ANTIETAM

There is much more to this story than can be covered here.

When TK opted out of moving to NYC with the lion's share of No Fun and the I-Holes, on one hand that was clearly the right thing to do -- on the other hand, she had a full head of steam, being singed by the power of playing guitar with other humans, and had no band and no prospect of one. Then Chip called up and asked if she would join the BDB. Chip Nold (vocals), Marc Zakem (guitar) and Tim Harris (bass) had been playing for about 19 days less than No Fun, and had arrived at the back-to-school fall moment where folks could move on with their lives or... get serious about being in a rock band. Man, it seems like a miracle that everyone made the choice they did, and by her 21st birthday (spent at Dance Band rehearsal at Nedelkoff's barn with Jack and Johnnie), TK was in the crew and drag racing her red Opel Kadett after practice against Chip and TH in TH's family station wagon down a miles-steep hill out of the Knobs, across the Sherman Minton Bridge headlong into the lights of Louisville. The whole era felt like a head-first lunge into something.

Dave Bradley joined up that fall. In his early thirties, Dave had played in bands as a teen on local TV shows -- a direct link to the Sixties we were just young enough to miss out on. We began trying to find places to play. Chip, Tim and Marc document those gigs well in their accounts elsewhere on this page.

At times we played four sets a night and one time five, repeating some songs but stocked with a fairly large arsenal of sixties covers by one-hit wonders, bubblegummers and our beloved Monkees and Raiders. And we had instrumentals to play when Chip had to run outside and throw up -- he worked the stage amazingly hard. We coated our fingers with NuSkin before the set but bled anyway and TH dug a hole in his bass with his pick and his intensity. TK had found like souls -- the hide under the covers with a transistor from 1962-1968 kind -- who used the same building blocks to find a voice, adding in Bowie, Roxy, Lou, Iggy, the Dolls, Clash and Patti strains too.

We were five for a couple of years, with Marc and TK on guitar. Then, in 1980, Marc and Dave left the band and here was the first test point of many for TH and TK over the years. Things just radically changed -- do you want to go on? Yes, please. So Chip, Tim and Tara found younger, brasher Sean Mulhall and briefly, the Lexington guitarist Karen Vance. But we eventually settled on being a quartet with Tara playing rhythm and lead (at the same time). This was when the athlete on stage thing started for TK and TH, sometimes them plus Chip ending up in a heap on the floor. One night in Lexington, KY, in addition to this, TK managed to shear off Mulhall's crash cymbal, through metal, by sending a Marshall flying.