All good songs--not just good garage rock songs--stay with a listener long after it has ended. One of the finest examples of a "can't get it out of my head" tune is 'You Say' by The Night Crawlers. Although it's the group's best-known song, their Back From The Grave-worthy 'Want Me' (Volume 8) demonstated how electic The Night Crawlers were. The band (three original members) reunited on May 1st, but Night Crawlers' keyboardist and founder Marc Reigel provided information on the combo's '60s heyday in this exclusive interview.
|
Marc Reigel Recalls The Night Crawlers
I grew up listening to my dad playing piano and going to sleep to 'Peter and The Wolf' by Prokofiev. I also listened to WDGY from Minneapolis.
The Night Crawlers (Marc Reigel, piano and organ; Mark Headington, bass; Mike Jines, guitar; Bill Redeker, drums; Barry Gillespie, vocals) sound was an eclectic. Our play list ranged from Chuck Berry "scoot guitar" to "jingle-jangle twelve-string," to keyboard-featured blues (Paul Butterfield) to pop-schlock like 'Hang On, Sloopy!' Our key feature? We played great music for dancing!
We were influenced by The Byrds; Beatles; Stones; girl groups (The Shirelles and Martha and The Vandellas); Motown; early rockers like Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Gene Vincent; and harmony-driven rock including The Beach Boys, Everly Brothers and The Hollies.
The Owatonna rock and roll scene (revolved around) mostly radio play and the Monterey Ballroom but there was an explosion of bands in Minneapolis--Accents, Underbeats, Castaways--who were getting lots of airplay, and became the impetus, in part, for bands springing up in small towns outside the cities. So, in 1965 there were probably five or six bands--all decent and some great, in Owatonna. And the thing I remember most was how many great lead guitar players came out of our town: Gary Sorenson, Sid Gasner, Greg Northrup and our guitarist, Mike Jines. It was amazing!
We played at sock hops after football games, armories, dance halls and the occasional bar. Most dances were connected to school activities, with the others being more of a money-maker for a promoter. We also played as far as we could drive in a day! We played in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and North Dakota, but our usual "range" was the towns in southern Minnesota--within 100 miles or so from Owatonna.
The first summer we formed as a four-piece band, in 1965, we played in front of maybe our largest audience at a battle of the bBands at the Steele County Free Fair. I think there were three other bands, one of which was The Emperors. I'm not sure there was an actual "award to the winner" given, but I thought we had the loudest applause. I'll declare us the "unofficial winner."
Our manager, Don Madison, later "found" us in 1966 and booked us for the last year and a half of our existence. He did a good job of getting us gigs, and we needed someone to run that part of the show; all the rest of us were in college and too busy to find gigs. The part he was not as good at was promoting our record...
Barry had this great song, 'You Say,' that we wanted to record. Don Madison set up our recording session with an engineer he knew in Mankato. We recorded the A-side with simultaneous playing and singing--no tracks laid down--then a sing-over. I think it took no more than four to five takes. Bill Redeker broke a stick on the final rim-shot of the song. If you listen carefully, you can hear it it the rim first, instead of the head!
'You Say' / 'Nightcrawlin'' was eventually released on two different labels, MAAD and Joel. The original pressing, I think, was 300 copies. The follow-up pressing occurred after the band broke up, and apparently the orginal green label was no longer available.
We didn't write many original songs. Maybe four or five...and we played only 'You Say' and 'Want Me' at dances. 'Night Crawlin'', our B-side, was created on-the-spot at the recording session for 'You Say' because we needed a B-side! Barry and I wrote the original material, what little of it there was!
Madison also arranged for us to get a recording session at Columbia Studios in Chicago! These acetates ('Dandelions', 'I Fee So Fine', 'Want Me', 'Chimes Of Freedom', 'Just Like Romeo & Juliet' and 'Shoulder Of A Glint') were never printed as records but somehow hit the streets and now appear on some collections! I don't have a clue as to how the 'Want Me' / 'Feel So Fine' tape became and acetate and became a record! We also have a recording of "The Last Dance" at Carleton in June of 1967 which I have transferred to CD. It's a copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy, but you can still hear the excitement going on! We had great rapport with the crowds.
The Nightcrawlers broke up in 1967, mostly because Mark and I graduated from Carleton and left for Iowa and Illinois respectively--but also, we were nearing the end of our "run," and the music was changing from danceable to psychedelic/heavy/moody.
Playing in a band where everyone can "feel" what he's supposed to be doing, really was the hallmark of my experience with The Night Crawlers. There was a clear "synergy" between Mike, Mark, and me--the instrumentalists--and we could play just about anything we set our minds to. I loved singing in three-part harmonies, too. Most bands had one singer but we had three. I think we sounded "big" that way. For example, on Jay and The Americans song 'She Cried,' we just killed the ending with a C-E-G chord. I get goose bumps just thinking about how tight our singing was!
For more on The Night Crawlers, visit their FaceBook page, and read the great June 2010 article by Susan Hvistendahl in the Northfield Entertainment Guide.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
