Frog Legs Revisited

If I were to do this Frog Legs memoir right, I’d pull out the crate of old Journals and look up every article we ran on the band, but the crate is in the closet, under the Christmas decorations, behind the litter box, so that’s not happening.

The original cassette cover.

This is what I recall. I had a fax machine/answering machine combo in my apartment/Journal office, and I kept the ringer turned off so calls during the night or early morning would not wake me. This was before email was commonly used, and I wanted an easy way for my readers to send in their comments and letters. I assumed putting pen to paper might be too challenging, and musicians cannot afford stamps, but they can talk in the middle of the night. I was right. Each morning I had several spoken letters to transcribe for the popular letters to the editor page.

There was one frequent caller that, instead of comments on the local music scene, told acid trip type

stories that would always end with the admonition to go see Frog Legs. Sometimes two people were on the line during these messages and they would perform a play. I was intrigued. It was an effective way to get a reporter's attention. So, one night when I was on my way to a more important show, I dashed into Twisters to catch part of their set and was instantly blown away.

Their ambition in ’94 was to make the jump to the big time, which at that time was leaving Grace Street for Shockoe Bottom. Could I help? I could. I encountered a sort of drunk Chuck Wrenn wandering around the 17th Street Farmers’ Market at 2 in the morning one night. Tuesday was a slow night at his club, Moondance. I said, give me every Tuesday for Frog Legs. I guarantee you a crowd. He said okay. I called in every favor, twisted every arm, called everyone I knew, to guarantee at least someone showed up for that first show. I got people there. Each following Tuesday night went better and soon Moondance was the place to be on Tuesdays, not only to see the band, but to see each other. The gang’s all here. We went through wild dance nights, nights with choir robes, nights when no one knew where Wrenn was. But when the band started, he would pop out from under the Moondance stage. How and when did he get under it?

And yes, the legend you've heard elsewhere was true. Tom would quietly borrow a quarter from someone in the audience before the show and use it as a pick.

I don’t recall how long this went on, it seems like years, but probably was less than one. At some point the band wanted to get paid, which wasn’t part of the original deal. I am good at publicity, not at making money. Moondance didn’t want to hurt its food and beer sales by charging a cover on a Tuesday. The Journal’s gushing coverage became more of an embarrassment to the band than a benefit. We followed them to Crazy Charlie’s for a series of great shows. They had two cassettes out and did a CD, but the CD had new songs on it that the fan base wasn’t familiar with, and the few carry-overs were homogenized in the studio. The excitement of the live show didn’t carry over to the CD, and we had to give it a thumbs down, which didn’t endear us to their new management. Dave Matthews was able to preserve their stage sound on their first CD, but few other local bands got that kind of protection from their management. They listen to the studio engineers who want them to sound more like what’s currently selling.

Then they made – in our opinion – a fatal mistake by going with East Coast Entertainment on the college frat house circuit on tour through the mid-South. Frog Legs is not a frat band. Drunk frat boys don’t want their dates being distracted by Wrenn Mangum’s stage antics, and they didn’t appreciate Tom Illmensee’s amazing artistry on the guitar. They didn’t know the music from the magical first two cassettes. Life on the road for a young , unknown band is boring and costly. There’s no real money to be made. You are away from friends and family, and away from the hometown fans who know and appreciate you. Fighting Gravity was the perfect package for frat houses, and even they didn’t become famous after years and years on the road.

This suspicion was confirmed to me at a Battle of the Bands at Sunset Grill where I was one of the judges along with girls from East Coast Entertainment. I asked them how Frog Legs was doing, and they said the feedback from the frats was not good.

So ended Frog Legs circa 1997. Plus, the bass player moved away. Families and children happen. Steady jobs were needed. Wrenn developed a young Elvis act that expanded into an Elvis, Johnny Cash, rockabilly act that plays around the state five to 10 shows a month. The three remaining members came together for occasional local shows as Bone Anchor. Fifteen years go by. (Does anyone remember the original bassist? I do. He was either a med student or a dental student at MCV, the Pete Best of Frog Legs.)

Facebook, which replaced the Journal as a means of getting the word out about bands, told me there was going to be a last reunion show because Tom was moving overseas with his family. Bone Anchor would cease, too, and since Turtle was coming in from Crozet for the going away party, why not play a last show?

All the bands at the new, spacious Broadberry club near Boulevard and Broad would be interconnected. Johnny Cecka and the Jailswerves has Morgan and Tom in it, then Frog Legs, then Herro Sugar, a surprisingly excellent band of recent high school graduates – the bass player is Tom’s own son – and then Bone Anchor.

I seldom go out anymore, but this required an appearance. There were just as many familiar faces in the audience, and it was shocking how little the band had changed in appearance in 20 years. I guess the trip from age 20 to 40 is less physically transforming than the one from 40 to 60, which I’m on. Wrenn still worked the room before each set, sincerely thanking everyone for coming. He didn’t wear the little brown vest over the bare chest, and they didn’t play “Human Cannonball” or “Rubber Chicken,” but we did get “Midnight Radio” and memories of Batman underoos. Tom played sitting down, not in choir robes as he once did, but in a suit as he later did, and was – as always – completely oblivious to Wrenn’s antics on stage. We got the wiggle worm on the floor, and even the hand stand. There was plenty of sweat flying. 

You can probably find lots of videos of this show on Facebook and YouTube. At least a third of the audience was recording it on their phones or cameras, another reason a printed monthly newspaper is no longer necessary to share the news about great local bands. If you haven’t been, the Broadberry is a nice room, longer than it is wide, with seating in the back and plenty of room to see the band in the front. I parked across the street at the Children’s Museum and didn’t get towed or ticketed, or asked to pay a fee to park there, calamities that crushed the Shockoe Bottom scene.