Big Sky
Mudflaps begin 30th year with weekend concert in Hamilton
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Dexter Payne plays his baritone saxophone Thursday night in a Big Sky Mudflaps concert in Missoula. A founding member of the Mudflaps, Payne will join the band in a concert Saturday night at River Street Dance Theater. ADAM EMMERT - Ravalli Republic |
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The Big Sky Mudflaps will
take to a familiar stage Saturday at River Street Dance Theater and
begin the band's 30th year together. And joining the venerable
Bitterroot dance band on saxophone and clarinet at tomorrow's show will
be founding Mudflap Dexter Payne. In the early years, according to guitarist Horgan, the band played an eclectic mix of swing music, continuing a musical thread stitched by him and Payne during their years in a Western swing band called the Powder Milk Biscuit Boys. "(The Mudflaps) always did a mixed bag of stuff - Aretha Franklin tunes and Beach Boys stuff," Horgan recalled. "More than anything though we did a lot of classic swing - Billie Holiday and Count Basie from the 30s and 40s. I was real interested in swing music and jazz from the swing era - we all were. We were all pursuing our interests together." The band's first paying gig was a weekly stint at the Bum Steer in Florence. Also that first year, according to Payne, the Mudflaps played regularly at Haigh's, a previously "men-only" snooker bar on South Second Street, where Spice of Life is today. "We broke the gender barrier at Haigh's," Payne recalled. "It was a hootenanny; we'd sit in a circle and play. Joe Merrick was the bartender, and he'd keep the beer running as long as we kept playing." From the Bitterroot, the Mudflaps soon made their way to Missoula, playing regularly at the Top Hat and Park Hotel which boasted two of the town's biggest dance floors. In 1982 they played at the Top Hat with blues legend Muddy Waters. "Missoula was a good scene then," Payne said. "It gave us an opportunity to grow as a band. We had evolved from Western swing into bebop and by then were doing some rhythm and blues." After five or six years of honing their musical skills in the bars of western Montana, the Mudflaps' next step was to take their show on the road, Powell said. "We went through a period in the early 80's where we played a lot of concert series," she said. "We had a whole concert set and we played all over the country." From Club Lingerie in L.A. and Great American Music Hall in San Francisco to the Bottom Line in New York City, the Mudflaps took their eclectic sound from coast to coast, playing frequently at colleges, Powell said. "At that point we'd send out a promo and then get Dave on the phone to put the deal together," she said. "We'd play five or six weeks out at a time." Payne said the band's touring actually started in Montana with a statewide tour of the Montana Mining Company Restaurants. "They had about a four-by-four foot dance floor and a steakhouse," he recalled, "and we played them all over the state. I remember after playing at one in Great Falls the steakhouse manager telling us 'don't come back here again.'" But the many days and nights on the road had their high points, Powell said, like appearing twice on the "Today Show" with Bryant Gumble. "On the Today Show they asked us how we ever came into contact with Jazz in Montana," she said. "I told her about Jean Wroble. Jean had played Vaudeville and learned piano from Teddy Wilson. "Bryant didn't know who she was, but Jean ended up get calls from people all over the country after the show." Horgan said he enjoyed being on the Today Show, but for him the high points of their time touring was playing some of the classic jazz and blues halls in the East. "Playing on the Today Show was a shot of adrenaline for sure," Horgan said. "But for me the high point was playing the Bottom Line in New York City in about '81. It's a great place in the Village near New York University that's always had a wide variety of music. Playing in New York City was pretty intense, but we felt really comfortable there. There were a lot of high points, but that one was really vivid in my mind." Other acclaimed venues for the band included regular appearances on Prairie Home Companion and at the Kool Jazz Festival in Philadelphia, for which the band received, among other things, a carton of Kool cigarettes. Powell laughed recalling the time a Japanese reviewer at the festival mistakenly thought the mudflap was the state bird of Montana. Horgan said the years on the road were fun, but they took their toll on the band members. By the time he and Beth had their son Tai in 1987, the touring years of the Mudflaps were all but over. "We didn't start out thinking we would be a bona fide touring band," Horgan said. "We were just having fun." Payne and his wife, Judy Roderick, who sang with the band almost from the beginning, began a recording project in 1983 and by the mid-1980s their appearances with the Mudflaps were infrequent. Saxophonist Chuck Florence, at that time, joined the rest of the original members, and the Mudflaps' gigs were once again limited primarily to western Montana. Meanwhile, Payne's musical forays took him first to New York and Colorado where he recorded with Roderick, Dr. John and others in a band called "Judy Roderick and the Forbears." After Roderick died in 1990, Payne left the Bitterroot Valley and in 1995 traveled south on a two-and-a-half year sojourn to Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba and Brazil, where he met and played with scores of local musicians. "I left the states with my alto sax and clarinet planning to be gone for a year and a half," he recalled. "Two-and-a-half years later in December of 97 my family asked me to come home." It was in Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil, in 1997 that Payne recorded with composer and guitarist Antonio Mello and "organic percussionist" Thiago de Mello. Just last month the CD containing many of those recordings, titled "Inspiration," was completed and Payne will officially release the CD within a month. He will have a box of the new CDs with him Saturday night for anyone who would like to purchase one. According to Horgan, who met both Payne and Steve Powell in 1969 at Stanford University, Payne's continuous education as a musician, punctuated by his trips abroad, has had a big influence on the music of the Mudflaps. "When Dexter returned from Cuba and Brazil he brought us a lot of material to study," Horgan said. "That's really when we started doing some Latin and salsa stuff. We all spent a lot of time with Dexter, and he's definitely influenced our music" At the same time, he said, the band started working with Leon and Liz Slater, both of whom have strong interests in Latin music. Leon Slater plays trumpet and replaced Chuck Florence who left the band a few years ago, and his wife Liz plays conga, timbales and other Latin percussion instruments. Other members of the band who have contributed to the Mudflaps' success include Rob Sanders, who played fiddle on the band's first album, and Tom Wogsland, who occasionally plays trombone with the band. For the last several years, the Mudflaps' gigs have been limited to benefits, private parties and weddings. Thursday night they played at Missoula's First Night for the 10th year in a row. The band has produced five CDs, three of which are re-releases of their first three albums - "Armchair Cabaret" (1979), "Sensible Shoes" (1983), and "Shake, Rattle and Roll" (1987). Horgan said he definitely believes the Mudflaps are a better band than they were 20 years ago. "I think we're always improving and evolving," he said. "We're tighter, more cohesive. Everybody listens and learns from each other. "I think that's true with any band that's been together as long as we have. You want to think of yourself as climbing the ladder." He said he doesn't think any of the Mudflaps would have believed in 1975 that the band would still be together 29 years later. "If we had any idea we'd be doing this for 30 years, we'd have taken out a pension plan," he said. Saturday night's Hamilton show is open to the public and begins at 8 p.m. Cost is $5 per person. In order to protect the new dance floor at River Street, owner Pam Erickson asks that people attending the show remove boots and shoes and dance in either socks or slippers. According to Steve Powell, the idea for the show was not to make a lot of money. "We wanted to give people the opportunity to see us locally, because we don't play here very often," he said. "And we wanted to let people get reacquainted with Dexter." Reporter Rod Daniel can be reached at 363-3300 or rdaniel@ravallirepublic.co |
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