Ron Graham- Drums

Robert Paulin- Bass

Bruce Wibanks- Farfisa Combo Compact (later Jimmy Doyle)

Joe Hanley- Rhythm Guitar

Rob Fox- Lead Guitar

Richard Moeck- Vocals and Trumpet

WIlly Pilato- Sax

"I think we were better than "some of the shittiest garage bands you never heard of," but we mostly had fun. From Birmingham, Alabama, we were The Jailbirds. Some went to Ramsey HS, some to John Carroll HS, some to Berry HS.

We played all covers except for "The Problems of a Man", which Richard (Moeck, vocalist and trumpet player) wrote at the tender age of 17, and which we recorded at Ed Boutwell's place in an old church under a viaduct. Never released except they played it on WSGN a couple of times. Covers of It's All Right, You're Just in Love (The Tams), Time Won't Let Me (The Outsiders) Louie Louie, Farmer John; our best song was Security (Otis Redding). We played Red Rubber Ball, and got rid of our first organ player, Bruce, ostensibly because he couldn't get the organ part right but really because his parents were strict Baptists and wouldn't let him practice on Sundays, and also because he didn't drink beer.

We played the Boom Boom Room at the Eastwood Mall, the Oporto Armory, CYO dances, and zillions of sock hops. We played in the intermission of a midnight horror movie at the Alabama Theater with Steve Norris of WSGN as MC. Ronny Graham got nervous and screwed up the drum part in the middle of For Your Love (The Yardbirds), but we survived.

We played in a Battle of the Bands at Berry HS against The Dynamics. Their bass player was Steve Sanders. If you tune into WGN Chicago at 11 PM Central, you can see him doing the news. He started as a newscaster at WBRC TV. We definitely won the Battle of the Bands.

Sam McDavid of the Showmen lived up the street from me, and was a couple of years older than me. I asked him to give me a guitar lesson, but all I really wanted to know was the lyrics to Louie Louie. He didn't know them either. Vaughn Rives, who played bass in The Bassmen, lived next door.

In the seventies, I did sound for Cozy, who had Ross Roberts (The Rockin' Rebellions), Mike Cadenhead (later of Hotel), Roger Fritz, Phil somebody on bass, and Macey Taylor. Macey worked for Luckey Forney and wrote the Milo's Hamburger jingle. Macey's daughter Maria Taylor, my god-daugher, has about six albums out and tours with Connor Oberst of Bright Eyes. Roger was a wonderful guitar player and for many years was chief luthier for Gibson. He has his own line of custom guitars and played on a Shelby Lynn album a couple of years back.

Cozy was the warm up band before Jethro Tull at the Birmingham Auditorium. They asked me to make sure their sound was okay. Their sound guy was Chris, and he was cool, so I just stood there available if he needed me. Tull's road manager was an asshole and came up and yelled at me, so I stood off to the side. I peed at the urinal next to Ian Anderson after the sound check.

I worked with Gaston Nichols at Prestige Studios in Homewood. We did service work on all the studios in town -- Sound of Birmingham, Boutwell, and the Matos brothers' studio in the old Homewood icehouse. Gaston and I did live recordings using a truck that had a 3M 16-track and two Studer 30 ips 2-tracks. We'd pull up to a venue, run a snake to the stage, put up some of our own mikes and split off the PA for the rest. The deal was that for a flat fee you got recording services plus the first 1000 LPs. You could sell the LPs at church or whatever.

I missed out on most of the real commercial stuff, although we recorded a show with lots of country greats: Faron Young, the Wilburn Brothers, Dotty West, and some others. We mostly did gospel groups. We had the contract to do live recordings for all the acts of Word Records, the biggest gospel company (now they'd call it country
gospel). We recorded a lot of top acts: The Gaithers, the Happy Goodman Family, The Florida Boys. It was really great music. We recorded the country commedian Jerry Clower in Ft. Walton Beach, and I have a copy of that album.

Eventually I realized I had more talent for he technical stuff than for the music (although I can play some fine slide guitar if I do say so). So I got a PhD in Electrical Engineering at Auburn, became a professor here in Gainesville teaching electronics, and I've been here ever since. I'm big on nostalgia for those days. And I still love the
music."