KNIGHT RIDER NEWS. APRIL 4 2006 SANTA FE- On September 3
1997, country music star Lucy Falcon was found crying, a
bloody butcher knife in her red right hand.Lucy sat on top of the body of her dead husband, twelve
years her senior, Hal Bumper Jenkins. Falcon had recently
completed her first album for Sony/Nashville. The album
titled Good Hearted Country Girl was, according to industry
insiders, destined to become a classic. Falcon was
tenantively booked to tour Canada and Japan the following
spring as the opening act for Shania Twains Feel like a
Woman tour.The newlyweds had attracted the attention of the Nashville
press during the recording of the album with their public
displays of both affection and violence .Bumper drunk that town into the ground!..and Lucy snorted
what was left! It was like Dewey and Loretta Lynn on
steroids, and the papers ate it up!.. So said longtime
Nashville scenester Owen Tompkins. Upon returning to New
Mexico, the two moved into a recently built 150 acre
hacienda, that if local gossip could be believed, Bumper paid
an estimated four million dollars to build. They then began a
six month drinking binge that would see the newlyweds in and
out of the local papers, and county jails, for the next year.Finally, on the morning of September third, Detective
Carlo Baca of The Santa Fe Police Department received a phone
call from Ms. Falcon. She had killed her husband.Only the third woman to be hung in New Mexican history,
Falcons album would never be heard. During the settlement of
her estate, Lucys younger brother Davey found a box
containing several tapes that revealed a song book of
original compositions unlike anything Lucy had ever sung in
public.These songs where rawer, truer,and even meaner than
anything brother Dave had ever heard his sister sing before.Davey and his older brother Alex, along with their
cousins(Cousin Carlos, Cousin Tom, Cousin Brett, Cousin
Arron, and Cousin Miguel) had toured the country as children
with their sister as the Falcon Family Singers. As the boys
voices changed, it became obvious that the real talent was
Lucy, but in the light of these undiscovered recordings,
Davey felt the music should be heard.While Davey and his cousins had left the music business
in their teens, older brother Alex had made a name for
himself as a drummer and producer. He had spent the
intervening years touring the world with the likes of Celine
Dion, G.G. Allan, Brandford Marsalis, The Bad Brains, evenserving as Michael Flatelys first American musical director
for the famed Lord of the Dance.
While working on a spoken word album with Henry Rollins,
Brother Alex began receiving phone calls from Davey back in
New Mexico. Davey wanted Alex to help him get their sisters
music to the people.
After much pleading, Alex agreed. Alex would school
younger brother Dave and his cousins in the basic formulas of
garage band, cowpunk, death-metal. Lucys songs would be
heard.
After a strenuous four month boot camp, Brother Alex was
able to whip the brothers into a cracker jack outfit. With
Cousin Carlos on bass, Cousin Tommy on lead guitar, Cousin
Brett on pedal steel, and Cousins Arron and Miguel on backup
vocals, the band was ready. The only problem was Davey.As Alex told Rolling Stone in 2001...Davey seemed to
have no discernible talent, he couldn't play anything, his
voice, which had been decent as a kid had been destroyed by
smoking cigars, a habit he picked from the former Falcon
Family Singers manager Pete The Starmaker Long, as a
child. Davey certainly had no rhythm to speak of, but the
hardest part was that he seemed to be truly retarded, a fact
our family..out of love..had never really come to terms
with.
Lucy had always protected Davey, says Cousin Carlos,
speaking from his Jeep Wagoner salvage yard outside
Albuquerque (the third largest in North America). When they
were little, Davey almost seemed normal when Lucy would sing
with him. I think thats why Alex decided he should be the
singer.He played guitar too. Alex taught him a few chords,
but towards the end we usually just turned his guitar
off..you know like Elvis..you know some people say he had the
retardation too.Success was immediate. The combination of the bands
blistering live show and Sister Lucys plaintive ballads was
irresistible. In June of 99, after a fierce bidding war, the
band signed with the most unlikely, and many say unholy, of
companies. Mario Fashionss Jack you off records.
Famous for his work with Ru-Paul, Sylvester and other
gay dance icons, fans wondered what was next for the Falcon
Family singers.
It seemed like a strange match, says Cousin Brett
from his forest fire watchtower in Northern New Mexico where
he works as a Park Ranger, but thats the kind of effect
Lucys songs had on people. The next year and a half was a
blur. It seemed like we played six times a day, seven days aweek, and I never even had money for tacos !
With the added pressure came the usual trappings of
show business success. For us it was the coffee, says
Cousin Carlos. Youd be dead tired, but you still had to
work. Of course Davie couldn't stand the edge of the coffee
so hed sneak a few lite beers to take the edge off..it was a
vicious cycle. That combined with massive doses of the
Czechoslovakian LSD that was all the rage at the time, it was
just a matter of time before the whole thing came crashing
down.Then Cousin Tom disappeared. We never really knew what
happened to Tom. We had been hired by this fashion designer
Vivian Westwood (of Sex Pistols fame) to play a runway show,
and they had this big party after the show... well, this
small crowd of obviously cool people, I mean cooler than
anybody youve ever met, that's for sure, and they came and
started talking to Tom, and then they just took him away..it
was weird. No one heard from Cousin Tom again.
Without Cousin Toms stage presence, the band began to
flounder. Tom was a porcelain Rock God. Imagine Robert
Plant with a Les Paul...without Tom we lost all the young
girls! We lost our bread and butter! said long first Cousin
Miguel from his Tacoria in Tijuana.
As The Bands cache began to decline, Manager Fashion
and Alex decided to move the band to Hollywood. I think Alex
just wanted to cash in.. you know, get the big check, and
they got Davey to go along by promising him that awful TV
show..he didn't know any better.
They were just making fun of Davey with that
show...the writing was awful..and those lines!! I mean come
on , how many times did we need to hear Davey say Does God
hate me me cuz Im dumb?..dumb..dumb..dumb! It was true,
Trying My Best, a prime time vehicle, based on the
fictional character Robbie Carmichael, a pop star with
down syndrome, only aired twice and was, even by industry
standards , a pile of shit.
They weren't gettin me out there, Id already been
through all that crap!, so says cousin Carlos from the
salvage yard,that town will eat you up! (Cousin Carlos had
replaced the Butch Patrick Character Eddie Munster in the
short lived Munsters spin off Grandpas house and had been
largely blamed for its failure)Former Manager Fashion picks up the story in Serbia where
he now produces silent homeless theater. When Alexs thing
with Star Search fell apart, he really went into hyper-
drive. He was producing Old School Gangsta hip hop,alt-country funk, blues based karaoke rock..even a multi- media
classical piece based on Ulysses that he wrote with Billy
Gibbons from ZZ Top... But his real focus was The Lil
Girls.
As Brother Alex told Source magazine in 2003, Lil girls
are the future! Everybody likes lil girls! Problem is.. they
get bigger! Well, these lil girls aint gettin any bigger!
Ever!
And it was true. The group, made up of five inner-city
little people, wasn't getting any bigger, except on the
charts. This was Alexs next-big-thing, when Love You a
Little hit big in England. Alex thought he was home free.The groups characters, based on a proven Village
People, Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls formula, allowed the 45
inch Jesse Attitude Jones to come front and center as the
bands lead singer, and soon Brother Alex and Attitude were
an item.
You couldn't give that girl enough! The licorice, the
stepladders, the jewelry! While Davey was living in a storage
unit in Twenty Nine Palms, Alex was buying Attitude a Ferrari
with those special pedals! says personal assistant Jamie
Jenkins. The other girls where jealous as well, and the
girls first album hadn't even dropped, but what happened at
the BET awards couldn't have been predicted by anyone.
I dont know who all was involved in that nonsense!
says Rashed Jackson, brother of Lil Girl Treasure. The
stilts, the apple juice, and there was a lotta muthafuckin
cake too!. Now dont get me wrong, I like cake.. but that
shit was stoopid.
On December 25 2006, Brother Alex was found dead, his
legs mauled to death by the bites of angry little people.
His dream to bring the haunting beauty of his dead
sisters music to college girls and slutty waitresss had
been realized.
His dream of bringing the music of four inner -city
Little women of color to the masses would go unfulfilled.
Brother Dave said it best like only a special person
can.We cant play band anymore..Alex was boss of play
band..cant play band without a boss.
Many of us dont appreciate how hard love and respect are
to come by in this world... Alex, we wish you would have
realized how much you had of both..we love you, Alex, and
will never forget what you taught us at your best.. no
cheese..no pity...The Falcons. OF COURSE THIS IS ALL BULLSHIT, BUT THE MUSICS NOT, ROCK ON
MY YOUNG BROTHERS - DF
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