JimmyR
During the tension-filled late spring and summer of Lord Tracy's last year, I had been rolling over in my mind the possibility of fronting my own band. It was a scary thought, going from a band that had the Big Record Deal to starting all over again. One thing I knew was that I didn't want to play the same kind of music that Lord Tracy had been playing. I wanted to follow the bluesier side of things while still letting it rock. And I didn't want a lead vocalist to have to deal with. I was rightfully shy about my vocal abilities, but I thought that the freedom I would have being the front man would make up for that.
I took the sort of shitty odd jobs that musicians take when they're between bands, and started looking for some guys to jam with. I eventually took up with a drummer whom I'd known for several years named Randy Barnett, and he knew a bass player by the name of Larry Earl Brown. We jammed together a couple of times and decided to make a band out of it. We named it JimmyR and the Rhythm Rats, later changing it to the JimmyR Band when we wised up that girls didn't like rats!
I wish I could say that Dallas welcomed us with open arms, but that didn't happen. I was caught between the blues clubs and the hard rock clubs. I played at the Basement a couple of times but failed to light a fire under the crowds that really wanted Lord Tracy stuff. And the blues Nazis at some of the blues clubs were quick to put us down for being "too rock." It's funny how they booed Stevie Ray off the stage in his unknown days for being "too rock!" And the booking agents that I initially contacted for out-of-town gigs wanted me to go out calling it Lord Tracy. Yeah, right! So it was an uphill battle for me to be accepted.
We found our niche in several clubs in the Dallas area, and eventually got some good roadwork out of clubs in and out of Texas. I was getting respect if not actually getting rich and famous! Plus I learned to sing. Really, I found out what I could do and couldn't do with my voice. This was very important to me. Still, Pavoratti doesn't have anything to worry about!
Just as the band was starting to get some recognition, we made a change in drummers welcoming my old friend Chris Craig back to the fold. Larry had grown as a bass player, making the change from heavy metal to blues in an unbelievable way. It was probably genetic since his dad came from the old school of rock and Larry was playing his old bass. That version of the band was the best. With Chris back in and Larry behind me, I had the best rhythm section I could ever hope for.
Our friend Al McCraw, originally from Memphis like Chris and me, had been working with the band in a quasi-management capacity and he found some guys up in Denton who were willing to do a spec deal with the band. We recorded Lost Highway which I named after that great Peter Guralnik book at their studio in the fall of 1993. The album has some good stuff on it, and I am proud to look back on my first 'solo' effort and know that I did a good job, even if it didn't change the world. At least my songwriting had come along by then, and I can listen to (most of) my vocal tracks without cringing!
The next year should have been really great for us, but personal problems started cropping up even before the year was really upon us. My wife left me right after 1994 kicked in for another guy, a musician higher up on the food chain than I was in the Dallas scene. That's not to throwing the blame on her for everything; she had grown tired of my infidelities and seeming addiction to extra-marital sex. But it was a shock nonetheless, even though I have to take much of the blame.
For the band, Larry has started to escalate his drug use until it was no longer able to be termed 'recreational' by any stretch of the imagination. Then during that summer, Chris headed back home to Memphis, tired of the endless struggle for success and all the personal problems of Larry and me. First Larry and I got another drummer, then Larry was out when he had to go home to Lubbock to recover his life. For a brief shinning moment it looked as if things would fly again when Barney joined the band. We had some fun, but by that time we had gone through a succession of uninspiring drummers and things were just not happening.
I had played music for most of my life now, and I was tired. When I was onstage, I was wishing I was somewhere else, and when it gets to that point it's time to lay it down for awhile. Sometimes you have to leave the things that are most precious to you when they become stale in order to rediscover what it is you loved about them. I had decided to quit for awhile, and put myself through motorcycle mechanics school at a local community college. So in the fall of 1995, that's exactly what I did.
I played one last gig in one of our favorite clubs. Chris came down from Memphis and he, Barney, and I had a great time and gave everyone a glimpse both of what Lord Tracy was and what this band could have been. But it was there and gone like a cool breeze in the summer.
During this time, I had met a girl that would inalterably change the course of my life for all time to come. When she went to spend a year in Zürich, Switzerland she beckoned me to follow, so after motorcycle school was over in the spring of 1996 off I went. And that was how I went 'missing.'
