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MP3 The Nomads & Friends - Evolution
17 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Album Rock, ROCK: Pub Rock
Details:
The Nomads were a rock&roll band based in Mount Airy,N.C. Our playing area included North and South Carolina,Virginia and Tennessee. We played at large VFW buildings, night clubs, fraternity parties, skating rinks(at night), dance clubs and outdoor concerts. Audiences ranged from 250 to 2500 or more people. We entered the Mount Airy "Battle Of The Bands" where we competed against seven other bands. The audience for that was appx. 800 people. We also entered the North Carolina "State Battle Of The Bands". I forget how many bands competed in that but they were from all across North Carolina. We finished second in that contest but would probably have finished first if we had not had equipment problems during our second performance and if one of the female judges had not been offended by the "sexually suggestive" lyrics contained on one of the original songs that we performed. We put out a number of original recordings locally but never got around to recording the above mentioned song. We got a significant amount of airplay at several radio stations and all the records we placed in the record stores sold out. If we had thought about it at the time we could have probably sold a lot more records if we had more copies ordered and offered them for sale at the places we played. One of the local records we released-"Thoughts Of A Madman b/w From Zero Down" was the number one song played on the jukebox at one of the skating rinks for an entire year. We played on one of the areas more popular television music shows and we were also asked to be the backing band for Bo Diddly at one of his performances. We were approached by a promoter to be one of the bands at a large outdoor concert but turned down the offer when he said all the bands were donating their performances and none of them were getting paid. We later found out that one of the bands that performed was "The Allman Brothers Band". This was about the time they had their first big selling record release. Our manager was also contacted by someone who owned a night club in one of the midwestern states that wanted to book us for two months and would have paid for our lodging in addition to paying us to perform. We always made decisions by a group vote and I was only one of two that wanted to do it. The rest of the band thought it would be too boring playing that long at the same place. I saw it as an opportunity to continue to get more accomplished musically and to write more more original songs in the time that we would not be performing. I''m not quite sure how but Double Shot Records located in Los Angeles,California got hold of a copy of one of our later recordings titled "Willowgreen" and wanted to sign us to their label for a national release. However, they wanted us to either go to Los Angeles(at their expense)and go into the studio there to up-tempo the song or go back to Reflection Sound Studios in N.C. and do it. Again I was the only one who wanted to go to Los Angeles. So we went back to Reflection Sounds and did an up-tempo version of the song which none of us at the time liked. We sent the tape to Los Angeles for it to be mastered there. We had changed our name to Blu-Erebus at the time because we had signed with Hit Attractions booking agency and they said there were too many bands using "The Nomads" and that would create confusion. Double Shot Records thought Blu-Erebus sounded too strange so they changed the name of the band to "Willowgreen" and the name of the song to "Fields Of Peppermint". They released it nationally and it got favorable reviews in both Billboard and Cashbox record magazines and made it as high as appx. 120 on the music charts. The song also became one of the top five most requested airplay songs at numerous radio stations across the U.S. Meanwhile we had discovered that we could get just as many gigs without Hit Attractions as with them so we stopped using them.
In 1985 we were contacted by the owner of Crypt Records. He had come into possession of one of our records and wanted us to send to him any records, tapes, pictures and any biographical information about the band. He said he wanted to release an album of our songs. We talked it over and decided that we would send whatever we had to him. After he finished the album he sent a copy of it to each one of us. We had no idea that he was going to include on the album four cover versions of other artists songs. These four must have been from some live recordings at early stages in our development and to be honest were not all that good when compared to the original. I think that someone who was associated with one or more of these four songs got in touch with him and demanded that he stop selling the album. We did not think much more about it at the time. In 2005 I sold my fathers acoustic Gibson guitar(which turned out to be worth a lot more than I ever thought it would). A few months before this I had been contacted by various people who tracked me down using the White Pages. They suggested that I put out a cd of just The Nomads songs. I had taken the Crypt LP and some other songs that were on tape and had all the original songs re-mastered to remove as much as possible any scratches,pops etc. I gave a copy of this cd to the person who bought my fathers guitar. Through one of his friends(Lightening Wales) who listened to the cd I found out that there was a website located in Illinois that was looking for any information on the song "Thoughts Of A Madman" and the rock band that recorded it. I got in touch with the website and did an on-line interview there and also sent a copy of the cd to him which he said he really enjoyed. The EVOLUTION cd is a re-mastered version of some of the original songs on the Crypt LP plus some songs that the band members did later. In that context it cannot be viewed as just "garage music" because it contains some "ballad like" material, a psychedelic song, rock&roll and even a country song.
The band members consisted of Jerry Martin on bass guitar and vocals, Bruce Evans on guitar and vocals, Mike Badgett on drums, Mike Beason on keyboards and vocals and Larry Deatherage on guitar and vocals. We had a great time as a band and remain very close friends. We get together every once in a while to enjoy each others company and talk about the "old days". We had some interesting times. A couple of times we were actually shot at. And of course we at times were offered different kinds of drugs which we kindly declined. All in all though a great time.
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