel certainly is! Love Paul McCartney and John Lennon …Much love” Needless to say we were quite taken with Nat and he liked us a lot as well. Nat went back to New York assuring us we’d work something out. After about a month, he called me on the phone. He’d had some financial setbacks and entanglements and just didn’t have the money to record and promote Blue Ash properly like he wanted. He told me over the phone that he felt bad and didn’t want to hold us back. Right around then our drummer, Jeff Rozniata quit the band and moved to California. He was frustrated that we hadn’t been signed and I didn’t blame him one bit. We were all heartbroken. It was all getting to be too much. Timing is everything in this business.

So, as you can surmise by this time we were more than getting a little frustrated. So much so that by the time Steve Friedman approached us after having been a year and a half without a label, we were more than ready, willing and able to sign anything. Steve Friedman was a nice guy and an affable enough guy. We liked him. He used to work at Peppermint Productions when Gary Rhamy got us signed to Mercury in 1973. Steve had also managed our buddies Left End and got them signed to Polydor and produced their LP ‘Spoiled Rotten’ in 1974 and didn’t do a bad job on it. So, we trusted him and signed the contract.

We started rehearsing four songs to record at the famous Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida. Steve picked ‘Look At You Now,’ ‘You Are All I Need,’ ‘Tired Of Pushing’ and ‘Singing And Dancing Away’! We recorded them not as demos but ready to be released masters.. Bill “Cupid” Bartolin, Jim Kendzor and I along with Bill’s wife, Darla and Jim’s wife, Susan drove to Florida from Pennsylvania in the beginning of June of 1976.. Steve wanted to hire session musicians and add strings and horns to the recordings. He hired veteran arranger and hit maker Mike Lewis to coordinate the embellishments, The legendary Jack Adams was the engineer. Jim Kendzor sang lead of course and Bill and I did the harmonies. To his credit, Steve did hire some stellar session men for the tracks: Bobby Economou from Blood Sweat & Tears and Jaco Pastorius on drums, George Terry who played with Eric Clapton and co-wrote ‘Lay Down Sally’ on guitar.

Steve took his four Blue Ash masters to Los Angeles and started shopping them around to the major record labels. He played them for Tom Takayoshi, the President of Playboy Records and he loved the recordings. Mr. Takayoshi signed Blue Ash up for a singles deal. Playboy was distributed by CBS. We thought that was cool because a lot of our old buddies who tried to get us signed at Columbia would be working the record. The first Playboy single ‘Look At You Now’ b/w ‘Singing And Dancing Away’ was released in May of 1977. It started taking off in the south. It was a regional hit in Texas hitting #1 in a dozen markets there like Lubbock, San Angelo, Henderson, Tyler, Longview, Galveston, Laredo and was getting good airplay and hitting the Top 40 in Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and more. Many stations were picking it up in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and all over Louisiana. Steve sent us money to go out and promote it all over Pennsylvania. Jim Kendzor and I went out for a week staying in motels and hit every radio station in Pennsylvania and Geoff Jones and Cupid went to every station in Ohio. We got picked up on rotation on over 100 stations. With all this action Playboy offered us an album deal and very quickly flew us to Los Angeles to finish the album. Steve booked time at Village Recorder in West Los Angeles to record another 7 songs and to get the album out as fast as possible! The sessions started at the beginning of August of 1977. Steve hired veteran studio drummer John Guerin for the sessions. John was a cool guy, also the last drummer for The Byrds. He was a great player and we loved him. There were 3 studios at Village Recorder at the time we were there. Rumours were that Fleetwood Mac were in Studio D there but it was locked and guarded. We never saw any of them there while we recorded. In the other studio was Kansas mixing their debut album ‘Point Of No Return’. They were really nice guys and I got to sit in their studio and listen to some of the mixing. ‘Dust in The Wind’ sounded amazing in the studio.

While we were recording the LP, we invited our old drummer, Jeff Rozniata and our old friend from Sharon, Kenny Johnson to come to the sessions every night and hang out. They were both living in California by now and it was good to see them and get together. One day, John Guerin came to the session with a big surprise. The company that invented Synth Drums had given him a set of the first synth drums ever as he was a top session man in LA. They wanted him to try them on a recording. We hooked them up and used them on ‘Rock And Roll Millionaire’. It’s one of the first recordings, if not the first to ever use them. One day, our Playboy Records labelmates and hitmakers Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds popped into the studio to meet us and offer encouragement. While we were recording ‘Baby, I Just Want You’ an old friend of Mike Lewis named Shelly N. Fisher stopped by to say hello. Shelly had written the hit ‘Dis-Gorilla’ which was a follow up to Rick Dees and his Cast of Idiots’ ‘Disco Duck’! Shelly did hand-claps with us on ‘Baby I Just Want You,’ After recording the rest of ‘Front Page News’ we felt pretty good about it, good but not great as we were apprehensive about all the strings and horns being added. On an historical side note two things happened while we were in LA in August of 1977. Francis Gary Powers (the U-2 spy plane pilot) died in a helicopter crash in Southern California on August 1st and on August 16th,1977 Elvis Presley died.

Blue Ash’s ‘Front Page News’ album was released on Monday October 17, 1977. Both the Blue Ash and Kansas LP’s were released at the same time in October of 1977. Our CBS/ Columbia matrix numbers were 34918 and 34929 respectively. On Wednesday, October 19th, I got a call from one of my friends working the record at CBS. “You’ll be happy to know your album is in every record store in the United States.” That was so great. When we were with Mercury in 1973 they had independent distributors and it sometimes took weeks to get records in cities where we had airplay. Funny thing was that in the next few weeks, ‘Front Page News’  would go on to sell some 54,000 units. It was slowly taking off over the next few months then the bomb dropped. The plug was pulled on Playboy Records in early 1978. They were now out of business and defunct. Blue Ash were once again without a label. It would be the death knell for our band. We would reunite 25 years later in 2004 when the ‘Around Again’ double CD set of 44 never before released Blue Ash rarities would be published by Bruce Brodeen and Not Lame Records.

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

Jim Kendzor and I have always been and still are best friends to this day. We have had various reunions since 2003 when we got the original members David Evans, Bill Bartolin, Jim Kendzor, me and Bobby Darke together to play the International Pop Overthrow Festival in Philadelphia. In 2004, when Not Lame released the ‘Around Again’ rarities double CD Blue Ash (Frank Secich, Jim Kendzor, David Evans, Bill Bartolin, Jeff Rozniata, Brian Wingrove and Bill’s son, Sean Bartolin) played the a huge outdoor concert at the B & B Backstage in Youngstown, Ohio on the bill with Mountain and Vanilla Fudge for the release of the Not Lame album.We also did a great show at the Corinthian Ballroom on Sharon, PA. In 2008. Collectors Choice reissued ‘No More, No Less’ for the first time on CD and it hit the top of the Amazon Power Pop charts in the USA for three weeks and also topped the Amazon Power Pop charts in Canada. In November of 2008, Blue Ash played the International Pop Overthrow in Youngstown which was an amazing night with all the old core crowd coming. In early 2009 we played the Barrow Civic Theatre in Franklin, PA and in March 2009 we played the Corinthian Ballroom again. That would be our last concert with Bill “Cupid” Bartolin. In September of 2009 Bill was diagnosed with cancer and passed away on October 3rd, 2009. In 2014, You Are The Cosmos record label out of Spain released a four song vinyl EP of Blue Ash rarities then in 2016 released ‘Hearts & Arrows’ a double gatefold LP plus bonus 7″ EP featuring 28 rare Blue Ash songs on vinyl for the first time. Blue Ash and the Deadbeat Poets then toured Spain in June of 2016. Since then the new Blue Ash (Jim Kendzor and I) backed by the Deadbeat Poets (Pete Drivere, John Koury and John Hlumyk) Have played gigs in Pittsburgh, Ohio and Canada and are working on a new Blue Ash album which is 75% done and featuring new originals like ‘Cousin Dickie’s Shirt’ and ‘The Black Light Room’ and will be released in the coming year. Jim Kendzor and I still live about ten blocks from each other in Sharon, PA. David Evans lives in Florida and Jeff Rozniata lives in Arizona.

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?

Getting signed to major labels like Mercury Records and Playboy Records was definitely a highlight for Blue Ash. Having world-class bands like the Records cover ‘Abracadabra (Have You Seen Her?)’ and great artists like Michael Monroe cover ‘A Million Miles Away’ was also very cool. In March of 2023, Amazon Prime released the video series ‘Daisy Jones and the Six’ which became a world-wide smash hit. Episode one featured ‘Jazel Jane’ by Blue Ash which was a great thrill for us. Blue Ash’s ‘Can’t Get Her Off My Mind’ was featured in the trailer for the movie Smother starring Diane Keaton and Liv Tyler in 2009. Blue Ash played some great concerts over the years. We opened up for David Cassidy and Bay City Rollers at Idora Park in Youngstown each time in front of 25,000 kids. We played fun concerts with Raspberries at Packard Music Hall in Warren, Ohio and opened up for the Stooges at Michigan Palace in Detroit February 09, 1974 for the infamous Metallic KO Concert. Blue Ash also toured Spain in June of 2016 which was fantastic. During the Covid pandemic in 2020 Billie Joe Armstong recorded mine and Stiv’s song ‘Not That Way Anymore’ that was released worldwide on Warner Brothers on his album ‘No Fun, Mondays’. I am most proud of the ‘No More, No Less’ LP and the fact that over 40 artists around the world have covered my songs. I think that’s the best honour that a songwriter can ever have.

“There are still about 150 unreleased Blue Ash recordings”

Is there any unreleased material by Blue Ash?

There are still about 150 unreleased Blue Ash recordings. During our time at Peppermint from 1972 until 1979 we had recorded some 219 recordings of various quality. In 2004, Peppermint and Blue Ash licensed the release of 44 of those songs to Not Lame Records. The result was the 2 CD set called ‘Around Again’ (‘A Collection Of Rarities From The Vault 1972-79’). ‘Around Again’ received critical acclaim and sold out every copy ever printed. More material was released on the You Are The Cosmos Record Label out of Spain in 2016 on the double gatefold limited edition LP ‘Hearts & Arrows’ which came with a bonus 4 song vinyl EP. In the near future, Peppermint Records will be releasing a series of never before released Blue Ash material on vinyl and CD. The first release will be called ‘Dinner Ar Mr. Billy’s and will feature some classic Blue Ash songs that no one has ever heard with titles like ‘She’s A Pleaser,’ ‘Moving Right Along,’ ‘Stay,’ ‘Here And Gone,’ ‘It’s Alright by Me,’ ‘It’s A Good Night,’ ‘Look Out Your Window, Baby I’m On Your Porch,’ ‘Dinner At Mr. Billy’s,’ ‘It’s All In Your Mind,’ ‘Walls,’ ‘When I Get You,’ ‘You Really Get To Me’ and many others so stay tuned.

What led you to join Stiv Bators band from 1979 until 1981 and what kind of experience was it for you?

After Playboy Records went out of business in early 1978. We were all very dejected and were doing nothing. Blue Ash had been together for 10 years and we were tired and spent. We had put in our all for the band. We just sort of fell apart. In November of 1978, Stiv Bators and Cynthia Ross came to visit me and Lisa in Sharon, PA.. That night we wrote ‘The Last Year’ and Stiv and I decided to work together. Later that month Stiv, Jimmy Zero and Johnny Blitz invited me to record with them in Cleveland at Kirk Yano’s After Dark Studio. We did demos of ‘It’s Cold Outside,’ ‘The Last Year’ and a cover of Adam Faith’s ‘It’s Alright’. Stiv took the demos to LA and played them for Greg Shaw at Bomp Records. A few months later Greg signed Stiv and me to Bomp. Our first single ‘It’s Cold Outside’ b/w ‘The Last Year’ was released in June of 1979 on Bomp Records. In October of 1979, I started touring with Stiv and the Dead Boys and would continue touring North America almost nonstop until January of 1981 with various line-ups. I also played on and wrote or co-wrote most of the songs on Stiv’s solo debut LP ‘Disconnected’ which was released in December of 1980. It was great fun playing with those guys and we had a great time and made very good money. Some of the highlights were John Belushi joining us on stage at the Whisky A Go-Go in LA in January of 1980. We were also invited by Anita Pallenberg to Keith Richards’ 36th Birthday Party in New York city December 18, 1979 and got to meet Keith, Ronnie and Mick. Many stars also joined us for guest appearances on stage at different dates on those tours like Johnny Thunders and Joan Jett.

How did Club Wow come about?

On the first of January of 1982, Jimmy Zero asked me about his new band Club Wow. Jimmy already had Billy Sullivan on lead guitar and Jeff West on drums. They were all great players and joined immediately. Club Wow was together from 1982 until 1985. We only played out about one a month in either Cleveland, Youngstown, Buffalo and once in New York City in 1985 for a label showcase. We wanted a major label deal but it just wasn’t in the cards. We spent most of our time writing songs and recording them. Club Wow was a great band and we did record about 20 songs which were released in 2015 on the Zero Hour Records label from Australia. The Club Wow CD/DVD release ‘Nowhere Fast’ is still in print and a fine legacy for Club Wow. Also, Peppermint Productions of Youngstown, Ohio will be releasing a Club Wow vinyl LP in 2023.

I would love it if you could discuss what was the initial idea behind Deadbeat Poets.

Terry Hartman of the Deadbeat Poets and I would always joke that the reason we wrote songs was to make each other laugh! From 1990 until 2003, I quit the music business. I just walked away. I had a young son, Jake and wanted to be with him when he grew up , so I got a proper job and quit the music business. I never even picked up a guitar again for 13 years until 2003. One day, I picked up my old 1966 Gibson guitar (with 13 years old strings) and started playing this cool guitar riff. I thought “shit” now I have to write this thing. I finished the song in about 15 minutes. That song was ‘The Stiv Bators Ghost Tour’. The songs just started pouring out of me. ‘A Funny Little Feeling,’ ‘The Psychedelic Gas Station,’ ‘Jennyburg Hill,’ ‘The Green Man,’ ‘Elvin Dabney Professional Thief’ and so many others. I started making acoustic demos at my friends Pete Drivere and Tom Sailor’s studios. In 2006, Pete Drivere and John Koury and I started recording full band demos at Pete’s Ampreon Studio in Youngstown. I always thought that if I ever formed another band I’d want my old friend Terry Hartman from Cleveland in it. We found Terry in Cleveland (he had disappeared just like I did) and he also had a lot of songs and I asked him to join the band. The Deadbeat Poets were off and running and we released our first album ‘Notes From The Underground’ in August of 2007 on Mark Hershberger’s Pop Detective Records. The song ‘The Stiv Bators Ghost Tour’ was featured in Danny Garcia’s 2019 film. ‘STIV….. No Compromise, No Regrets’ as recorded by both the Deadbeat Poets and Room Full Of Strangers. The Deadbeat Poets toured the UK in 2008. We toured the Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark and Sweden in 2012 and Spain in 2016.

Would love it if you could share some sentences about the several albums you released.

‘Notes From The Underground’ was the first Deadbeat Poets’ album released on Pop Detective Records in 2007. NFTU was rave reviews twice in USA Today and features Terry Hartman’s trippy masterpiece ‘What Part Of Cognitive Dissonance Don’t You Understand?’

‘Circustown’ is the second Deadbeat Poets album released in 2010. In my opinion, it’s our finest hour. It features the song ‘The Staircase Stomp!’ about Joe Meek and was ‘Coolest Song in The World’ on Little Steven’s Underground Garage and a hit on Sirius XM.

‘Youngstown Vortex Sutra (The British Version)’ was our third album in 2011 and produced ‘The Man With The X-Ray Eyes,’ our second Coolest Song In The World.

‘American Stroboscope’ was released in 2012 and features ‘Jennyburg Hill’ and ‘Down With The Lonely Boys’ and is one of our finest works

‘A Deadbeat Christmas’ 2013 is our Christmas album featuring ‘Christmastime In Painesville’

‘Hallelujah Anyway’ 2014 is right up there with ‘Circustown’ and features ‘Johnny Sincere’ another Coolest Song in The World on Little Steven’s Underground Garage

‘Strange Tales From The Hussmann Building’ 2016 Deadbeat Poets (sort of, best of) 2007-2014

‘El Camino Real 101’ Spanish Best Of Deadbeat Poets 2016 of You Are The Cosmos Records

What are some of the most important players that influenced your own style and what in particular did they employ in their playing that you liked?

Some of my biggest musical influences in the 1960’s were The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Who, The Yardbirds, The Poets, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Marianne Faithfull. Moby Grape, the Animals, Bob Dylan. I loved the production work of Joe Meek and Andrew Loog-Oldham. In the 1970’s I loved the New York Dolls, Big Star, Dwight Twilley, Raspberries, Ramones, Dead Boys, The Damned, Sex Pistols, The Pretenders, The Records, Paley Brothers, The Dickies, Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen and The Cars.

What currently occupies your life?

Currently, I am just finishing up writing my second book Not That Way Anymore which will be published by High Voltage Publishing out of Perth, Australia later in 2023. Jim Kendzor and I are also recording a brand new Blue Ash LP with the Deadbeat Poets which is 75 percent done and will be out soon. We think it’s our finest work! We’re also very busy putting together the Peppermint Records Blue Ash Legacy Series which will eventually include all of the previously unreleased Blue Ash recordings done at Peppermint in the 1970’s.. It will soon be out on the road again promoting my books and doing acoustic shows everywhere. I currently live in Hermitage, PA with my wife, Lisa. We have been together for 49 years and married for the last 45 years. We have a son, Jake who lives in Pittsburgh, PA

Any future plans?

Yes, my next book project will be with Theresa Kereakes. It will be all of Theresa’s fabulous photos of Stiv Bators Bomp Records years and her photos of all the recording sessions like ‘Disconnected’ and ‘It’s Cold Outside’ and our recollections and stories of those crazy times. It’s going to be a fun project and will also be published by High Voltage Publishing out of Australia.

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

Thank you for your interest and to new bands and artists I say: cover Blue Ash, Stiv Bators and Deadbeat Poets’ songs!

Klemen Breznikar

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Headline photo: Blue Ash recording ‘Silver Horses’ at Peppermint Productions in Youngstown, Ohio August 10, 1972 | Photo by Geoff Jones

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