Rolling with the Nashville Ramblers
(Gravedigger V/Nashville Ramblers bass player Tom Ward peruses the Cyndie Jaynes Photo Collection for stories behind the photos.)
Among Cyndie Jaynes’ photos, I recognize a subset of black-and-white images from the Cavern Club, Hollywood, in 1985. My old band the Nashville Ramblers is featured in the pictures. These particular photos show us in our earliest phase.
The lead photo of the subset captures a once-ever moment: [guitarist/vocalist] Carl Rusk and me onstage with Claudia Brandes. She made a guest appearance with us to sing—as best Carl, [drummer/vocalist] Ron Silva and I can recall—a cover of Manfred Mann’s 1964 pop hit, “Do Wah Diddy.”
The equipment we are using is our 1985 gear, and you can just barely see a Vox Essex amplifier peeking out of the photo. Carl is using the first of several Hagstrom guitars that he would employ, a pale blue one that may have come from or gone to Ron Silva. My bass here is a 1966 Framus Star bass.
The photo subset includes a couple of pictures of Ron behind the drums, and the length of his hair helps to date the photo. In 1986 he went for a much longer hairstyle.
There is also a Cyndie Jaynes color photo showing Pat Works with me in the background. I’m so pleased to see this because I loved Pat and I’m happy to have a picture that connects me with him way back then. I was younger than Pat and his circle (including the Tell-Tale Hearts, whom I admired almost like the youth “gang” you couldn’t quite join, although they might tolerate you), and I wished for more of these times with these cool people. But they all too quickly moved away.
By the time I got to San Francisco, that group had moved again, or was simply less cohesive, kind-of atomized. This photo of Pat and me brings back a special feeling. I was pleased to be hanging around with these sophisticated older cats (and kittens), and we look pretty awfully relaxed in this one photo.
– Tom Ward
More photos from the Cyndie Jaynes Collection:
- More familiar faces
- Let’s talk about girls
- Many familiar faces (a few missing names)
- Candid Wallflowers
- More shots of the Hearts
- Have you seen me?
- Every picture tells a story
- Cyndie Jaynes: An evening with the Wallflowers
- The Cyndie Jaynes Collection, Part One
Tags: , Carl Rusk, Cavern Club, Claudia Brandes, Cyndie Jaynes, Framus Star, Hagstrom, Patrick Works, Ron Silva, San Diego music, the Gravedigger V, the Nashville Ramblers, the Tell-Tale Hearts, Tom Ward, Vox Essex
August 28th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Hello Tom: I have a vhs packed away somewhere of The Nashville Ramblers playing a show in L.A.. I think it’s an early show.
Tom on the footage you are playing a bass with a really massive headstock.
I think Ron’s drums keep moving away from him(no rug?).
Ron Rimsite gave me the tape about 10 or so years ago while I was living in N.Y.C.. I should still have it….I hope.
August 28th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Is Carl on here? I knew him slightly when I was in 8th grade and he in 9th at Dana Junior High School. We were in an extraordinarily badly-taught Spanish class together, and I admired him for his musical reputation, his resemblance to Donovan, and (what I took to be) his cool disdain for school, Spanish, younger students in general, and myself in particular. I wanted to make friends badly enough that I sold him a Monkees book for almost nothing. It didn’t work. Bastard. Hi, Carl.
I think it was the same class where another of our colleagues, drunk, wrapped herself in the black-out curtain, passed out, and then urinated spectacularly–all without the teacher noticing. My friends and I said nothing, rather than break the adolescent code, but we were slightly worried that she’d died there when she failed to appear at lunch or in any subsequent classes.
August 28th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
I for one appreciate Tom’s boosterism of the Vox Essex, the Dom Perignon of bass amps. Tone-X forever!
August 28th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Uhhhh, Simon … Was the drunk girl OK??
August 28th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Yeah, she was fine, I guess. That is, she eventually re-surfaced and seemed the same as ever: a stoner/heavy-metal girl.
I didn’t really talk to her, although she occasionally threatened to have her boyfriend beat me up.
I’m not sure who got her out from the curtain and cleaned-up the pee. Just guessing, but it probably wasn’t Carl.
August 28th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
P.S. Sorry to Tom for my bad habit of digression. The Nashville Ramblers’ hey-day was slightly after my time, I guess, but I heard you once or twice with great enthusiasm, and I like seeing the pictures very much (although pictures of R. Silva always remind me of the night I was tricked into hosting a Crawdaddys party and the resultant mayhem–a digression I struggle to truncate here…). Cheers!
August 28th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
OK, so back to the Nashville Ramblers: Did Carl make his band debut in the Hedgehogs (rockin’ 1980-ish ensemble with Messrs. Brandes and Silva)?
August 29th, 2008 at 6:04 am
Those photos of the boys and Claudia are from those shows that were held at the Rowing Club in Mission Bay: ZLAC club. I attended Mike Rice’s wedding there in 2002 and recognized the stage area and the parking lot and knew I’d been there before. Mike’s wife Rachel was rowing there and on the board.
TOm, could you hear yourself play with the Essex? Kevin Ring had one and it wasn’t a potent force of low frequency output. Not Dub worthy.
Tone X! Yes. Tone D or Tone J? nooo..