<<UNDER CONSTRUCTION>>
Hal visits Walls Of Genius October 2017!
October 7th through 9th, 2017
I hung out and recorded with Walls Of Genius in Denver and Boulder, Colorado! with Little Fyodor and Evan Cantor I visited many of the sites of events described in the comprehensive Walls Of Genius Archive |
a long-time dream came true
when I participated in a Walls Of Genius recording session on October 8th! That session became the newest WoG album, No Surviving Humanity. check out the photos and commentary below! |
listen to No Surviving Humanity
in free streaming audio in the player above and click on the album name and album cover to visit the album page on Bandcamp and to purchase a download. |
Little Fyodor on October 7, 2017 at Littleton Town Hall,
2450 West Main Street in Littleton, Colorado site of the last Walls Of Genius performance on November 30, 1985. Right: Walls of Genius’ flyer for the Littleton Town Hall show, with a photo of Little Fyodor at that show performing with a sombrero.
Evan Cantor recalled that: "Mission From God" was a riff on the Blues Brothers. I don’t recall why we thought this would be our farewell concert, but we did promote it that way. The dissolution of WoG occurred in halting steps and perhaps by this time, I didn’t want to do any more live shows. Evan opened the show as "Wally Bob Colorado", wearing a long-hair wig and cowboy hat, playing country versions of well-known punk-rock songs, including "Anarchy In The U.K.". He was received warmly enough by the punk crowd. Below: photos from WoG's performance at Town Hall. Evan recalled their performance of the song "Burning Smurfs": I burned a Smurf on stage as the climax of this song at our “End of The World” gig at Littleton Town Hall, in Littleton Colorado. Ed recalls that the smoke from my burning Smurf set off the alarms; they had to empty the hall before the next band could come on stage and they never again hosted a rock show at the Littleton Town Hall. I don’t recall any of that myself… again, perhaps that’s the proof that I was actually there. |
listen below to an earlier version of "Burning Smurfs"
from Crazed To The Core cassette |
Littleton Town Hall
show posters and performance photos were originally published on the Walls Of Genius Scrapbook page. |
Little Fyodor: [above] 772 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, formerly The Art Department, site of the 1984 Festival of Pain at which The Pus Tones performed, as well as a few other luminaries of the 80's Colorado punk and experimental scene! It now houses CHAC - the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council (I know it primarily as an art gallery featuring Chicano artists).
The song "Green River" was recorded at The Festival Of Pain, and it later appeared on Crazed To The Core.
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Evan Cantor:
"Green River" starts with a snippet of my recording of the Bloodball tournament, a tongue-in-cheek athletic event that opened the Festival of Pain on February 3, 1984. Then the Pus Tones come in on applause. Evan is singing the lead, David is playing beer bottle and wearing what Westword magazine called the ‘homeliest sport coat ever’. We got a tremendous round of applause, but the emcee ushered us off stage promptly, as if to say that this wasn’t really what the Festival organizers had in mind when they asked for “pain”. We should have done an encore!
Little Fyodor:
The music was held downstairs while upstairs a load of guys played an ad hoc sporting event called “Bloodball”. We spectators huddled on the sidelines with paper or something to protect us from the “blood” (some sort of red liquid). Evan recorded the sounds of the Bloodball and edited some of this running and yelling onto the front and back of our rendition of “Green River”. Evan played guitar and sang while I played some sort of miniature or found percussion that I could smack with a drumstick while dancing around. I know I played a beer bottle with that drumstick for one of our other two or three songs, and it broke partway through that song. It’s funny to hear us thanked for coming all the way down from Boulder!
"Green River" starts with a snippet of my recording of the Bloodball tournament, a tongue-in-cheek athletic event that opened the Festival of Pain on February 3, 1984. Then the Pus Tones come in on applause. Evan is singing the lead, David is playing beer bottle and wearing what Westword magazine called the ‘homeliest sport coat ever’. We got a tremendous round of applause, but the emcee ushered us off stage promptly, as if to say that this wasn’t really what the Festival organizers had in mind when they asked for “pain”. We should have done an encore!
Little Fyodor:
The music was held downstairs while upstairs a load of guys played an ad hoc sporting event called “Bloodball”. We spectators huddled on the sidelines with paper or something to protect us from the “blood” (some sort of red liquid). Evan recorded the sounds of the Bloodball and edited some of this running and yelling onto the front and back of our rendition of “Green River”. Evan played guitar and sang while I played some sort of miniature or found percussion that I could smack with a drumstick while dancing around. I know I played a beer bottle with that drumstick for one of our other two or three songs, and it broke partway through that song. It’s funny to hear us thanked for coming all the way down from Boulder!
Little Fyodor (continued): On April 8, 1986, approximately two weeks after Evan told me in a Boulder movie theater moments before the movie started that he didn't want to do Walls of Genius anymore, we both traveled again to The Art Department to witness a music and art show called The Erotic Art Festival, for which Paul Dickerson had borrowed the original letters to Dan Fogelberg that I had collected from being a clerk at the Hotel Boulderado, where the addled author apparently thought Fogelberg lived. The Letters were hung up on the wall of The Art Department as "erotic art"! G.X. Jupitter-Larsen's "The Haters" and The Thessalonians performed. In between performances, I hit on Babushka (after two brief prior meetings, one at a WoG performance, that I didn't recall her from till after the hitting) and we consider this day our anniversary!
Little Fyodor at 1308 Pearl Street in Denver, former site of the Pearl Street Music Hall, where Walls Of Genius performed in January and December 1984. At one of the January shows the WoG cover version of "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf (with Little Fyodor on vocals) was recorded, which appeared on the Crazed To The Core cassette.
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Little Fyodor: I'm thinking this was the site of the Pearl Street Music Hall, where WoG played twice primarily for the benefit of Fish Music (and maybe some other time?)! There was some unrelated restaurant there more recently that apparently has since closed. Restaurants have been furiously opening and closing during Denver's recent torrid spate of growth!
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Evan Cantor described the recording of "Magic Carpet Ride" on the Crazed To The Core page:
This is a cover of the Steppenwolf song. Fyodor does a great screaming lead vocal and Ed provides a terrific lead guitar solo. I am playing the rhythm guitar and riff parts in between verse and chorus. Bass was overdubbed later. At one of our gigs, Pearl Street Music Hall in Denver, we followed Paul Church’s group, Fish Music. Fish Music brought a giant aquarium full of fish to put on stage for their show. They played an interminable set that went on forever and we didn’t go on until after midnight. Ed recalls that the fish were left in the hall overnight to freeze. My recollection is that half of them, at least, were already dead by the time the show started. Jimi West of local punk-rockers, the Rok Tots, requested “Magic Carpet Ride.” We had never played it before this recording and had never played it since, but I figured “what the hell” and launched into it. Then Ed stopped in mid-riff and says “That’s not how it goes.” Bloody Hell, I thought, it goes anyway I want to play it, and I launched into “Born To Be Wild” instead, another Steppenwolf cover that I knew much better.
This is a cover of the Steppenwolf song. Fyodor does a great screaming lead vocal and Ed provides a terrific lead guitar solo. I am playing the rhythm guitar and riff parts in between verse and chorus. Bass was overdubbed later. At one of our gigs, Pearl Street Music Hall in Denver, we followed Paul Church’s group, Fish Music. Fish Music brought a giant aquarium full of fish to put on stage for their show. They played an interminable set that went on forever and we didn’t go on until after midnight. Ed recalls that the fish were left in the hall overnight to freeze. My recollection is that half of them, at least, were already dead by the time the show started. Jimi West of local punk-rockers, the Rok Tots, requested “Magic Carpet Ride.” We had never played it before this recording and had never played it since, but I figured “what the hell” and launched into it. Then Ed stopped in mid-riff and says “That’s not how it goes.” Bloody Hell, I thought, it goes anyway I want to play it, and I launched into “Born To Be Wild” instead, another Steppenwolf cover that I knew much better.
Little Fyodor: The site of the Pirate Art Gallery, where The Miracle played twice, I believe, once on its own and the other ostensibly in support of the touring tENTATIVELY ... a cONVENIENCE, this latter time representing the last time the name Walls Of Genius was ever used in any capacity back during the band/label/organization's original run, as Evan promoted the show as "Walls Of Genius Presents...". Evan had already told me he wanted to break up the band some weeks earlier, but I think he used the name both out of obligation to the touring tENTATIVELY ... a cONVENIENCE, who had written us via the Walls Of Genius PO Box evidently hoping to contact and do something with WoG, and probably also because he thought he could attract more people using that name, though alas, very few showed up on that Sunday evening.... (And maybe just maybe he might have reconsidered deep sixing the WoG name had it turned out better?) The Pirate moved one door over and another gallery opened behind this door several years ago, but both moved out entirely just a week or two before Hal's visit (no doubt due to rising rents)! (The Pirate is now located just off West Colfax Ave., in an area the suburb of Lakewood is trying very hard to turn into an arts district.)
Evan Cantor: in Fyodor's basement--you're seeing the "remote unit" version of my own basement studio (Evan). The Tascam Neo (digital recorder) is on the table in front of Fyodor. I got the "pop cover" for the microphone to assist in the recording process with Fyo's vocals, which tend to be rather propulsive. This device has certainly improved the recording of Fyo's vocals. Ed waits patiently for us to get going.
Little Fyodor: Most notable in the background are a poster for a show Little Fyodor & Babushka played in Columbus, OH organized by TradeMark Gunderson of the Evolution Control Committee and a drawing by Leo Goya who played with the original WoG and The Miracle. Leo's piece features a pronounced (presumably female) buttocks underneath a wall of art (art on a wall featuring art on a wall).
Little Fyodor: Most notable in the background are a poster for a show Little Fyodor & Babushka played in Columbus, OH organized by TradeMark Gunderson of the Evolution Control Committee and a drawing by Leo Goya who played with the original WoG and The Miracle. Leo's piece features a pronounced (presumably female) buttocks underneath a wall of art (art on a wall featuring art on a wall).
Evan Cantor: Evan labeling tracks on the Tascam Neo. Thank goodness for Blue Painters' Tape! In the old days, when we had only 4 tracks, there wasn't a lot of challenge in keeping track. But with the multiple track machine, I lose track (pun sort of intended) really easily, so I use the blue tape to label what is going where. With this machine, you have to assign each input to each track for every file that you record. Sometimes we might have more than one song on a particular file, but most of the time, it's only one. I set up blank tracks in advance of the session so that we don't have to waste more time (and mental confusion) "creating" blank tracks at the time of recording. You can see Ed's feet next to his DigiTech effects box on the floor. The DigiTech box is now an antique, but it produces such prodigious effects that both Fyodor and I bought one for ourselves after watching Ed use his. The DigiTech, via Ed, produced the rhythm track for the song "No Surviving Humanity". When Ed started up the rhythm thing, I saw my opportunity and pulled out a lengthy rant about humanity and zombies inter-breeding, which became the title track of the 2017 WoG title "No Surviving Humanity".
EC: I'm belting it out--"Bronco Lovin' Man"--the song being a tribute to Ed himself, who really does own orange-and-blue boxer shorts in addition to a whole collection of Bronco clothing to wear while cheering on the boys. Although Little Fyodor and I don't take football as seriously as Ed has over the years, we both embraced Ed's enthusiasm and mention of the Broncos has been a continuing theme in WoG music. Ed was a bit subdued at the session and didn't think much of the tune at the time he heard it (for the first time), but later on he confessed that he thought it pretty funny. I hope listeners will feel the same way.
LF: The background includes some of my DIY cassettes, mostly from the 80's and 90's, some mis-hung Leo Goya art, some art made by a developmentally disabled individual served by the company that employs me (don't know his name), an album cover for a children's record that we found in the foundation of a house in ruins across the street from the Hall of Genius which was razed to build the houses whose building's hammering can be heard on "Impressions Of Denver" from Before ...And After, a photoshop collage made by Babushka featuring my father amidst engineering images (he was an engineer), and some original paintings sent to me by someone I only know as Tom Eileen, though Eileen is actually his partner's name, among other things....
LF: The background includes some of my DIY cassettes, mostly from the 80's and 90's, some mis-hung Leo Goya art, some art made by a developmentally disabled individual served by the company that employs me (don't know his name), an album cover for a children's record that we found in the foundation of a house in ruins across the street from the Hall of Genius which was razed to build the houses whose building's hammering can be heard on "Impressions Of Denver" from Before ...And After, a photoshop collage made by Babushka featuring my father amidst engineering images (he was an engineer), and some original paintings sent to me by someone I only know as Tom Eileen, though Eileen is actually his partner's name, among other things....
Evan Cantor: The Genial Genii! From left to right, Evan, Fyodor, & Ed. Fyodor and I have no compunction whatsoever about hamming it up and making funny faces. Fyodor use to make a face he called the "Litch smile", which he had apparently perfected as a child (reflecting his given family name). Ed is a little more self-conscious about this, always has been. He was a fairly wild-and-crazy guy back in the '80s, but even then he wasn't much for making funny faces. This is outside of Fyodor's house in the Highlands (NW Denver).
EC: another portrait of the genii, with less funny-face hamming-it-up. See how my forehead is threatening to channel Little Fyo's. I guess none of us are getting any younger. There are things that I used to do with WoG that I simply won't anymore--in particular, no more autistic screaming versions of Hank Williams and Creedence Clearwater Revival songs. Hence the title that emerged for our first big reunion project a few years back, "Now, Not Then".
EC: here we are with special guest Hal McGee--Hal has definitely gotten into the spirit. It was a real blast having Hal participate in the session, quite the honor for all of us. Lauren (aka Babushka) was taking this picture and she may have instructed us to ham it up, but Ed and I are just smiling blandly while Hal and Fyodor ham it up.
LF: Just as WoG has enjoyed a revival of the good ol' days, there has been at least one revival of the Jerry Lewis Telethon party organized and attended back in the day by Ed and friends he knew before we met him, some of whom played roles in the earliest WoG and proto-WoG recordings. Marsha Wooley, who participated in the Dirt Clods and Major Faultline sessions and some other WoG activities, designed the t-shirt for the 2011 (revived) telethon party, which I'm wearing in this picture. I was invited to said party, but I haven't heard anything about any subsequent telethon parties (Jerry Lewis was actually dumped from the MS telethon that very year, much to everyone's disappointment...).... (Hal, of course, is wearing a Little Fyodor & Babushka t-shirt featuring LF & B's heads transposed onto Justin Timberlake's and Janet Jackson's bodies during the famous Super Bowl halftime "wardrobe malfunction"!)
LF: Just as WoG has enjoyed a revival of the good ol' days, there has been at least one revival of the Jerry Lewis Telethon party organized and attended back in the day by Ed and friends he knew before we met him, some of whom played roles in the earliest WoG and proto-WoG recordings. Marsha Wooley, who participated in the Dirt Clods and Major Faultline sessions and some other WoG activities, designed the t-shirt for the 2011 (revived) telethon party, which I'm wearing in this picture. I was invited to said party, but I haven't heard anything about any subsequent telethon parties (Jerry Lewis was actually dumped from the MS telethon that very year, much to everyone's disappointment...).... (Hal, of course, is wearing a Little Fyodor & Babushka t-shirt featuring LF & B's heads transposed onto Justin Timberlake's and Janet Jackson's bodies during the famous Super Bowl halftime "wardrobe malfunction"!)
EC: the boys in the throes of improvisation--we did several tracks based on Fyodor rhythm guitar parts and this is obviously one of those. Fyo is playing the white stratocaster that belonged to Ed back in the 1980's. I think Ed is playing a hollow-bodied electric that he likes, perhaps a Godin or a Paul Reed Smith guitar. I'm playing my black Fender jazz bass (Mexican made). I really like this bass. I'm not an avid instrument collector. I have never owned more than 13 guitars and basses at any one time. Nor do I venerate blindly vintage instruments for the sake of being vintage. I truly believe you can make great music on crappy instruments. This Mexican-made Fender bass is not crappy by any means. It was on the wall at Robb's Music on Canyon Boulevard in Boulder (no longer extant) and of the selection on display that day, it was the one that spoke to me and my fingers.
LF: Over Evan's shoulder is a Little Fyodor portrait courtesy of one Arvo Zylo. Among the sundry items behind my stereo equipment is a wildly decorated LP sleeve (including a pic of Mr. Spock) that was used as a mailer to mail something to WoG back in the day. Personally, I would say that the '73 or '74 (estimated) Strat that Ed played during WoG that he since sold to me for a very reasonable amount and that I'm playing in this pic comes in at more of a pale yellow....
LF: Over Evan's shoulder is a Little Fyodor portrait courtesy of one Arvo Zylo. Among the sundry items behind my stereo equipment is a wildly decorated LP sleeve (including a pic of Mr. Spock) that was used as a mailer to mail something to WoG back in the day. Personally, I would say that the '73 or '74 (estimated) Strat that Ed played during WoG that he since sold to me for a very reasonable amount and that I'm playing in this pic comes in at more of a pale yellow....
EC: Fyo is going to town with the rhythm guitar (on the legendary white Ed stratocaster).
LF: It's a sin for any Little Fyodor fan to catch me looking so solemn and thoughtful, but I shan't deny the raw, hard evidence!
LF: It's a sin for any Little Fyodor fan to catch me looking so solemn and thoughtful, but I shan't deny the raw, hard evidence!
EC: Ed is getting into it. Note the Broncos champions cap!
EC: Now Evan is getting into it, playing high up the neck, some kind of bass solo no doubt.
LF: Behind Evan one can see my Pro-One synthesizer, used profusely during WoG's original run, though rather in need of some keyboard repair right now. On the wall there's a photograph by Babushka of Hell's Half Acre in Wyoming, a photoshopped picture of Little Fyodor & Babushka in a Chicago bookstore, some keyboardy art by Babushka, and two postcards sent by Ryan J. Boyd featuring atomic bomb explosions and the caption, "God is Love"!
LF: Behind Evan one can see my Pro-One synthesizer, used profusely during WoG's original run, though rather in need of some keyboard repair right now. On the wall there's a photograph by Babushka of Hell's Half Acre in Wyoming, a photoshopped picture of Little Fyodor & Babushka in a Chicago bookstore, some keyboardy art by Babushka, and two postcards sent by Ryan J. Boyd featuring atomic bomb explosions and the caption, "God is Love"!
EC: another shot of the group going to town with the improv. This session was notable for several tracks led by Little Fyodor's rhythm guitar.
EC: the Walls Of Genius scrapbook--the cover features one of the ubiquitous moron heads that I used to draw for each WoG catalog and a bumper sticker from an Alaskan 'zine of the 1980s, "Warning".
EC: the scrapbook, "compiled Feb '88"--these things are described previously on the website. I used to create these odd faces from paper cut-outs and post them around my desk at whatever office I was working in on campus. The Rumours Of Marriage flyer was for a band that preceded the advent of WoG, a band whose influence on WoG cannot be over-estimated.
EC: ha ha!! The picture of Brezhnev admiring actress Jill St. John! Notice the Joel Haertling doppelganger over the commissar's shoulder. Ed poses in a woman's bathing suit (perhaps Dena Zocher's) with a pennant and basketballs. This is the kind of crazy-and-wild stuff that Ed used to do back in the '80s when he was less inhibited than now. The other photos are from the Eldorado Springs house where WoG coalesced. The WoG catalogue features a pair of moron heads.
EC: this is the great Ape guitar that Ed made with the intention of destroying on stage. It was too beautiful to destroy and when he moved back in with his mother in the early '90s, he gave it to me. The backscratcher comes from "South Of The Border", a famous tourist-trap on I-95, and was added to the guitar later on (since this photo was taken, I have taken the backscratcher away). There's a nice photo of Ed and I with instruments in hand from the '90s, probably a Polyester Prophecy jam (not quite a WoG spinoff band). I have a white bass guitar in my hand, so that's probably the bass I used for most of the classic WoG material in the '80s, a Fender Jazzmaster, short-scale bass guitar.
EC: a snowy day visit to Evan's house in Boulder. The autumn of 2017 has been unprecedentedly warm and dry, with only three snowfalls in Boulder by the time of the winter solstice. But this particular day in October was one of those snowy days and the power went out at our house for almost 10 hours. Again, rather unprecedented. So I couldn't offer Hal & Fyo a hot cup of tea or coffee... Robin (my wife) put out a nice spread of picnicky things for us to have lunch and then we got in the car and started touring Boulder WoG sites.
EC: Fyodor & Evan pose in front of the former Hall Of Genius on 19th Street. The trees sure have grown up! The dirt road behind the house has now been paved and features a "no-through street" sign, which isn't true at all. I used to practice cross-country skiing (in those snowier years) on that dirt track and once sat on a small cactus on the hill just past the dirt road (I had spines in my ass for a week). There's a lot of stuff about this house on the website.
EC: the house as it was in the '80s (scrapbook) and house as it is now (10-2017).
EC: the porch where we used to hang out quite a bit. I knocked on the door at one point and no-one answered, so we flipped thru the scrapbook and found pictures taken on the porch. Before we left, we knocked on the door one more time and a sleepy college student came to the door. I showed him the scrapbook, explained how we had lived in this house thirty years ago and used it as a recording studio, might we step inside and take a quick look? "Uh... No." Okay, sorry to bother you...
EC: examining the scrapbook on the porch. The hardwood floor certainly looks like it had been upgraded since our time in the old Hall Of Genius. When we lived there, it was just another old falling-apart house, but it looks like it's been renovated nicely.
EC: the picture of me and the snow-shovel on the porch of the Hall Of Genius. This was a potential 'publicity photo' that we never used. It doesn't make much sense, even from a nonsensical perspective, but there it is.
EC: outside the Eldorado Springs house. Things had changed as bit in Eldo, but the photo in the scrapbook proved that this was the house. The east side of the house had been expanded. After our experience at the door to the old Hall Of Genius, we decided not to knock on the door. No evidence of whether or not Natasha Brown still inhabited this place.
EC: When I lived in the Eldo house, it was literally the last house at the end of the road. The photo in the scrapbook is actually a view west, looking towards the mountains. The view in picture 26 is looking east, where previously there was no road. You can see that the road has been extended, with trees on either side. We tried driving down the road, but the snow had brought a fallen tree across the track so we backed-up and turned around. This was all open space back in the 80s and I used to go hiking there right out the door of the house.
EC: Evan and Fyo pose in the lobby of the Hotel Boulderado. Fyodor worked the night shift at the front desk for several years and this place was the source of lyrical contents for WoG ("Letter To Dan Fogelberg" in particular).
LF: All the furniture in the lobby once got stolen while me and the other night auditor (working the graveyard shift) were both in the back room of the front desk area, probably listening to some late night radio on KGNU Community Radio!! I received some demerit points for that....
LF: All the furniture in the lobby once got stolen while me and the other night auditor (working the graveyard shift) were both in the back room of the front desk area, probably listening to some late night radio on KGNU Community Radio!! I received some demerit points for that....
EC: in the vintage antique elevator, which Fyodor sometimes had to operate as a hotel employee.
LF: I took a bunch of celebs up in that elevator (manually operated) back when I worked there in the 80's!! Bob Weir, Dave Brubeck, The Roches....
At Iggy Pop's request, I went out to a 7-11 and got him a microwave hamburger which I delivered to his room! This being somewhere about 3 or 4 in the morning. I didn't realize it was Iggy's room (he checked in under his real name, Jim Osterberg) till he came out dressed *only* in his birthday suit to accept the burger and I thought, hey, that's Iggy Pop! (I knew he was at the hotel that night, in fact I saw him at the Boulder Theater for free through the hotel's connections earlier in the eve, and I also thought this Jim Osterberg was probably in his party, but that's all I knew...). He gave me a $5 tip!
LF: I took a bunch of celebs up in that elevator (manually operated) back when I worked there in the 80's!! Bob Weir, Dave Brubeck, The Roches....
At Iggy Pop's request, I went out to a 7-11 and got him a microwave hamburger which I delivered to his room! This being somewhere about 3 or 4 in the morning. I didn't realize it was Iggy's room (he checked in under his real name, Jim Osterberg) till he came out dressed *only* in his birthday suit to accept the burger and I thought, hey, that's Iggy Pop! (I knew he was at the hotel that night, in fact I saw him at the Boulder Theater for free through the hotel's connections earlier in the eve, and I also thought this Jim Osterberg was probably in his party, but that's all I knew...). He gave me a $5 tip!
EC: the entrance to the "Architects' Office"--this was where Charles Haertling had had his office and, after he died, Joel Haertling took over the space for his own. We visited Joel there on several occasions, including the funereal reception for his father, but I don't recall any music events there. This is at the corner of Broadway and Arapahoe in Boulder.
EC: Evan displays the '61 Gibson SG that he used in the WoG heyday of the '80s. It's a great instrument, the only 'vintage' guitar I own. I refinished it myself after buying it for $200 in 1979. The full story of this guitar is already on the website.
EC: This is Evan's Czechoslovakian saxophone, bought for $100, used on "Letter To Dan Fogelberg" and numerous Miracle sessions. The story of this sax is also already on the website. I never could really 'play' the sax, but I have always been willing to see what I could do with various instruments. I've never warmed up to the mandolin or the ukelele, however.