One was 1960s acid rock, and we took our name from a cool book we had all read. How were we to know the name would be chosen for a major cult film three years after we split up? The lead guitarist/lead singer discovered LSD and took off for San Francisco. The drummer got into RISD and left for Providence. I (bass and keyboards) left to live in Spain. That was the end of that! But we did get to back up some cool bands at Washington's short-lived version of the Fillmore (The Ambassador Theater), such as Junior Wells, Canned Heat (original lineup) and the Youngbloods.
The second was an instrumental folk music band that did Appalachian, bluegrass, Celtic, English and Balkan music. The name was from the fact that we were both Dutch and American. We did two tours of the Eastern USA and played gigs in Germany and the Netherlands, and got to hang with a few notables, such as Eric Bogle, the Boys of the Lough, Hamish Imlach and Steeleye Span.
The third was/is a necessarily part-time project of (mostly) political satire, named after the Republicans' ridiculous renaming of French Fries and French Toast to Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast after France refused to march with Bush into Iraq in 2003. Most of the group hangs out in the Atlanta area and are professional musicians. I am not, and live about 4000 miles from Atlanta, which should pretty much explain the part-time status. We rarely get to hang with ourselves, let alone anyone else, but I got a hand-written note from Bill Clinton saying how much he liked the lyrics of one of the songs I wrote about him. Also, Al Franken and Thom Hartmann played our stuff on their shows during the Air America days, so we've had our fun, too, off and on.
= new reply since forum marked as read
