Page 81 - Been There… Done That!

Been There... Done That!
the Greek” came by the office and I told Voss I was able to put a new group together, so he asked me to come work for him for a while. Voss said, “I can give you a chance and you can use the club at night after hours to audition musicians.”
I took him up on his offer and soon had the use of a 500-seat nightclub with sound system, lights, the whole damn place from two to six in the morning. It was during the auditioning in San Francisco that I met drummer Keith Wagner, who would join the band I formed and then I hired a bass player. We got ready to work as a trio under the name of Gary Graham.
We rehearsed in the Off Broadway nightly and my throat was getting better every day. One night Voss sat at the bar and listened to us for about an hour and then walked up to the stage and said, “Practice is over, I have a club on Broadway that needs a band and you start tomorrow night.” I looked at Keith and he said, “Let’s go,” and away we went. It was at a club called Tipsy’s and we played there through the summer of 1966.
We had worked together enough that Keith could tell by my body language what I was going to do next. He was undoubtedly a tremendous asset in getting me where I needed to go and he never minded being on the back line. Keith in the Bahamas, in Florida, in Washington, D.C., Missouri, California or even the Far East with a one-year stop in Hawaii, he always answered the call. Keith is a great musician and friend who is now happily retired in Idaho.
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