In the spring of 1970, I moved from Tampa to New York City to launch what I hoped would be a successful career in music.  This was the turning point of commitment to this endeavor and I thought that being in New York would place me in the center of the record business and to perhaps follow in the footsteps of many icons of American popular music.  From Bob Dylan to Fred Neil to Steven Stills and David Crosby, I was going to tap into Greenwich Village, the epicenter of American art to help me find my path of self expression.

My apartment on Washington Place between Washington Square and Sixth Ave. was the headquarters of this campaign, and it was there that I formed a plan and musical relationships that have lasted a lifetime.

From my apartment in New York I started making contacts with the folk clubs in the village and started a series of personal performances at such places as the Gaslight, Folk City, and the Cafe' Wha. Performing in these clubs and writing some of my first songs was an exciting introduction to the professional music scene. During this time I wrote songs of home sickness and of longing for my loved ones. The songs that were written during this time were Knoxville Girl, Southern Nights, Girl From Ohio and others. I got a job at the Strand bookstore and met a lot of interesting people and the money helped pay my bills. At this same time, Hughie Thomasson was living on the Upper West Side with an emerging folk singer from Tampa named Milton Carroll. Milton had a record out on RCA, and Hughie was playing lead guitar with him. Milton was and is quite talented but  this record would go pretty much unnoticed. Although Milton and I were friends I wouldn't meet Hughie for another two years...

In the spring of 1970 I was approached by a man that managed an act on Epic records. I can't remember his name but he took me to Epic and introduced me to Don Ellis then head of A and R for the label. I played couple of songs for him in his office on my acoustic guitar and he was impressed and agreed to give me an opportunity to cut a four song demo session at the Columbia Records studio. Needless to say I was thrilled and immediately had visions of retracing Bob Dylan's footsteps. I remember going home and rehearsing my songs and making the decisions what to cut. I got two friends to record with me; One was Frank Micare, a guy I met in the clubs who played great and had a really good ear for harmony. The other was Richard Lepps, the violin player from the duet Baldwin and Lepps. He was one of my heroes and it was he who inspired me to play mandolin. We cut Knoxville Girl, Southern Nights, Girl From Ohio, and one other I can't remember. How exciting recording in the same studio that Bringing It All Back Home was cut in. The session was the highlight of my short life !!! I was in New York at Columbia Studios recording my music DREAMS COME TRUE...

It was about this time that I met Jim Fish through my friend Frank Micare. Jim was living outside Albany, N.Y. and he came to NYC to meet me and play together and see what that was about. He was a devout Clarence White fan and we both were big Byrds fans as well. We hit it off immediately and I was so thrilled to play with someone of his talent. I wanted to put a band together and Jim was the first and most important part of that effort. I taught him all the songs I'd written and we also sang everything we both loved. We would stay up every night till four in the morning playing music,Jim on his guitar and me on the mandolin. We had no money and I vividly remember Jim and I sharing a pound of spaghetti and a small jar of Ragu' every day just to survive. I met Ray Gerber at the Cafe' Wha and Sean Emmitt through friends and that was the beginning of the group Sienna. Ray played Sax and flute and Sean played bass. I remember going over to Sean's house one day and seeing an Oscar on a shelf in his living room.I was mind blown seeing that famous statue just sitting there and Sean told me his mom won it for best supporting actress in the film version of "Streetcar Named Desire." His mom was Kim Hunter and his dad was a famous TV producer who had a huge hit with a show called "That Was the Week That Was." That show introduced George Carlin to the world as the hippie dippie weatherman, and it became clear to me that I was traveling in pretty in pretty hip circles.

At about this time a friend of mine from Tampa approached me with an offer to come back to Tampa and let him manage the group and help me fill any missing personnel in the groups line up. His name was Ben Brown and his company was called Community Workshop. There plan was to showcase us for colleges and universities and use us to play some political rallies that played into the anti war movement that was prevalent at the time. I subletted my apartment and we piled into a van and headed to Florida. The band consisted of Jim Fish, Ray Gerber, Sean Emmitt, myself, and a roadie who worked with me at the Strand bookstore Patrick McDonough. When we arrived in Tampa I was introduced to Monty Yoho who was going to play drums with us and that was the beginning of Sienna. We played a few showcases and a date here and there but Sean grew home sick and made an early departure back to New York. Monty called Frank O'Keefe and he took Sean's place. At that point in 1972 we had three out of five of the band members who would go on to cut the Outlaws first album. We played a few more shows and the bands career was highlighted by a performance in support of Dr. Benjamin Spock's anti war presidential bid at a public park adjacent to the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach that year.

Hughie had more of New York than he could stand and returned to Tampa. He looked up his old friends Monty and Frank who were playing with me in Sienna. Our band was running out of gas due to lack of work and the organization around us losing focus so Hughie, Frank, Monty, and myself put a new group together. Jim went back to Albany and I'm not sure what ever became of Ray Gerber. So the year was 1973 and we had this four piece band called Sienna and we started playing anywhere that would book us. Later that year we changed our name to the Outlaws and took up residence in Cocoa Beach at a club called the Pillow Talk Lounge at the Satellite Motel. It was run by a retired air force fighter pilot named Tom Burkhead. He paid us 500.00 dollars a week and gave us two motel rooms. We played four sets a night Monday thru Thursday and five sets a night Friday and Saturday. We would get off work at 3:30 am on weekends and go up to the Lamppost Lounge in Cape Canaveral because it stayed open 24 hrs. a day. Our drink of choice was called a Greenie Weenie!!! It was a shot of 151 proof rum and a shot of 100 proof Chartreuse....Yummy!! I can remember coming out of the Lamppost drunk out of our minds and pulling out our units and peeing right there on A1A in front of all the Nasa employees on their way to work. Oh to be young and in a Rock group!!!  

By now it was 1973 and we played four piece for about six or eight months. Hughie kept saying that Billy was going to move back from Colorado and join the band but nothing was happening. We played a bar in Tampa called the Collage. It was the underground hip radical place out near the University of south Florida and we were a favorite at the place. We started to develop quite a following in Tampa and we began to believe in the dream!!! It was some time in late 73 that Billy finally showed up in Tampa and joined the band. We bought a 1965 Chevy truck with a 12 foot box and a power lift gate to haul our equipment in. We would ride in the back of the truck with the equipment and our sound engineer Rex Ray our road manager David Cloud and stage manager Freddie Cullaro would ride up front. We toured like this playing. every club in the southeast and as far north as Ohio. By 1974 I had met Charlie Brusco and we hired him to be our manager. One night in Nashville Tn. we opened a show for the up and coming band from Jacksonville Lynyrd Skynyrd. There producer at the time Al Cooper was with them and he and Ronnie thought we were great. Ronnie went back to his manager Alan Walden in Macon Ga. and told him he had to check us out. He formed a partnership with Charlie and they co-managed us. Alan help sign us to the Paragon Agency in Macon and with a national booking agency we started touring with Charlie Daniels, and Lynyrd Skynyd and others. We had our band personnel together we had great original music and now a manager and an agent...Hot Damn here we come!!!!!!!!!

We continued to play a mix of clubs and concerts getting our music tight and developing our different stage personalities. Sometime in late summer of 1974 Bob Fieden, the  A and R director for the then new Arista label, flew to Orlando and saw us open a show with Skynyrd at the Orlando Sports Stadium. We impressed him enough for him to go back to New York and report to Clive Davis that we were quite good and probably a band that he should come and see. A few days later we were doing a show with Skynyrd in Columbus, Ga. and Clive flew in on his private jet and saw us play. After the show he committed to signing the band to his new label and we became the first band signed to Arista Records. Clive wanted Paul Rothschild to come and see the band and see if he liked us and perhaps produce our first record. Paul of Doors and Janice Joplin fame caught up with us at a club in Chicago about two months later. We hit it off and the decision was made for him to produce our album that May in L.A.. He flew to Tampa in April and we rehearsed with Paul out at a  summer camp a friend of ours managed. We set up in a screened in bunk house with all the bunk beds pushed back and worked there for about a week. We decided which songs we were going to record and we worked on the arrangements. Our agency booked a few shows on the way to L.A. and we pulled into Hollywood in our 75 Dodge Maxie Wagon van that May. We stayed at the Tropicana motel at the corner of La Cieniga and Santa Monica Blvd.. Other bands living there at the time were Bonnie Raitt's band and Pure Prairie League. There was a famous coffee shop directly adjacent to the motel called Duke's. This was a popular stop for the hip Hollywood set and we saw our share of stars as they came and went. We recorded at the Elecktra records studio on La Cieniga. Fritz Richmond was Paul's engineer and we got to work making what would be the Outlaws first album.

After we finished our first album we went right back on the road. About a month after we finished the album Clive Davis had us go back in the studio this time in Atlanta and cut "Song In The breeze" for the album. Paul Rothschild flew into Atlanta and we cut it at Web 4 studio.  By August the album was set to be released and we happened to be in Denver at the time playing a club called Ebbits Field. We were opening for Bob Seger and Sugarloaf and by the end of the week we were headlining and recording the show live on a local Denver rock station. We also did two in store appearances at local record stores, one of which was hosted by Cactus Mosher who went on to play drums in the country band Highway 101. We got immediate air play with our new album on album oriented rock stations and the record started its long climb up the charts. We signed on to do a coast to coast tour with the "Doobie Brothers" This was the fall of 1975, and from that point on we would never be the same and we would live our adult lives out on the road!!!!

Story Behind the Song:  Knoxville Girl

This song started out as an Appalachian folk song from East Tennessee from sometime about the 1920's or '30's.  It was a song of public domain that I learned from a duet named "Baldwin and Lepps" from the Tampa area.  They were quite popular as street musicians in New York and went on to record an album for Vanguard Records.  I rewrote the verses and put a bluegrass musical backdrop to the song and recorded it on the Outlaws first album.  It remains a concert favorite to this day.

Story Behind the Song:  Song In The Breeze

Song in the Breeze was a last minute addition to the first album due in part to Clive Davis' insistence. He thought it had hit potential and he wanted it on the record. Because the record was already finished we had to record it in Atlanta. Paul Rothchild flew in and we recorded it about three weeks after the rest of the album. The song was written about a year earlier and I was writing about separation from loved ones. I wrote it by myself which the way I worked back then and I think it was interesting musically. The musical outro was edited out of the record to make it more programmable for radio. In the demo recorded in Sheffield, Al. a year earlier and in the live arrangement the longer version was always played.