Around 1991 somehow I discovered that my friend Warner Hodges, who I’d met through the Del-Lords being label mates with Jason & The Scorchers in the 80's, was actually living in NYC. In Queens specifically. Warner was holding court at the Telephone Bar on 2nd Avenue. I was living at Tiny Pines on 11th Street. Around that same time somebody had fixed up and opened the old after hours bar known as Brownies around the corner on Avenue A. We went in there and introduced ourselves and thanked them for building us a bar. A short while later the bar had installed a little riser in the back for an English Darts Setup. Now to me this looked like a stage. We asked and the let us set up a gig. I roped Warner into playing with me. As all of his equipment was in Nashville he told me about a friend of his that had some “4x12” Cabs” named Andy York. Meeting Andy would be a big thing in my musical life but that’s another story. We got Andy and played some gigs in town as what I would refer to as the “Five Man Gang”. Eventually we got a little tour together with four of us, Warner, myself, later Scorchers bassist and Fleshtones to be Ken Fox and Ron “Rongo” Gremp who’d played with me on the Roscoe’s Gang record from Springfield, MO on drums.

Our not too long tour took us to Springfield, MO for a gig and also a recording session with the late, great Lou Whitney. This was at Lou’s old Column One Studio, southeast of town. There’s a song from this session on my Knucklehead record called “Lonely Town” written by Jeremy Tepper and Jay Sherman-Godfrey. We also ran through some stuff we were playing live including this run through of us doing the Rolling Stones “All Down The Line” in a duet style with Warner and I trading verses. I’m playing the cheater G tuning B-bender guitar (with a little slide thrown in for more inaccuracy) on this previously un-released track.

I hope you enjoy track #4 of the Shut In Singles Series