My Departed Brothers

David Adams

I actually hung around with David's older brother Aaron before I really got to know David. David was a bass player and when we ended up in college together we started hanging out. We tried several times to put bands together before finally getting Gris Gris established. David played in Gris Gris, Corruption, and The Catahoula Band with me and we were pretty close. David got married and had a great family and basically got out of the business but we always remained friends. David passed on about two years ago after a long hard fight with cancer. I think about him all the time.

David Antonius

I first met David when he was playing bass with a band named Heater. This band included brothers Bill and Kim Hoyt and Debbie Stanbro. This was in 1974. David quit playing bass and became a sound tech shortly thereafter and this was his true calling. David ran sound for just about everybody on the coast at one time or the other including an extended stretch with The Dock of the Bay Music Company. David helped me out countless times running sound when I was promoting the Beachfront Festival for years and doing sound for my bands countless times. Any technical questions or problems that I had were always solved by him. David died of a heart attack very suddenly and I am still sick over his death. Wherever you are, I miss you, my brother.

Raymond Ladner

Big Raymond was part of my Harley Davidson/Biker connection. When Candy and I were playing with her cousin Gina in The County Line Band we had quite a following of bikers (still do, for that matter) . Gina's husband, T Bone road a motorcycle along with her brothers. Raymond was one of this crew. When Big Raymond would get loaded he would literally roar like a big lion. We would be playing and every now and then Raymond would just start roaring!! We used to play a Billy Joe Shaver tune named Black Rose that Raymond loved and I'd always dedicate it to him. Raymond died pretty suddenly from some weird kidney problem and he was buried with a black rose in his hand. I always think of Raymond whenever I'm around that Harley crowd. Hello to my brothers in The Asgard Motorcycle Club!!

Doug Sahm

As the original Texas Tornado, Doug was the real deal when it came to Texas music. I first heard Doug in 1965 when his record, "She’s About A Mover" with The Sir Douglas Quintet was burning up the AM airwaves. With the Quintet’s brit sounding name and heavy beat, teenage America had no clue that these were guys from San Antonio’s east side!!

Doug was a cosmic walking talking encyclopedia of Texas music. He was like a giant sponge absorbing and reinventing any and all styles of music from Tex/Mex polkas to Bob Wills, Junior Parker and T Bone Walker. This guy turned me on to the real Texas blues when Stevie Ray Vaughn was still in grammar school !! Doug’s music (no matter what style he happened to be playing) was real and authentic. I only shared his company a few times but he was always friendly and upbeat. One night my friend Augie Meyers who has played with Doug for over 40 years and is also a member of the Texas Tornadoes came out and sat in with my band. I was devastated when Augie told me that Doug died from a heart attack several weeks before!!!
I think that perhaps a most fitting tribute was spoken for Doug Sahm years ago by legendary record producer and Atlantic Records founder, Jerry Wexler. In Wexler’s book "Rhythm and The Blues" he said " What Mac (Dr. John) is to New Orleans, Doug is to Texas. From Western Swing to Lightning Hopkins’s Houston Blues, from Tex/Mex ditties to polkas, Doug integrated it all and came out with something singular: his own sound on guitar, his own voice, his own songs. I was proud to produce his album documenting Sahm’s soul, embracing everything from T Bone Walker to Bob Wills."
Doug, I’m sure that you’re at The Great Soap Creek Saloon in the Sky fronting a great house band and having a blast. Adios amigo and know that you left good fingerprints on my soul !!

Billy Shumski

Going back to my first day of Kindergarten at St.Joseph Academy I can still remember seeing this little skinny kid with bird legs and a crew cut. His name was Billy Shumski. He and I became immediate friends.
Move forward to my sophomore year at St. Stanislaus. He and I are still good friends and both in the school band, Billy on cymbals and myself on trumpet. Billy knew that he would be a drummer but he was stuck down at the low end of the percussion section on cymbals, temporarily. Sometime later that year he badgered his mother into letting him buy a set of drums. From that moment on his entire life revolved around those drums. He practiced ten hours a day,every day that whole summer and by August was playing in his first band, The Saxons. I talked my way  into the band shortly after. That year Billy was moved  first chair snare drum in the St. Stanislaus band!! Billy was the most schooled rudimental drummer that I have ever encountered and the best. His brain was like a metronome, a perpetual click track!! This guy was mentally brilliant and had always been a straight A student. He was the one that everyone knew would eventually be a renowned brain surgeon or a Nobel Prize winner! The fact that he was a monster drummer was just icing on the cake! Billy and I played together through three bands, The Saxons, The Subway Prophets and Tomorrow's Dawn. Later he would move on to play with Gregory and The War Babies and countless other bands through the years.
The great tragedy in Billy's life was the fact that he was born with the whiskey demon in his genes and was doomed from his first taste. He would fight a battle his entire adult life against alcoholism but sadly, he could never beat it.
Recently Billy was killed when the house he was living in burned to the ground with him sleeping on the sofa. I know that I'll always grieve for him. He was a true blue friend for almost forty-five years and a real musical brother. I miss him every day.

Robbie "R.L. The Sax King " Rivers  

Growing up in Meridian,  Robbie Rivers got his musical chops playing the bars and roadhouses of central Mississippi with his band The House Rockers.
Robbie began playing in my band around 1989 while he still playing with The Pearl Band.  Robbie's true love was playing jazz and the bebop of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Miles Davis was where his playing style came from.   He was also a monster R&B sax player and "R.L." was the saxophone player that worked with me the most over the years. This guy is responsible for me having the band that I have today because he was the one who gave me the connection with The Pearl Band. Robbie's recent passing is going to create a giant void in the gulf coast  jazz scene that will probably never be filled. He was a gentle soul and a good friend who opened my eyes and ears to the world of jazz


THE BAND | FRIENDS & FAMILY | MY MUSICAL HISTORY
COOL LINKS | MUSICAL INSPIRATIONS | BOOKINGS | E MAIL PAT

PARTIAL MP3 FILES

HOME