A Cautionary Tale of Mis-spent Youth

My name is Steve and I play the bass guitar and sing. I do other things as well, but these two are the ones I enjoy most. I've been around a long, long time.. playing lots of different styles of music, both original and cover. I entered the club scene in the early 70s at the tender age of 18, playing with The Fabulous Downbeats, a Hartford area institution. I was going to music school at the time and was living at the Hartford Seminary, which was exactly what it sounds like, a seminary minus the nuns. There was one phone for the 60+ students that resided there, and one night I found a barely decipherable message taped to my door from some guy named Frank DeChichio. Turns out this guy was a drummer from New Britain, CT who had heard about this badass cat from Hartford who might be perfect for the new band he was forming. I auditioned and got the gig, and the seeds of Oreo were sown. Oreo was a funk band, covering artists such as AWB, Tower, and the Meters to name a few. We chose Oreo because we were originally all white playing black music, a clever twist of what some might consider a racial slur. We were young and innocent, though.. and certainly meant no harm. We were extremely popular, and played all over New England, spending big chunks of our summers at Misquamicut Beach, Rhode Island, often playing opposite other New England favorites including Beaver Brown, PF & The Flyers, and 805. After disco had killed the funk scene, Oreo became more of a top 40 band and I split to join another area band called Cryer. This was in 1980, and heavy rock n' roll was making a strong comeback with bands like Van Halen leading the charge. Cryer embraced this music and lifestyle, enduring wardrobe phases which included leather, spandex, leg-warmers, and tasteful combinations of all these elements (see below). I toured with Cryer for 5+ years, opening for numerous national acts including Aerosmith, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, and many others. We played very loud and got very high, often at the same time. We were on the road constantly, covering venues from Maine to Delaware, often not returning home for weeks at a time. Cryer had several pretty cool originals, written by guitarist Jay Johnson and myself, and some got regional airplay. We made several TV appearances and appeared in an MTV video as the backup band to fellow nutmegger Jeff Cannatta in support of his single "Tragedy" (see below). During this period I married my true love, Grace, and we remain together to this day. After several personnel changes with Jay and I the only constants, Cryer broke up in 1986. After recuperating for a few months, I re-joined my friend and brother-in-law Papo Collazo in a band which would later become AKA, a popular Top 40 outfit. I did this for a few years, but after the birth of my daughter Stephanie in 1986, I found I wanted to spend more time at home. I took a job as Production Manager for Cross Country Concerts (later Metropolitan) producing shows for Jim Koplik from 1989-1994, but got aced out when The Meadows Amphitheatre opened. It was a good thing, because the job was demanding, thankless, and didn't pay all that well considering I was usually on site for 18-20 hours!! My friends, who got great tickets to all the shows were sorry to see it end, though.. I spent the next ten years raising my daughter, working a day gig and occasionally subbing with various bands until I realized I had better start playing in earnest again while I still retained my youthful energy, rugged good looks, and most of my hair!! I ran into my old Oreo drummer Frank in a bar, and we discussed getting the band back together. With Papo and old friend Paul Shea aboard, we came back out in 2004 as The Oreo Project. I believe Frank and Pop were concerned that if we were just "Oreo", old fans would be disappointed that we weren't all original members. I wasn't too concerned, but being the agreeable, easy going type that I am, went along with it. We played area clubs for 3+ years, only recently calling it quits. During this period, I met a fine young fellow named Bill Wilson, who I thought might be the perfect fifth Oreo as he sang quite well, and also played guitar and keyboards. He was a cute motherfucker, who would definitely bring some sex appeal to our otherwise weathered persona. After realizing that joining Oreo wasn't in his future, Bill and I started laying plans for a classic rock band, more in the line of the great rock bands of the 70-80s such as Aerosmith, VH, BadCo, etc. We enlisted Bill's drummer, the amazing and well hung Joe Santucci and guitarist extraordinaire Gray Fowler who also sings beautifully and has even bigger teeth than mine!! We considered several dentally inspired names such as Mo' Teef, The Enamels, and The Anti-Dentites, but ultimately switched our focus deeper into the mouth and came up with Last Licks, a name which serves us to this day (please visit myspace/lastlicksonline ). Last Licks is currently working on original material while honing our stage show to a razor's edge... a balancing act which will either kill us or make us stronger. I'm also keeping busy compiling material for my long overdue solo CD "I'M NOT SORRY", which will feature original SS material from various periods in my chequered past. There's also some new stuff, and I'm writing more as we speak!! It will feature many of the musicians that I've had the pleasure of performing with and I'm pretty psyched about playing it for you. Hopefully, I will get the bulk of it done this winter... That's all I've got for now... the saga continues. Thanks for supporting live music!! I love you all!!

The Music:

Riverside is off the new cd from my pal Jay Jesse Johnson. It's entitled "I've Got an Ax to Grind", and it is due to be released in mid February. This song features me on bass, BJ Zampa on drums, Matt Zeiner on organ, and Jay on guitar and vocals. Check it out.. it's a great tune, one of my favorites!!
Young Lust is a cover of the classic Pink Floyd song performed by Last Licks, one of the two bands I currently play with. It is part of our demo cd and was recorded and mixed at Bill Wilson's home studio (does your studio have a name, Bill?) It was played live and the vocals were dubbed, although no parts were added... this is basically how we do it on stage except we have the little telephone conversation sampled at the end. I did the vocal in one take, which is good because I was pretty hoarse after all that hollering...
Solar Wind was written by Jay Jesse Johnson and was one of the songs off of his cd "Terrestrial Plains" (I think that was the name). This is a recent remix Jay threw together for my page (thanks, dude). I played bass on all the tracks except for one on which Jay played. The drummer was BJ Zampa who is now splitting time between House of Lords and Eddie Ojeda (of Twisted Sister)'s new band. Although Jay has focused his recent eforts on a more bluesy groove, he kicked ass on the fusion stuff, and I will post some more as it becomes available to me. It certainly was fun to play!!
Back Seat Lover was co-written by me, Bobby Pieper, and Steve Montano as part of the Teazer demo sessions. As I remember it Bobby wrote the music, Steve wrote the chorus, and I wrote the verses. This is a more recent version featuring a post Cryer lineup of Jay Johnson, Jeff "Bam Bam" Zajac", and Mark "Diamond" Putorti on vocals. Mark also engineered the session at a small studio in Bristol. This is from the legendary "Eyes Out" demo (I just made that name up, but hey.. it's my page plus I paid for the demo so I can call it Dog Farts if I choose to..). It's a little more polished than the original Teazer version, and Mark turned in quite the performance.
My good friend Curt Wade recently sent me some board mixes from a Cryer show at the New Haven Agora. Curt is now the house guy at Mohegan Sun and used to mix us back in the day. Frustrated and Mr Crowley/Revelation Mother Earth were recorded back in 1983. There were a couple of originals on the disc, but that portion of the cassette tape did not hold up well... The lineup was Jon Code on keyboards, Jeff "Bam Bam" Zajac on drums, and the incomparable Jay Johnson on guitar. Oh yeah... and yours truly on bass and lead vocal on Mr Crowley, Jay singing Frustrated.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it... it's a little slice of CT rock history, and although it's pretty dated, I think you'll find it entertaining.

Here's some shots dating back to when I was a wee bassling... I am trying to find more pictures that include the other fine musicians I have been privileged to share the stage with, but for now it's mostly me... Enjoy!!

I thought I would put up this video, as it is my first and probably last MTV appearance. Check out the threads!! I would have been in the diner scene, but there was a sign out front reading "NO LEG WARMERS"...

....while we're on the topic of fashion statements, I have had several requests for more Cryer shots. Here are a few that I had laying around, but I missing some periods, most notably the early Mark Putorti days (Cryer MkII) and the subsequent Ron Miguel era (Cryer Mk III). I hope to add some more in the near future, and if anyone has any to contribute, send 'em over!!