Larry & Lance in Garland Jeffreys’ band, 1978

Larry and Lance in Garland Jeffreys’ band, 1978, caught on tape!

What happened between the time the original lineup of Orleans (John Hall, Larry and Lance Hoppen, Wells Kelly … plus Jerry Marotta) broke up in 1977 and the reformed Orleans “next generation”  (Larry, Lance, Wells, Bob Leinbach and R A Martin) appeared in 1979?

Well, a LOT of things, actually … but this post focuses on the Garland Jeffreys story.

Now, I don’t know how many reading this are familiar with Garland’s work. I certainly wasn’t at the time. Still, when Jerry Marotta called me early on in ‘78 about a gig, I was all ears.

Jerry had become band leader for Garland and responsible for assembling a band for his upcoming tour. He invited me to play bass, Tim Cappela for keys and sax, David Brown on guitar, and Joachim Young also on keys. Just for reference …

Jerry, the younger brother of world-famous drummer Rick Marrotta, had his first “big gig” with us! His first hit recording session was Still the One. When Orleans broke up, he wound up in the Hall & Oates band for awhile, playing on Kiss on My List, etc. After that, he was with Peter Gabriel for a decade, helping to develop that Gabriel sound (Shock the Monkey, Salisbury Hill, and so on). His credits are too numerous to mention, but you can visit him at http://jerrymarotta.com  

Tim Cappella went on to bulk up as a bodybuilder. You can see him in the original Lost Boys vampire movie. More importantly, he went on to play in Tina Turner’s band and with Ringo’s All Stars.

David Brown got the Billy Joel gig and stayed with Billy for I don’t know how long … maybe 20 years? (incidentally, David is a good Boston-based bud of Orleans’ own Fly Amero)

Now, Jerry had met Joachim Young (who played all those cool keys for Steve Miller on Fly Like an Eagle and other Miller tunes of that era) when he was playing with Valerie Carter. She was opening the tour we (Orleans) did with Jackson Browne, throughout 1976. He was great in those roles but, for whatever reasons, did not get (or take) the Garland gig. So, who would be the replacement?

“Why not Larry?”, I suggested. And, lo and behold, it came to pass that Larry joined us to complete the band. In the trade-off, Garland got the benefit of not only keys, but a 2nd guitarist and another singer.

As best as I can recall, that tour lasted only a few months, but we played some cool places … I think. Actually, to be honest, I don’t remember much about it at all. But, hey … it was the 70s, right?

Fortunately, someone had the presence of mind to capture this Garland Jeffreys Band on tour … and I’m getting to that, which is the point of this story. Fast-forward to last month …

When Orleans played Sanford, FL on 4th of July, we were visited by a dear old bass-playing friend, fan and Woodstock contemporary, Greg Jackson. While emailing back and forth in the aftermath of that reconnection, Greg informed me that there were now two Garland Jeffreys shows posted at Wolfgang’s Vault. He was sure it was OUR version of Garland’s band because it was not HIM playing bass (and I never knew before that that Greg had ever done the Garland gig. Hmm …)

So, I checked out these shows, recorded live at the BottomLine in New York on May 15th and 16th of 1978. And you know what? We were pretty darn good!

Anyway, for those of you who like to dig down deep into the history, can’t get enough of Orleans spin-offs, or just like finding some good but obscure “new” music,  this is something VERY different than anything you’d expect to find from us!

The really GOOD NEWS is that listening to the shows is FREE! The not-so-good news (for some) is that the shows are NOT available to purchase for downloads. Don’t know why.

While you’re at Wolfgang’s Vault, you might want to type “Orleans” into the search box, because there are FOUR shows from 1977 that are available for listening and downloading.

Enjoy!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 11:31 pm and is filed under More Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments and pings are closed.