Interviews

Free Press
March 23, 2000
By Joe Tougas
Free Press Staff writer

Late-summer Saturday night, 1999. Patrick’s, a small rock club in St. Peter, is hosting Lonnie Knight and his band, Big Shoes. This should be a big deal – Knight’s electric guitar playing alone has astonished nearly everyone who’s seen it happen during the past three decades, from his days in Mankato’s City Mouse to his role in the Hoopsnakes. It’s made him a multiple winner over the years for best guitarist at the Minnesota Music Awards.

Tall and thin, his presence while playing the guitar tonight gives him, as always, the appearance of an authority looking down calmly on his six-string subject; but it’s the actual sound from the speakers, the pure music he makes the electric guitar, that confirms the authority.

So put him in front of a four-piece metro band whose trade is in embellished blues and aggressive, colorful R&B and you have the type of night that will satisfy both the dance-happy music fans as well as those who just like to watch. The stage is lit with five white lights shining on the band and seven colored lights.

But the room at 10:30 p.m. is six people away from being dead, with more people hanging out in the bar or playing darts than in the room listening to the band. It’s a situation that will eventually wear Patrick’s down as a live venue—booking established, solid bands and not drawing squat.

Veteran musicians know these gigs happen. It’s part of the job, part of paying your dues, etc. But that still doesn’t answer the question of how Knight will react. His 30-year reputation as a hotshot player does include a few chapters of having a small fuse with inattentive or unappreciative crowds. As one former band mate recalled with a laugh, “One of my biggest jobs in the band was saying, ‘Hey, he’s really a nice guy.’”

But tonight, Knight shrugs it off because Knight is different these days and the difference is showing up on and off stage. Although the music he plays with Big Shoes is a bolder, flashier and stronger presence than others he’s fronted, Knight himself has dropped the intimidating front that often stood between him and audiences in the past.

“What people took for arrogance was me being self-conscious, uptight and uncomfortable being around people,” Knight said. “Mostly it was a fear of opening up and talking to them.” And the trail that brought him to this point, musically and personally, is one both rocky and rewarding.

To meet Lonnie Knight today is to think, hey, he’s really a nice guy.

In the evening at his Minneapolis home, where a cat named Strat walks the wooden floors amid a half dozen guitars cased up, Knight keeps a pack of Marlboros busy as he talks energetically about the past and the present.

Knight grew up in Richfield where his family moved from New Jersey when he was five. Knight was a tall, gangly and genuinely awkward kid who worried often about his inability to get dates. He envied, coveted the attention and respect given to the kids in his school who wore black leather coats—the greasers and their skin-headed counterparts, the baldies. Tough guys, all of them, and Knight wanted to be one.

“But I didn’t have a tough bone in my body,” he said. “I couldn’t fill any of these roles. And then I started playing guitar.”

Click.

After a couple of lessons Knight took the instrument on by listening to and watching others. In 1965 he and some fellow Richfield High School students formed The Rave-Ons, which played music by the Ventures, Beatles and Yardbirds at pizza parlors and other teen hangouts. But it was one night that seemed to seal the deal. Knight agreed to play at a large hall as the substitute guitar player for a popular band at the time, Mike Wagner and the Bops—an experience that made a lifelong impression on the tall, formerly awkward teenager.

“Everybody was applauding. I thought, OK. This is Nirvana.” He laughed.

“The guitar became everything. Nothing else had any meaning, ever.”

The guitar would accompany him during the next 30 years into a variety of genres—acid rock, acoustic folk, country, blues and R&B.

College didn’t get a chance to matter—he enrolled, but quit his freshman year because playing five nights a week clashed with the studying. His songwriting began with some “psychedelic nonsense” he wrote with the Cream-inspired power trio Joker’s Wild, but over time it was refining itself to the folk-oriented work that anchored two Lonnie Knight albums in the early ‘70s.

He was working as a studio musician at Sound 80, the premiere studio in Minneapolis at the time, and producer George Hanson, who had recently recorded Leo Kottke, took a liking to Knight’s playing. Hanson produced his first album, which was followed up with 1974’s Song for a City Mouse.

The title was an homage to the Mankato band in which Knight played for several years in the early ‘70s. That relationship began when Knight was playing with the Chad Mitchell Group at Michael’s (now the Jazz Club) and met City Mouse founder Bill Steiner. Steiner and friends had seen Knight play earlier in a band called The Litter.

“He just blew us away,” Steiner said. “It was the kind of Cream-like stuff, the rambling guitar solo. We looked at each other and said, ‘What’s the difference between him and Clapton? The guy’s got it.’”

The two met, became friends and roomed together in St. Peter. Knight played with City Mouse for a couple of stints in the 1970s, and Steiner laughed thinking about the on-stage dynamics of the band.

“We never quite got clear who the front man was, and we got into a few schisms.” Steiner said.

By this time Knight had shed any appearance of awkwardness and had replaced it with a cocky attitude and bravado—on stage. People who knew him, like Steiner, said that front was the result of focusing so much on the art that the niceties went by the wayside, niceties such as shrugging off a small crowd or keeping a bad thought to himself.

“There were times when Craig (Black, former City Mouse bass player) would say, ‘Don’t let him talk,’” Steiner said.

Throughout the 1970s, as Knight continued a prolific career playing in studio and on stage, he also continued a drinking habit that took hold in the late ‘60s. Knight and alcohol worked naturally together, particularly on slow nights where the attention wasn’t quite up where he thought it should be.

“I used to think I needed, on a night that wasn’t going very well, a couple of shots. If I didn’t have the muse working for me, I’d artificially create it.” And few livelihoods encourage drinking as much as playing in nightclubs, when the band was hot. Up came the drinks from either club owners or fans. It was liquid congratulations, the perfect sign that a night was going well. “Audiences like a player who drinks,” he said. Knight remembers one opening act for guitarist Dave Mason, in which the biggest round of applause Knight received was when he held high his can of Coors and said something about drinking.

“Where else can you openly drink on the job?” he smiled.

The alcohol’s effect rarely touched the music, but it did touch friendships and relationships—including broken marriages. It also had a lot to do with his demeanor which was based more in insecurities than arrogance.

“I thought I was the nicest guy in the world,” he said. “I was certainly self-centered but not aware of it at the time. I thought I was just another musician, but I think I came across to a lot of people as really arrogant.”

Knight said he felt he had little to offer anyone outside of music.

“It got to the point I didn’t feel I existed outside of being a performer,” he said. “I knew I was very uncomfortable in groups of people unless I was playing there. The music, it set me apart.”

In the 1980s, he reunited with his old bass player from Joker’s Wild and formed the Knight-Henley Band, playing originals mixed in with tunes by Weather Report and the Stones, and his attention later went toward full-blown country with Wild Horses, a powerful, guitar-driven band that frequented the Caledonia in Mankato in addition to the Twin Cities clubs.

Wild Horses went on for years, leading to an ideal job as guitarist with one of the Twin Cities’ most popular blues bands, The Hoopsnakes, founded by Bruce McCabe.

“I think the jump to the Hoopsnakes was as close as I got to the big time,” Knight said. It was also a job where he didn’t have to be the center of attention. And that suited him fine, given the company.

“Bruce, to me, was a consummate musician, songwriter,” Knight said. “That’s why it was comfortable for me to just be the guitar player in that band.”

A regional favorite, the band seemed destined to get a foothold in the national blues scene, playing gigs such as Buddy Guy’s Legends in Chicago with blues queen Koko Taylor.

But the group disbanded when McCabe signed on with Jonny Lang, writing the young guitarist’s first hit “Lie To Me” and remaining as writer and bandmate. Without McCabe, the Hoopsnakes quit rolling.

“I think the rest of us talked for 30 seconds total about going on without him,” Knight said. The breakup of the band was followed by a divorce for Knight in 1996.

“I wallowed around for a while. That’s when the drinking got real heavy.” In February 1997 he made the decision to quit drinking,

“They talk about hitting bottom and I hit it. The bottom is inside your head, when something absolutely has to change.”

The first week was the worst. “Fear, abject depression, I hated where I was,” Knight said. “I had not discovered any of the concepts yet that there are other ways of dealing with it.”

By this time he had formed the band he still fronts, Big Shoes, with Minneapolis musicians Bart Guthrie, Reid Papke and Carolyn Gronfield.

Soon into playing with this new band, he began discovering he was approaching music differently than before.

“It wasn’t based on getting it back from the audience. It was based on just enjoying playing,” he said. “I think by taking myself out of the center of my own existence, it helped take away a lot of the crap I was taking on stage with me.”

“His musical sense is just unparalleled,” Steiner said. “He’s just the finest guitar player around these parts bar none. And he’s at his best when he’s playing with other good players.”

Back at the fall gig at Patrick’s, Gronfeld is sitting out a couple of songs, watching Knight, Papke and Guthrie perform to the sparse room. She’s thinking the Gustavus crowd might show up after the football game, but Gustavus crowds don’t listen to veteran bands. Gustavus crowds listen to Gustavus bands. All U Can Drink with a $5 cover kind of nights.

Gronfeld, the band’s keyboardist and backup vocalist, comes from a variety band background, the type that required her to learn polkas, country, waltzes, swing and old-time rock and roll. Musically and creatively, she said, playing in Big Shoes pushes her to work harder.

“It’s low pressure,” she said, “but when you play with someone like Lonnie, he’s so talented you strive to play at a level you wouldn’t strive for otherwise.”

From the stage, Knight is making mincemeat out of a tune called “Standin’ on Shaky Ground.” And it becomes clear that the guitar work may be where he truly speaks his mind, these exercises in sweet tones, sustain and color—where he shifts his weight from foot to foot while his head stays cool and the music nears its boiling point.

The band keeps busy, playing every weekend. They released a compact disc on Mankato’s Two Fish label, and Knight keeps busy working with his own business, Mosquito Shoals Productions, in which he designs Web sites (including lonnieknight.com) and records singer/songwriter acts in his own studio.

The effects of quitting drinking are still unfolding in his music and his life, and all are points positive.

In his music, he said he’s singing better and healthier, able to more easily get through three or four hours of being lead singer. And he’s also less concerned about the size of the crowd and more focused on the music.

“It was very significant in ways that haven’t completely played themselves out,” he said.

In his social life, it’s given him one.

“I still have a certain need for quiet and solitude,” he said. “But it isn’t like before when I’d flat-out hide from people.”

Free Press
March 23, 2000
By Joe Tougas
Free Press Staff writer

Late-summer Saturday night, 1999. Patrick’s, a small rock club in St. Peter, is hosting Lonnie Knight and his band, Big Shoes. This should be a big deal – Knight’s electric guitar playing alone has astonished nearly everyone who’s seen it happen during the past three decades, from his days in Mankato’s City Mouse to his role in the Hoopsnakes. It’s made him a multiple winner over the years for best guitarist at the Minnesota Music Awards.

Tall and thin, his presence while playing the guitar tonight gives him, as always, the appearance of an authority looking down calmly on his six-string subject; but it’s the actual sound from the speakers, the pure music he makes on the electric guitar, that confirms the authority.

So put him in front of a four-piece metro band whose trade is in embellished blues and aggressive, colorful R&B and you have the type of night that will satisfy both the dance-happy music fans as well as those who just like to watch. The stage is lit with five white lights shining on the band and seven colored lights.

But the room at 10:30 p.m. is six people away from being dead, with more people hanging out in the bar or playing darts than in the room listening to the band. It’s a situation that will eventually wear Patrick’s down as a live venue—booking established, solid bands and not drawing squat.

Veteran musicians know these gigs happen. It’s part of the job, part of paying your dues, etc. But that still doesn’t answer the question of how Knight will react. His 30-year reputation as a hotshot player does include a few chapters of having a small fuse with inattentive or unappreciative crowds. As one former band mate recalled with a laugh, “One of my biggest jobs in the band was saying, ‘Hey, he’s really a nice guy.’”

But tonight, Knight shrugs it off because Knight is different these days and the difference is showing up on and off stage. Although the music he plays with Big Shoes is a bolder, flashier and stronger presence than others he’s fronted, Knight himself has dropped the intimidating front that often stood between him and audiences in the past.

“What people took for arrogance was me being self-conscious, uptight and uncomfortable being around people,” Knight said. “Mostly it was a fear of opening up and talking to them.” And the trail that brought him to this point, musically and personally, is one both rocky and rewarding.

To meet Lonnie Knight today is to think, hey, he’s really a nice guy.

In the evening at his Minneapolis home, where a cat named Strat walks the wooden floors amid a half dozen guitars cased up, Knight keeps a pack of Marlboros busy as he talks energetically about the past and the present.

Knight grew up in Richfield where his family moved from New Jersey when he was five. Knight was a tall, gangly and genuinely awkward kid who worried often about his inability to get dates. He envied, coveted the attention and respect given to the kids in his school who wore black leather coats—the greasers and their skin-headed counterparts, the baldies. Tough guys, all of them, and Knight wanted to be one.

“But I didn’t have a tough bone in my body,” he said. “I couldn’t fill any of these roles. And then I started playing guitar.”

Click.

After a couple of lessons Knight took the instrument on by listening to and watching others. In 1965 he and some fellow Richfield High School students formed The Rave-Ons, which played music by the Ventures, Beatles and Yardbirds at pizza parlors and other teen hangouts. But it was one night that seemed to seal the deal. Knight agreed to play at a large hall as the substitute guitar player for a popular band at the time, Mike Wagner and the Bops—an experience that made a lifelong impression on the tall, formerly awkward teenager.

“Everybody was applauding. I thought, OK. This is Nirvana.” He laughed.

“The guitar became everything. Nothing else had any meaning, ever.”

The guitar would accompany him during the next 30 years into a variety of genres—acid rock, acoustic folk, country, blues and R&B.

College didn’t get a chance to matter—he enrolled, but quit his freshman year because playing five nights a week clashed with the studying. His songwriting began with some “psychedelic nonsense” he wrote with the Cream-inspired power trio Joker’s Wild, but over time it was refining itself to the folk-oriented work that anchored two Lonnie Knight albums in the early ‘70s.

He was working as a studio musician at Sound 80, the premiere studio in Minneapolis at the time, and producer George Hanson, who had recently recorded Leo Kottke, took a liking to Knight’s playing. Hanson produced his first album, which was followed up with 1974’s Song for a City Mouse.

The title was an homage to the Mankato band in which Knight played for several years in the early ‘70s. That relationship began when Knight was playing with the Chad Mitchell Group at Michael’s (now the Jazz Club) and met City Mouse founder Bill Steiner. Steiner and friends had seen Knight play earlier in a band called The Litter.

“He just blew us away,” Steiner said. “It was the kind of Cream-like stuff, the rambling guitar solo. We looked at each other and said, ‘What’s the difference between him and Clapton? The guy’s got it.’”

The two met, became friends and roomed together in St. Peter. Knight played with City Mouse for a couple of stints in the 1970s, and Steiner laughed thinking about the on-stage dynamics of the band.

“We never quite got clear who the front man was, and we got into a few schisms.” Steiner said.

By this time Knight had shed any appearance of awkwardness and had replaced it with a cocky attitude and bravado—on stage. People who knew him, like Steiner, said that front was the result of focusing so much on the art that the niceties went by the wayside, niceties such as shrugging off a small crowd or keeping a bad thought to himself.

“There were times when Craig (Black, former City Mouse bass player) would say, ‘Don’t let him talk,’” Steiner said.

Throughout the 1970s, as Knight continued a prolific career playing in studio and on stage, he also continued a drinking habit that took hold in the late ‘60s. Knight and alcohol worked naturally together, particularly on slow nights where the attention wasn’t quite up where he thought it should be.

“I used to think I needed, on a night that wasn’t going very well, a couple of shots. If I didn’t have the muse working for me, I’d artificially create it.” And few livelihoods encourage drinking as much as playing in nightclubs, when the band was hot. Up came the drinks from either club owners or fans. It was liquid congratulations, the perfect sign that a night was going well. “Audiences like a player who drinks,” he said. Knight remembers one opening act for guitarist Dave Mason, in which the biggest round of applause Knight received was when he held high his can of Coors and said something about drinking.

“Where else can you openly drink on the job?” he smiled.

The alcohol’s effect rarely touched the music, but it did touch friendships and relationships—including broken marriages. It also had a lot to do with his demeanor which was based more in insecurities than arrogance.

“I thought I was the nicest guy in the world,” he said. “I was certainly self-centered but not aware of it at the time. I thought I was just another musician, but I think I came across to a lot of people as really arrogant.”

Knight said he felt he had little to offer anyone outside of music.

“It got to the point I didn’t feel I existed outside of being a performer,” he said. “I knew I was very uncomfortable in groups of people unless I was playing there. The music, it set me apart.”

In the 1980s, he reunited with his old bass player from Joker’s Wild and formed the Knight-Henley Band, playing originals mixed in with tunes by Weather Report and the Stones, and his attention later went toward full-blown country with Wild Horses, a powerful, guitar-driven band that frequented the Caledonia in Mankato in addition to the Twin Cities clubs.

Wild Horses went on for years, leading to an ideal job as guitarist with one of the Twin Cities’ most popular blues bands, The Hoopsnakes, founded by Bruce McCabe.

“I think the jump to the Hoopsnakes was as close as I got to the big time,” Knight said. It was also a job where he didn’t have to be the center of attention. And that suited him fine, given the company.

“Bruce, to me, was a consummate musician, songwriter,” Knight said. “That’s why it was comfortable for me to just be the guitar player in that band.”

A regional favorite, the band seemed destined to get a foothold in the national blues scene, playing gigs such as Buddy Guy’s Legends in Chicago with blues queen Koko Taylor.

But the group disbanded when McCabe signed on with Jonny Lang, writing the young guitarist’s first hit “Lie To Me” and remaining as writer and bandmate. Without McCabe, the Hoopsnakes quit rolling.

“I think the rest of us talked for 30 seconds total about going on without him,” Knight said. The breakup of the band was followed by a divorce for Knight in 1996.

“I wallowed around for a while. That’s when the drinking got real heavy.” In February 1997 he made the decision to quit drinking,

“They talk about hitting bottom and I hit it. The bottom is inside your head, when something absolutely has to change.”

The first week was the worst. “Fear, abject depression, I hated where I was,” Knight said. “I had not discovered any of the concepts yet that there are other ways of dealing with it.”

By this time he had formed the band he still fronts, Big Shoes, with Minneapolis musicians Bart Guthrie, Reid Papke and Carolyn Gronfield.

Soon into playing with this new band, he began discovering he was approaching music differently than before.

“It wasn’t based on getting it back from the audience. It was based on just enjoying playing,” he said. “I think by taking myself out of the center of my own existence, it helped take away a lot of the crap I was taking on stage with me.”

“His musical sense is just unparalleled,” Steiner said. “He’s just the finest guitar player around these parts bar none. And he’s at his best when he’s playing with other good players.”

Back at the fall gig at Patrick’s, Gronfeld is sitting out a couple of songs, watching Knight, Papke and Guthrie perform to the sparse room. She’s thinking the Gustavus crowd might show up after the football game, but Gustavus crowds don’t listen to veteran bands. Gustavus crowds listen to Gustavus bands. All U Can Drink with a $5 cover kind of nights.

Gronfeld, the band’s keyboardist and backup vocalist, comes from a variety band background, the type that required her to learn polkas, country, waltzes, swing and old-time rock and roll. Musically and creatively, she said, playing in Big Shoes pushes her to work harder.

“It’s low pressure,” she said, “but when you play with someone like Lonnie, he’s so talented you strive to play at a level you wouldn’t strive for otherwise.”

From the stage, Knight is making mincemeat out of a tune called “Standin’ on Shaky Ground.” And it becomes clear that the guitar work may be where he truly speaks his mind, these exercises in sweet tones, sustain and color—where he shifts his weight from foot to foot while his head stays cool and the music nears its boiling point.

The band keeps busy, playing every weekend. They released a compact disc on Mankato’s Two Fish label, and Knight keeps busy working with his own business, Mosquito Shoals Productions, in which he designs Web sites (including lonnieknight.com) and records singer/songwriter acts in his own studio.

The effects of quitting drinking are still unfolding in his music and his life, and all are points positive.

In his music, he said he’s singing better and healthier, able to more easily get through three or four hours of being lead singer. And he’s also less concerned about the size of the crowd and more focused on the music.

“It was very significant in ways that haven’t completely played themselves out,” he said.

In his social life, it’s given him one.

“I still have a certain need for quiet and solitude,” he said. “But it isn’t like before when I’d flat-out hide from people.”

“His musical sense is just unparalleled,” Steiner said. “He’s just the finest guitar player around these parts bar none. And he’s at his best when he’s playing with other good players.”

Back at the fall gig at Patrick’s, Gronfield is sitting out a couple of songs, watching Knight, Papke and Guthrie perform to the sparse room. She’s thinking the Gustavus crowd might show up after the football game, but Gustavus crowds don’t listen to veteran bands. Gustavus crowds listen to Gustavus bands. All-U Can Drink with a $5 cover kind of nights.

Gronfield, the band’s keyboardist and backup vocalist, comes from a variety-band background, the type that required her to learn polkas, country, waltzes, swing and old-time rock and roll. “Musically and creatively,” she said, “playing in Big Shoes pushes me to work harder.”

“It’s low pressure,” she said, “but when you play with someone like Lonnie, he’s so talented you strive to play at a level you wouldn’t strive for otherwise.”

From the stage, Knight is making mincemeat out of a tune called “Standin’ on Shaky Ground.” And it becomes clear that the guitar work may be where he truly speaks his mind, these exercises in sweet tones, sustain and color — where he shifts his weight from foot to foot while his head stays cool and the music nears its boiling point.

The band keeps busy, playing every weekend. They released a compact disc on Mankato’s Two Fish label, and Knight keeps busy working with his own business, Mosquito Shoals Productions, in which he designs websites (including lonnieknight.com) and records singer/songwriter acts in his own studio.

The effects of quitting drinking are still unfolding in his music and his life, and all are points positive.

In his music, he said he’s singing better and healthier, able to more easily get through three or four hours of being lead singer. And he’s also less concerned about the size of the crowd and more focused on the music.

“It was very significant in ways that haven’t completely played themselves out,” he said.

In his social life, it’s given him one.

“I still have a certain need for quiet and solitude,” he said. “But it isn’t like before when I’d flat-out hide from people.”

Lonnie Knight Interview
Lillian Speakman

Lonnie Knight first began playing the guitar when he was only 12 years old. Today he is recognized as a truly talented guitarist — with several Minnesota Music Awards to prove it. Throughout his career he has released eight albums; the most recent, So We Jump, was released in 2010. Knight has also put extensive effort into other artists’ creations, serving as both a producer and studio musician. A man who for years has focused his energy on music unfortunately now has a new priority.

Continue Reading.

Lonnie Knight Interview
Ray Stiles
March 1, 2002

Jokers Wild recorded three singles between 1967 and 1969 in Minnesota. Their complete album Liquid Giraffe was never released. Starting as a five man band, most of the material was recorded by the three main members: Lonnie Knight, Denny Johnson and Pete Huber. Later Lonnie Knight became guitarist of The Litter for a while, but he returned to Jokers Wild.

Huge amp stacks guaranteed a “wall of sound.” Double bass drum, cool outfits, …Brother Clark of Damin Eih, A.L.K. and Brother Clark recalls:

“In ’67 I saw two local bands that again amped up the juice, The Litter and Jokers Wild. Both bands played original music and had excellent psychedelic-raved guitar players, Zippy Caplan (Litter) and Lonnie Knight (Jokers Wild). That brought everything to a new level – original music and lead guitarists. Once I saw them, it was Hendrix, Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Roger McGuinn for me and those influences haven’t stopped.”

Interview with Denny Johnson and Lonnie Knight

We’ve talked in the past here at Blues On Stage about the wealth of musical talent residing in the Twin Cities area. One of those long time residents (more than 4 decades of playing) is Lonnie Knight. A guitarist who stands head and shoulders above many of his fellow musicians (both literally and figuratively since he is about 6’5″ and is one of those handful of exceptional players you don’t hear too much about). I overheard a musician at the Brewbaker’s guitar showcase recently comment about Lonnie’s guitar playing after seeing him for the first time, saying, “This guy is REALLY good.” That’s the type of comment you often hear when you see him play.

I caught up with Lonnie and his band, Big Shoes, at a recent Poodle Club show were we discussed doing an interview. The following is the result of that initial discussion.

Continue reading.

Ennyman’s Territory
Duluth, Minnesota
Ed Newman
July 2, 2016

A Visit with Lonnie Knight, Opening Act for the Rolling Thunder Reunion:

Saturday July 23, the Rolling Thunder Reunion will be rolling into town with a show featuring Eric Andersen and Scarlet Rivera, accompanied by Steve Addabbo and Cheryl Prashker. Lonnie Knight is on the docket to get the evening rolling as the opening act.

Knight has been playing professionally since high school. His first bands included the Castaways, the Rave-Ons (with Dick and Larry Wiegand and Harry Nehls), then Jokers Wild. He was attending the University of Minnesota when the folk boom caught him and he began performing in coffee houses and college clubs around Minnesota, eventually joining up with the Bitter End circuit out of New York City and traveling the country for a few years. When that scene dried up Knight went back to electric guitar, working with City Mouse, the Neilsen-White Band, the Hoopsnakes, and his own band, Big Shoes. He was also on staff at Sound 80 Recording Studio as a session guitarist and producer, gaining some serious cred in the Minnesota music scene along the way.

The past several years he’s been active with the Guitars for Vets free concerts in the Twin Cities as well as the fundraising concerts for the Duluth Armory. As it turns out, when it was mentioned to Knight that Eric was coming to perform here in Duluth this summer he said “Eric’s Blue River album in 1972 was a huge influence on me.” He also said he will have died and gone to heaven if he could open for Eric Andersen. On July 23 that is about to happen. 

EN: Your early groups, especially Jokers Wild…. when you look back on the “look” with the psychedelic clothes, what do you think now? Also, where did you and Clapton and the rest BUY those threads? 

Lonnie Knight: I really wish I still had some of that stuff. It fit with the times… the only outfits that make me laugh are those sequined wizard suits. Impossible to play in, extremely hot, etc. I couldn’t stand them back then, but I got outvoted. 

EN: You did recording with record labels. They assumed the risk, correct? I mean, they covered the costs. Nowadays it is totally different. Everyone rents studio space and makes albums. How did this change occur and what’s your take on all that? 

LK: I think we paid some of the studio time on the Rave-Ons and Jokers stuff. Label paid all other costs (recoupable). 

My solo albums, Family in the Wind and Song for a City Mouse, were paid for by Symposium Records. I’m pretty sure that major labels still pay for everything, but they get it all back before the artist sees dime one. 

Pro-Tools and the digital revolution made it much more affordable for anyone to record without financial backing. That has provided great opportunities for many artists to get their stuff out in front of people. But it’s still a one-in-a-million shot at getting anywhere… and big money still talks in terms of achieving big success. The more things change, the more they stay the same. 

EN: I once heard someone say they felt Townes Van Zandt was the greatest musician of our generation. I see that you worked with Townes. What made him so special? 

LK: I think that Townes was one of the best songwriters of our generation. He was at the forefront of the Texas songwriter explosion, which included Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, and later, Lyle Lovett, etc. Townes and I did a week at a place called the Rubaiyat in Dallas, TX in 1973. We were both pretty heavy drinkers at the time. I remember him as pretty quiet, but pretty open. We sat up until dawn one night and he taught me “Pancho and Lefty.” 

EN: You performed in the Armory in 1969. What was the band you were with and what was that experience like? 

LK: I know I played the Armory with Jokers Wild, and I think with the Rave-Ons as well. I loved the Armory gigs. All that natural echo…

EN: What are your interests outside of music. Clapton had cars, for example. 

LK: Photography has always interested me. I can spend days lost in Photoshop… 

EN: We’ve experienced a lot of change in our culture over a lifetime. In what ways has the information age and Internet transformed music, live performance and the industry over all? 

LK: Well, it’s all good and bad. I think the major impact has been in recording and distribution. Music has become too easy to access, and as a result has lost a lot of its mystique and a lot of its value. Sales of hard copy (CDs, etc.) have diminished, virtually everything that’s ever been recorded is available on iTunes for ten bucks a month. 

Ennyman’s Territory
Arts, Culture and Other Life Obsessions
May 5, 2014

Lonnie Knight Talks About His Life as a Musician and a Salute to the Music of Bob Dylan

Lonnie Knight is yet one more exceptional musician who will be joining a full line-up for A Salute to the Music of Bob Dylan at Sacred Heart two weekends from now, May 17. His career in music has earned him noteworthy attention and praise from critics.

EN: How long have you been playing music professionally and how did you get started?

Lonnie Knight: I’ve been playing professionally since high school… It started with Dick Roby and I playing guitar in his basement. We met a bass player (Roy Hensley) and a drummer (Denny Craswell) and decided to start a band. 

EN: Can you briefly run through your career path?

LK: I started in the Castaways, the Rave-Ons (with Dick and Larry Wiegand and Harry Nehls)… then Jokers Wild. I was attending the U of Minnesota when the folk boom caught me, and I began to do some solo work in coffee houses and college clubs around Minnesota… joined up with the Bitter End circuit out of New York City and traveled the country for a few years. When that scene dried up I went back to electric guitar, working with City Mouse, the Neilsen-White Band, the Hoopsnakes, and my own band Big Shoes. I was also on staff at Sound 80 Recording Studio as a session guitarist and producer. 

These days I work solo, in a duo with Reid Papke on bass, in my new quartet Mosquito Shoals (Reid, Gary Haberman on percussion and Laura Owen on vocals.) I play once or twice a month with the Smokin’ Section (Mike and Andy Boterman and Paul Mayasich), and occasionally with ROTU (Return of the Unexpected – Scott Sansby, Larry Wiegand, Dale Strength and Gregg Inhofer).

EN: Your guitar work seems to get high praise from the critics. How would you describe your style?

LK: Working at Sound 80 for all those years, and the constant switch between acoustic and electric has probably shaped my style more than anything. Working as a session player, you never know when you walk in what’s going to be played, so you need to develop at least a passing understanding of a number of different styles and genres. My biggest influences were probably Jeff Beck and Chet Atkins on electric, Bert Jansch and any number of fingerstyle guitarists on acoustic. I gave up the flat pick around 2003, everything I do now is fingerpicked, and that does make a big difference in approach to solos and rhythm patterns. 

EN: How long have you been playing with Mosquito Shoals? What kind of music do they play?

LK: Mosquito Shoals has been together for about a year now. It’s a hybrid acoustic/electric band. Gary plays everything from full drum kit to congas, djembe and hand percussion. Lots of original songs, and covers from artists as diverse as Joni Mitchell, Toto, Mark Knopfler… anything that strikes our fancy. 

EN: In what ways has Dylan’s music made an impact on you and your life?

LK: Dylan has been a huge influence, more as a lyricist than anything else. He opened the door to a whole new world of songwriting. 

EN: How did you get hooked up with A Salute to the Music of Bob Dylan

LK: I was working at Sound 80 when Dylan came in to record “Blood on the Tracks.” Kevin Odegard and Dylan’s brother put the band together, using the Sound 80 session staff and a few other people. As luck would have it, I was on the road doing concerts when the album was recorded. Kevin and Billy Hallquist are long-time friends of mine, and when the shows began to branch beyond just the original session players, I was invited to step in. It’s been great fun ever since. 

EN: Do you have some favorite Dylan songs or a favorite album?

LK: Too many good songs to name. I think my favorite albums are “Highway 61 Revisited,” “Blood on the Tracks,” “Blonde on Blonde.” I also still love his early acoustic solo stuff.

The Entertainer
Vol. 1, Issue 19
May 28, 1976
Chris Evans

Lonnie Knight: “What I’d like to do more than anything is just let go. Drop into the abyss. But I’ll deal with it. Drink a little bit, hang out a little bit and then write a couple of songs about it.”

Lonnie Knight can’t leave the stage in Austin, Texas without at least one encore. The audience won’t let him. In Minneapolis he can get very favorable reviews for a warm up show at Orchestra Hall and later that same evening play a guest spot at Ichabod’s which nobody listens to.

“I don’t want to say the wrong thing, but it seems no one can make it out of Minnesota. Music in this town, for some reason, is a second-class art form. You have to go to someplace else and accomplish something there before you get any credibility here. In Minneapolis people have to be told what’s good. They deny the fact that they have their own music and when you go into most of the bars downtown that are making money all you hear is disco music. It’s sad. I see a lot of musicians either leave town or wind up doing something else.”

“When I was a very young kid there was a guitar player in a local band called The Accents. His name was Kenny Sands and he was the best guitar player I had ever heard. I listened to him every chance I could, snuck out of my house because I wasn’t old enough to go downtown. I was 12 years old, 13, and the man blew me away. He really affected what I did for a number of years. I wanted to be just like him. Now he’s working in some club band, playing Doobie Brothers tunes and just punching a time clock.”

“I was ready to get out a few weeks ago. I was going to move to Austin, Texas. I said, ‘To hell with Minneapolis.’ Then I realized that I had given this town ten years of my life and I do believe in Minneapolis. It has the talent and studios to become a major recording center and I think it’s high time that people who feel that maybe they are on the verge of making it don’t leave, but stay here and slug it out.”

So we have him for the moment, a musician of polished talent and gentle sensibilities. There is a confidence and poetry to his second album, Song for a City Mouse, that justifies his growing reputation as an artist of considerable potential. His lyrics are refreshingly crisp and his music subtly structured. It inexorably and quite naturally becomes more enjoyable with each listening.

“The album isn’t selling that well, but we’ve got what you could call a turntable hit that’s receiving a lot of air play across the country. It’s opening some doors. I have a couple of irons in the fire that I am not going to talk about.”

“I think one of the problems with maintaining myself in Minnesota is that there is no mystique anymore. I think I have been overexposed in Minneapolis just from living here for so long. The people that are interested in me know me, have dinner with me. There has to be a certain separation between the artist and his audience. I’m not saying this in an egotistical sense, but you need a certain mystique.”

Lonnie Knight does not pass unnoticed. He is taller than doorways, a Viking with his wiry red beard and tangled blonde hair. But a cowboy, too, in blue jeans and leather boots with country-stewed folk songs and just a bright glimmer of smartass in his eyes.

Born in New Jersey, he grew up here in Minneapolis. He began playing with the Rave-Ons in high school and then joined Jokers Wild, to some the best local rock band the cities ever produced.

But the Jokers’ talent was onstage, in front of the crowds, and could not be captured in the recording studios. Their records were poor and Lonnie Knight stayed with them for three years before turning to the acoustic guitar.

“When I first got into acoustic music, I decided to go to the Village (Greenwich Village) and do the folk singer trip. So I did. I spent a few weeks there, I went around and did all the hootenannies and showcases. I’d get up and play three songs. I got a couple of gigs out of it and the pay scale at the time for new people in the Village was five bucks a night, a sandwich and all the coffee you could drink. Not an easy way to stay alive.”

“I used to get real bugged about playing bars, until I sat down and realized that James Taylor or Bob Dylan could be sitting on the stage and if they didn’t know who he was they wouldn’t give him any more of a response than they were giving me. I used to rant and rave and curse people out and say, ‘What the hell are you doing here if you don’t want to listen?’ But people go to bars for lots of reasons, I have no right to say that.”

He recorded with Mojo Buford’s blues band and toured with Chad Mitchell and Friends as their lead guitarist. He has made a series of college appearances which keep taking him back to Texas.

“Texas is neat. I guess in a way it relates to the hassles I’ve been having here. They seem to take things a little more seriously down there, if that makes any sense.

“I went down and saw how lazy I was getting up here. I realized that if I was going to accomplish anything in Austin I was going to have to work damn hard all the time and it changed my philosophy about my music and got me off my ass.

“Austin has its own sound, most of it is progressive country music and the audiences are geared to hearing original material. I don’t do much country stuff, but I suppose you could construe me as real progressive country if you wanted to and I got onstage there and I don’t know when I’ve had responses like that.”

He made a notable but uneven debut with his first album Family in the Wind. What was lacking in his lyrics and his voice he more than compensated for with his tight, clean guitar work.
Song for a City Mouse holds together much better. The lyrics and the music are maturer, richer and there is a sense of Knight stepping into his own. The title cut, “Railroad Hat” and “But the Blues” are fine songs, strong examples of Knight’s prowess both as a guitar player and songwriter. The voice is better, still strained and a little breathless, but perfectly set on songs like ”Homecoming ” and Dick Pinney’s “Motherlode.”

“I like my second album, even though I have strange feelings of compromise about it. I was trying to do something that had more of a commercial sound, that would have more immediate acceptance and in one sense I’m real happy about it and in another a lot of it is not me.”

“By and large I’m happy with everything I’ve done because I can see the progression. Right now I’m trying to get out of myself a little bit and write about other things. For a long time, I just walked around in a shell and then I decided ‘what the hell, it didn’t matter if I felt uncomfortable in certain situations; the point is to leave yourself open to those experiences.’ That affected my whole life, messed up my life in a sense. My wife and I just split up because there’s no way to communicate to her what happens to me when I’m gone or for her to tell me what happened at home.”

“Songwriting is therapy. Like this divorce. I’m still suffering from that. What I’d like to do more than anything is just let go. Drop into the abyss. But I’ll deal with it. Drink a little bit. Hang out a little bit and then write a couple of songs about it.”

He is very nicely primed, right on the edge of something he has worked toward all his life. Even now, his legs unfolding like pipelines from under the table, there is a sense of newly realized potential.

“I don’t know how big I would like to get. Big enough, I guess, so I could stop worrying about money. I’d rather have a small number of people understand what I am doing and like it than have mass acceptance. I don’t know if I’m really that interested in becoming a huge star.”

But he smiles.

“Of course, I am.”

Raisin’ The Union Jack Over Richfield With The Rave-Ons
Excerpts from the book: Lost and Found #3 (A ’50’s/’60’s Rock & Roll ‘Zine)
by Jim Oldsberg
2016

Number 3 in Jim Oldsberg’s fine books telling the history of Midwest rock. This issue features bands of Illinois and Minnesota, including stories and photos of bands including Long John & the Silvermen, Nobody’s Children, C.A. Quintet, Kan Dells, and Stillroven, among others.

• ASIN: ‎B005LKOLHW
• Publisher: Berg Brothers Publishing (January 1, 1994)
• Paperback:144 pages

Starting out as a Buddy Holly/Chuck Berry/Ventures cover band in the early 1960s, the Rave-Ons of Richfield, Minnesota, quickly made the transformation into a Beatle sound-alike quartet both in their tight, vocal two- and three-part harmonies and also in their visual appearance. Between 1965-66 they recorded 12 songs (nine originals and three covers), six of which came out on three separate 45s. All carried a “definite” British feel to them. By late 1966, they changed their style for a third and final time, this time going the harder-edged Music Machine/Yardbirds route.

During the winter of 1962, Dick Wiegand (guitar), his younger brother Larry (bass), Dick Thomas (drums) and Terry “Chris” Katsmedas (guitar), all Richfield High School students, formed a music group called the Knights. Chuck Berry and the Ventures were primary influences for the band as they strummed their way locally around town for small jobs at pizza parlors, school dances, etc. In January, 1963, Terry left the Knights to join the Navy and Lonnie Knight was asked to join.

“I had been with Denny Craswell and Dick Roby in a band called the Castaways (pre-‘Liar Liar’),” recalled Lonnie, “but we didn’t have a bass player. I think I met the Wiegand brothers at Denny Craswell’s place once. I was just knocked out because their group had a bass player! We were the Knights for only a short period of time after I joined. We were also the Werewolves as I recall. There was a band out of the Arlington/Green Isle area called Robby & the Rave-Ons that were pretty established on the local ballroom circuit. Their drummer, Skip Kovacs, was from Richfield. I don’t know the reason, but Robby left the Rave-Ons. At approximately the same time, Dick Thomas quit school, joined the Marines and left our band. Skip Kovacs got Larry, Dick and I (because we were all Richfield guys) to join him. After Robby had left, Skip retained the rights to the Rave-Ons name, so that’s what we became.”

By mid-’64, Skip Kovacs left the Rave-Ons. Drummer Harry Nehls was asked to fill in. Harry was in the same grade as Dick Wiegand, lived about two blocks from Skip Kovacs and had gained experience by playing in another Richfield group called the Crestmen. “Our bands had crossed paths before,” said Harry Nehls. “The Rave-Ons were good, I thought; I wanted to play with them.”

The Rave-Ons started out completely instrumental, playing all the cool Ventures and Astronauts tunes. Dick and Lonnie shared the lead guitar duties, alternating from song to song. Both were quite talented – but each in a different style. “We really had the best of both worlds, I thought,” stated Harry. “I borrowed a microphone and mic stand from Roy Hensley who had since joined the Castaways.” recounted Lonnie. “I got to be the Rave-Ons lead singer because I had the only microphone. Larry and Harry soon added background harmonies. Dick never sang, however.”

“We absolutely tried for the English sound. We used to go around to gigs and talk with a Brit accent. We wore Beatle suits and did a ton of the Fab Four’s songs. Larry did the best version of I’m Down I’ve ever heard!” Harry —“I remember we had a little battle going on between us and the Underbeats (in 1965) when “Rubber Soul” came out over who could learn the entire LP the quickest and be doing the tunes on stage first. We beat them!”

“In late 1964 Lonnie, Larry and Harry had written two tunes: I Want You To Love Me and Everybody Tells Me,” said Dick. “We, like every other local group in ’64, wanted to be where the Trashmen had recorded, so we took a demo tape down to George Garrett at his Nic-O-Lake Music Store. He thought there was some possibility so he booked us time at Kay Bank Recording Studio. Garrett brought the Rave-Ons into the studio, produced the session and paid for all the records that were pressed. The two songs became the second release on his newly formed (in collaboration with David Anthony Productions) Twin Town label in early 1965.

I Want You To Love Me had a ton of commercial appeal with its lovelorn vocals and catchy guitar riffs and quickly became a top-draw favorite on local AM giant KDWB. “We were kind of upset when the records came out, however,” said Dick, “because they didn’t come out on Garrett like the Trashmen. We thought, “What’s this Twin Town thing? George Garrett was a real character.”

“A couple of months after the first release, Garrett had us back in the studio again,” said Larry. “We’d written another song called Whenever, and George gave us two songs he’d run across, Love Pill and Mrs. Brown. George had a tremendous ear for commercial appeal and had heard Mrs. Brown on an early Herman’s Hermits import album — before it was available over here. We recorded it immediately and were definitely going to release it as our next single, but for some reason George couldn’t secure the release rights to it. The song got shelved indefinitely.”

“I don’t remember who had done the original version of Love Pill. All I know was that it was some R&B group under the Motown banner. When he played us Love Pill for the first time, it was back at the time when drugs were just being talked about. He handed us this song about a pill: ‘Here’s a pill to make you eat / Here’s a pill to make you sleep / …to make you fall in love.’ That’s Garrett — that’s the way he thought. He seemed to be in tune with what was going on culturally. I don’t know if he was ahead of himself, or just out of step.”

Love Pill/Whenever was the second Rave-Ons release on the Twin Town label in 1965. The ballad Whenever took over the local chart action where “I Want You To Love Me” had left off. It got played on the radio quite a bit. To help things out, Whenever, Love Pill and I Want You To Love Me were included on the 1965-66 Minneapolis compilation series “Top Teen Bands” Vol. 1, 2 & 3, respectively. Dick — “We never saw a penny from all the records. The only way we ever made any money was when we got booked more from the advanced promotion.”

“We were at Schleif’s Little City one night, listening to the Underbeats,” said Larry, “and David Anthony, the booking agent, was at the door handing out tickets. He was working the door for commission for the Underbeats, I think. He was conversing with the incoming crowds that he was the guy that got the Trashmen started. I was listening to David as I went through the door and I started thinking to myself that this might be an opportunity for the Rave-Ons.”

“We’d been working with booking agent Tim Kehr at the time and I happened to have one of his cards with our name on it so I posed the question to David – ‘Are you looking for bands to promote?’ He replied, ‘I can get you here, I can get you there, etc.,’ so I gave him a card. I didn’t think anything else of it. The next day David called up and said he had a bunch of out-of-town ballrooms that he could get us into if we were interested.” Dick – “At the time we were looking for more work but weren’t too thrilled with having to pay David (or anybody else for that matter) a 15% commission. But we eventually decided to work with him.”

Lonnie – “In 1965, my senior year of high school, my dad got transferred to Detroit, Michigan. Left in a lurch, the rest of the guys picked up another guitar player under the provision that he had to leave after I finished up school and came back. I remember Dick, Larry and Harry flying out to Detroit to attend my graduation. The next day the four of us flew back to Minneapolis and started out again.”

In the winter of 1965 the songwriting duo of Larry Wiegand and Lonnie Knight came to bat again, hitting a winner with Baby Don’t Love Me. George Garrett had had a falling out of sorts with the Kay Bank Recording Studio and David Anthony. The recording session was bundled in Garrett’s recording studio basement below his record store. “We needed a flip side,” said Harry. “Garrett called me up on the phone and together he, Tony Caire (Garrett’s right-hand man) and I came up with The Line, which was a parody of a then-current dance craze. I remember that during the recording of  Baby Don’t Love Me Lonnie had left the room while we were working on our vocal overdub parts. He was in an adjacent room and after a minute or so we heard  Baby Don’t Love Me/The Line was released on the Re-Car label in the summer of 1966. Despite the Rave-Ons trying to push the superior Baby Don’t… side, local disc jockeys latched onto The Line side. The record sold nowhere near the quantity of their first two releases, however.

“In the summer of 1966 we heard about Dove Recording Studio’s new facilities in Bloomington.” said Larry. “Peter Steinberg was one of the studio’s resident producers, working with the T.C. Atlantic, the Underbeats and the C.A. Quintet, among others. We approached him and he said, ‘Yeah, I’ll spend some time with you,’ or something like that. Lonnie had written three new tunes: I’ll Come Back To You, What’s His Name Today and I’ll Never Let You Go. I’d written one, The Girl I Adore, and we had worked up a Chuck Berry number, Talkin’ About You, all of which we had practiced in Harry’s garage until we thought we had them right. We went in, cut the five tunes, bam bam. We knew there was an acetate of the session that had been cut, but we never saw it. That was the end of that. Steinberg lost interest in us – actually we got lost in the shuffle behind his other ‘golden’ bands.”

“Somewhere along the line we started working with other groups on David Anthony’s roster,” stated Harry. “We backed up a three-piece girl group called the Luvs – they’d sing, we’d play the instruments. Bruce Brantseg, who worked as an agent for David Anthony Productions, was technically handling the Luvs (along with the Morticians and the Ivymen). Bruce was their guy. David was ours. Through the Luvs’ connection, however, we got to know Bruce pretty well. He started to take a personal interest in us.”

“Eventually Bruce more or less took us over,” said Larry. “That didn’t seem to bother David at the time but within a year-and-a-half (when we became the South 40 and our sights were set quite a bit higher) he and Bruce got into several disagreements. In retrospect I think our band let those guys (especially Bruce) have too much control of our direction. We should have kept it more to ourselves and things might have gone a little smoother later on.”

By the fall of 1966 a musical split had developed between the Rave-Ons’ members. Larry, Dick and Harry wanted to do more Mitch Ryder, Music Machine, Yardbirds-type music and Lonnie was heading in the Donovan, John Sebastian, Bob Dylan mode. One day a meeting was called between Dick, Larry, Harry and Bruce Brantseg in one room while down the hall David Anthony was simultaneously talking to Lonnie. Anthony pulled Dave Wagner out of the Joker’s Wild and replaced him with Lonnie Knight. Dave Wagner was placed with Harry, Dick and Larry – the end result being the hard-rock blues band, the South 40. Harry — “I liked what we did in the South 40, but I don’t think we had as much fun as in the Rave-Ons. Everything turned very business-like. I’d been so comfortable writing songs with Lonnie. I really didn’t have that same partnering in the South 40.”

For the next year-and-a-half the South 40 honed their form of hard-edged rock, recording two 45s and the “Live At Someplace Else” LP in 1968. When they made their metamorphosis into Crow, Harry Nehls left his old cohorts (Dick and Larry) and went on to the T.C. Atlantic, playing on their final single Judgement Train. Lonnie Knight recorded three 45s over the next two years with his five-piece group, Jokers Wild. In the 1970s Knight embarked on a local solo career. Today he owns his own recording studio in Minneapolis. The two Wiegand brothers began a meteoric rise and fall from fame in Crow, releasing four LPs and a plethora of 45s. For complete details on the South 40 and Crow, pick up “Evil Woman – The Best Of Crow” cassette/CD on Era Records.

Rave-Ons Discography

45s

LPs

The Rave-Ons Recordings In Review

The Rave-Ons didn’t just wear their John, Paul, George and Ringo influence on their sleeves, they flew it from their flagpoles! Most every song the band wrote and recorded draws obviously from specific Lennon/McCartney numbers, circa 1964/65. While the Rave-Ons lacked originality, they made up for it with tight harmonies and catchy, well-written tunes.

1. I Want You To Love Me (written by Harry and Lonnie). A nice, sparse uptempo garage/beat number. Intro guitar riff is “borrowed” from La Bamba.
2. Everybody Tells Me (written by Larry and Lonnie) – Cool, moody shaker. The alternating solo/harmony vocal lines are a fine touch. Shades of the Fab Four in the brief guitar break.
3. Love Pill (Larson, Marcellino, Greenbach) – Excellent, Mersey-influenced Motown cover. This could have come out of Liverpool in ’
4. Whenever (written by Lonnie, Harry and George Garrett) – Pleasant beat ballad, a la This Boy.
5. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter (Trevor Peacock) – Not available for review.
6. Baby Don’t Love Me (written by Larry and Lonnie) – An amalgam of the Beatles and Phil Spector! The opening guitar part is a variation of I Feel Fine. There are traces of The Night Before in the melody and snippets of various other Beatle tunes abound. Add the Then He Kissed Me guitar motif and you have the Rave-Ons most complex non-original original.
7. The Line (written by Harry, George Garrett and Tony Caire) – R&B dance-step shouter with hoarse vocals, handclaps, harp and fuzz guitar. Tuff, brief lead solo but all-in-all repetitive and out of character.
8. I’ll Come Back To You (written by Lonnie) – This could pass for an unreleased ’65 Lennon composition, with great Lennon-like vocals from Knight.
9. What’s His Name Today (written by Lonnie) – Nice mid-tempo folk-pop that actually doesn’t recall you-know-who!
10. The Girl I Adore (written by Larry) – More mid-tempo harmony beat sounds.
11. I’d Never Let You Go (written by Lonnie) – You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away rip, with tambourine and harmonica. Possible lawsuit grounds with this one!
12. Talkin’ About You (Chuck Berry) – Competent Mersey-influenced version of Berry’s standard with wailin’ harmonica and harsh Lennon-like vocals and screams.