I paid the cover and settled at a table close to the band. I was overdressed in the dress I’d worn to teach class that night. The club was one of my old stomping grounds when I went to college at the same campus where I was now an adjunct professor, so I felt both at home and out of place. A weird combination of feelings.
The music was loud. I’d forgotten how loud live music in a small club can be. I wadded up paper napkins and shoved them in my ears. Once I adjusted to the sound level, I realized their original lyrics, hooks and beats were damned good. I watched the student who’d invited me transform from serious college senior to outrageous wild man as lead singer on stage. It was a blast.
The unusual part of managing an alternative rock band at the age of 38 to 40 is that the bandmembers were ages 19 to 26. Mere babes to my sophisticated, professional persona. Or so we all thought.
The lead singer of the band was in the university class I taught on Advertising, Copy. Layout and Design. It was a senior level class and he was about to finish his degree. I was a former advertising executive who had recently owned my own agency, which had closed leaving me depressed and at loose ends.
One evening after class, he invited me to come hear his band, Lizard Ranch, playing in the popular club close to campus. I am nothing if not adventurous and spontaneous. Plus, I was having a debilitating mid-life crisis. So why not?
After their performance he introduced me to the band. Peter, the baby-faced 19-year-old with long blonde hair, Sean the 26-year-old drummer, clean cut and serious on stage. Mike, long-haired 26-year-old talented lead guitarist and alcoholic, as I was to discover later, and Bill, stoic bass player with a rebellious streak. Paco, 24, was my student, the lead singer and main lyricist.
I was surprised when Paco asked me to be their manager based on my marketing experience and my professionalism. It wasn’t anything I’d ever considered doing. Still, It might be just the right thing for a 38-year-old woman at loose ends, who felt like a failure, and was ready to wild out, all of the parts of me they didn’t know yet. It didn’t take long for them to find out.
In essence, we fell in love. I with them and they with me. I watched them onstage as their manager and felt what I would later discover is the overpowering love of a mother towards her children. I was as proud of them as if they were my sons. Part of my mid-life crisis is that I wanted a child and my husband at the time wouldn’t have a baby with me. The “boys in the band” and I became a family for two years, and like all families, were part supportive and part dysfunctional.
Peter Meredith, the baby face, could string an entire sentence together using only the word “F**k” and its past tense, plural, and gerund as subject, verb, adjective and adverb. He was amazingly gifted as a guitar player, and had the most caring soul. He was the one most concerned about my mid-life crisis and my happiness.
Bill Hammon used my computer to make an inspection tag for the band’s van. He was ingenious at the art of bypassing. He was the quiet one, and the one most dedicated to promoting the band with me. I feel sure they would become famous in today’s social media world with Bill’s computer skills and our promotion.
We had to do an intervention at one point with Mike, the lead guitarist. He was a puppy dog, and a gentle spirit unless he was drinking, which was most of the time. He wrote much of the music, and when he had to take a break from the band, he was deeply missed.
Sean Shallenberger, the drummer, was the oldest and the most serious. He held a full-time job in addition to the band. He avoided drama, and seldom disagreed with the others. After the gigs, though, he could joke and party with the best of us.
Paco Koehn was the touchstone. He wrote most of the lyrics, although Peter collaborated on two of their most popular songs. They all wrote the music. Paco’s inspiration included the beats from the 1960’s, and Jim Morrison’s music. Hence the name “Lizard Ranch,” after the album by the Doors. He would swing and hang upside down from the rafters in clubs that had them. He and I argued over his garbled lyrics, and he won. Any indecipherabiltiy of the lyrics didn’t keep the groupies from singing along at every gig.
I quickly discovered management included babysitting fragile creatives and breaking up arguments. At one gig in Deep Ellum in Dallas, the bass player Bill packed up his equipment and headed toward the door. I’d had my back to the band and was sitting on a bar stool talking to the bartender. When he nodded toward the door, I looked over, leaped off the stool and threw myself between Bill and the door, blocking his way and asking, “What the hell are you doing? It’s the middle of a gig!”
After listening to him vent about Paco and their creative differences, I managed to convince him to return. I talked Paco down, too, and the show went on.
It wasn’t the last time I had to act as mediator, but it was the only one where we could have lost all future gigs at the clubs in Deep Ellum, which was a mecca for alternative music then. Being banned there could have ended the band’s career.
I set them up with a recording session, and showed up to meet Paco there wearing cut off shorts and a denim shirt. Paco was appalled. “Carol, we hired you because you’re a professional. Dressing like us doesn’t make you look like one.”
While I couldn’t disagree, the job was unleashing a freer part of me I’d kept on lockdown for a long time. As it turned out, the recording guy and the club managers were cool with my look, which was sometimes leather shorts and tall boots, and other times voluminous hand painted shirts over tights and high heels.
My husband traveled for business and would often come home to band members and even groupies asleep all over the house. When we finished a gig they wanted to party, and I, the mama bear, didn’t want any of them driving home. Since we celebrated at my house, I didn’t have to drive either.
During summer, we sometimes went skinny dipping in my backyard pool after a performance. There was drinking and a tentative experience with mushroom tea. My one and only use of LSD was with some of the band at the first Lollapalooza concert in Dallas. It caused me to wander around the concert grounds in wonder, and to miss seeing Ice Cube perform. I’m not sure it was worth the trade-off.
I’d missed the typical psychedelic adventures as a college student and then as a young adult. My entire life up to that point had been mostly serious and focused. Around the band and their followers, I vacillated between feeling like a mother figure and a teen-ager. Once, when I was complaining about getting “old” at nearly forty, Sean said, “Carol, you look our age, you act our age, you ARE our age.” Still one of the best compliments I’ve ever received.
During two years, I got them radio play, up to fourteen gigs a month towards the end, and a gig at the Caravan of Dreams in downtown Fort Worth, Texas. Caravan of Dreams was a jazz and blues club with a huge auditorium stage, and a geodesic dome planetarium on top. It was built by the millionaire Ed Bass, who also funded the Phoenix geodesic dome live-in project in Arizona. Lizard Ranch was the only alternative rock band with all original music to ever perform there. To me at least, they appeared magnificent on that stage.
During the second year, I started Graduate school in counseling. Managing a young band and dealing with club owners and managers certainly prepared me for the job.
The band, even though I booked them 14 gigs that month, told me on my 40th birthday that they were hiring another manager. They expressed love, regret and gratitude. I was devastated. Looking back, I see that my new focus caused them to feel neglected or unsupported. Even though I stayed up all night with them at their second recording session, and left the studio at 8:00 in the morning to drive to class, I couldn’t make every gig anymore.
I will always love and be grateful to them. Bill, Mike and Sean keep in touch with me. I know where Paco is and what he’s doing, although we haven’t talked in over twenty years. I finally tracked Peter down after he moved to Austin. I moved to Austin as well 10 years ago and have looked for him all that time. We will meet soon.
The band broke up shortly after they switched managers. Their bookings dropped dramatically, and she wasn’t able to deliver what she promised. Maybe they just burned out, as it was so much harder to make it in the music business in the 1990s.
Bill and I started a Facebook page for Lizard Ranch where you can hear the music. I think you’ll agree that today they’d be famous. It’s some of the best original music I’ve ever heard before or since.
As for me, they gave me new life. They let me love them, and they gave me love back. I learned that turning 40 wasn’t the end, and that a mid-life crisis could be more of a spiritual emergency, using both meanings of the word. I emerged from the experience with my confidence back, a new found joy in music and life, and ultimately a degree, a divorce, and a son.
He’s a content creator and breaking into innovative rap styles. When he was growing up, he and I sang along to Lizard Ranch
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
What Does Being in Love and Loving Someone Really Mean? | My 9-Year-Old Accidentally Explained Why His Mom Divorced Me | The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex | The Internal Struggle Men Battle in Silence |
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