When Harry Met Sally

Women who aren’t married and want to be sometimes ask me how I met my husband. It was a long path through a chain of bands, which could have gone several different ways – and in that sense, it seemed like fate.

I could have met him right away if I had gone to a Stiff Richard show at the Metro. There was a blackboard above the downstairs bar that listed the bands for the week and I saw the name. The band was Guy Pettengell, guitar and songwriter, Billy Britt, drums, and Bobby Jorgenson, bass. In due time, I received their CD “Squeeze” in the mail and gave it to Peter Bell to review because he knew Pettengell from somewhere and was eager to review it. The review was okay but not glowing.

Time passed and Bell himself got into a band, October. Ironically, Jorgenson was playing guitar in that band, a holdover from the original line-up called Solid Ground. Bell urged me to see them because, he promised, Jorgenson looked like Frank Daniel, a guy from Single Bullet Theory and My Uncle’s Old Army Buddys who I had a futile crush on.

It was true. They could have been related. I saw October at Jimmy Ryan’s and Moondance. Before the Moondance show, the band Thelma Shook had decorated my front door in the dead of night with flyers and cardboard “Shook” eyeglasses, and left me a whole box of cassettes. I was passing out those cassettes to everyone at Moondance, encouraging people to submit reviews. One of the people who got a cassette was Jorgenson.

I still remind him that if he had only written a review and gotten in touch with me to submit it, we might have met a year sooner, but he didn’t. (Small World aside: He went on to play bass in Thelma Shook.)

Time passed. I had heard of the band Joe America. Frank used to go see them play, and never invited me, which made me very curious about this mysterious local music scene that hardly anyone knew about that didn’t start until 11 o’clock at night. We’d go to dinner and a movie, and then he’d leave and go on for part two of his evening without me. Where did he go? What did he do? Who did he meet? That curiosity birthed the Richmond Music Journal, so now I had a reason to see Joe America for myself, without a date. I was a reporter.

This band took me to venues I had never been to before, and never went to again, like the Bus Stop in Shockoe Slip and Cimarron Rose on Midlothian Turnpike, a steakhouse famous for its superdelicious cinnamon buns. There’s a Walgreen’s now on Buford and Midlothian where this place was. I loved their cassette, “What World?” and knew all the songs by the time I first saw them, so their originals were as familiar as covers to me.

The band was Chris Douthit, JJ Loehr, Keith MacPhee, Chip Farnsworth and Merewyn, a background vocalist. The other background vocalist, Chuck, had been promoted to “management” and their soundman, Flash, had gone on tour with Reba McEntire, so now they had Bill Murray on sound and lights. It was the first big operation outfit I encountered. (Small World aside: MacPhee had been in Single Bullet Theory, too. Loehr had traveled with Bell as an opening act when Bell was in Ten Ten and had been in a band with Frank.)

Even before 9/11, Joe America stood for patriotism. “We’re watching CNN, a lot of political debates, we’re thinking about racism, looking at both sides of things. We’ve got the best of everything in America and we should be praising that. That’s Joe America. We go after things harder. We can stand in the face of all kinds of things. America is still a place where if you try, and work hard, it’s going to come true for you.”

Their song “Bad Days” was a tribute to people who fought in Desert Storm.

They had talent, equipment, great songs, enough covers to placate the bookers, a great PA, lights, and touring truck, but there was mysterious “bad blood going around town with the clubs…if you get on the wrong side of people in this town, it really hurts, and we’ve made the mistake of trying to expose ourselves at some wrong times.”

What?

“Where we belong is having the Dave Matthews Band open for us. We have values, we’re straight with people; we’re upfront; we don’t tell lies. That’s the greatest thing about our band. We’re trying to work through the music scene in Richmond, but there’s a whole lot of schmucky people.”

Douthit was proud of the fact their songs varied. “You check the Beatles out. Every song doesn’t sound the same. But you go down to hear Fulflej, the Pleasure Astros, every song is the same, even the same lyrics. These kids have one good idea and they do it every time on every song. We do acoustic, electric, go over the edge, overdrive, but we keep it dynamic.”

The real reason their songs sounded different was they had three very distinct songwriters, MacPhee, Loehr and Douthit, bringing in material. I especially liked Loehr's "Think About a Song" and "Every Little Danger." I still have a version of the latter on my iTunes. "Guardian Angel" and "Lies" were my MacPhee favorites.

Soon enough, they dissolved. Time passed. When MacPhee formed a new band with Keith Clarke called Grumbledog, I got a call from Clarke to come out to see them at Twisters. It was MacPhee’s Joe America songs again, interspersed with Clarke’s excellent pop tunes which sounded like radio-ready ‘90s hits. It was a good show, so I was ready to go see them again next time they called. They were going to be at the Sunset Grill. But they weren't a three piece anymore. They had a new drummer, Farnsworth from Joe America. And oh….they added a second guitar, Bobby Jorgenson. By the end of their set on the Sunset Grill’s outdoor stage, I had made up my mind. It took a couple more shows to bag him.

And that’s how we met. It only took three years and four bands. No woman who has ever asked to hear this story has made it to the end. They want to know an easier way to meet a guy. Or at least a quicker one.