Doug Snyder, guitar player
Musical biography and cultural history 1961 — Becomes aware of local drummer and fossil collector, Bob Thompson. 1962 — Snyder and Thompson share a locker in high school (it’s a farm school — not enough lockers to go around). 1964 — The Beatles (yeah!). 1965 — Bob Dylan fan. Asks for/gets Harmony acoustic guitar for Christmas. Right away can play “Desolation Row.” Dad always disapproved of “hillbilly” guitars (all guitars). 1966 — Starts writing/performing “folk” songs. 1967 — Awaits release of first Velvet Underground LP. Meanwhile, takes up electric guitar and starts band as art history class project. Band is called Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show — a name taken from Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” (a name taken from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”). Performs with multimedia (films, slides,projections — like EPI). 1968 — Sees the Stooges open for MC5 at Grande Ballroom in Detroit, Michigan (MC5 recording first, live album). Likes “big, simple sound.”Feels Stooges take up where Stones left off. Is ready! 1971 — Circumstances finally right. Thompson and Snyder together in the country (you can make a lot of noise in the country) with electric guitar, big amp, big drums! 1972 — Buys Rickenbacker guitar and Vox Royal Guardsman amp (both used).Snyder and Thompson start getting together regularly to play music at Bob’s old farm house in Fayette County. Buys fuzz-wah pedal. They record everything from (almost) the beginning. Snyder maintains they never play anything twice; Thompson counters that they always play their “songs.”Both agree they must be the “World’s Most Recorded Band.” 1973 — Snyder and Thompson record what have become known as “The Damascus Tapes” (because of the oriental carpets covering the floor and walls of Thompson’s music room). Yet to be released as of this writing.(Soon to be released by Warm O’ Brisk in quadraphonic?) As well as guitar, Snyder plays electric violin. 1974 — Moves to Detroit area to attend graduate school (MFA not MBA). Marries college sweetheart who is busy designing auto interiors for General Motors. 1976 — MFA in hand, moves to New York City. Works for large midtown corporation by day; plays in downtown post-punk band called Sick Dick and The Volkswagens by night. Meets them on the subway. Turns out they live across the street. One of them has a copy of Daily Dance. Critic Lester Bangs is a fan. Rolling Stone magazine says that the scene in Mel Brooks’ film “High Anxiety” — where a man is locked in a car and killed by the car radio — would only be believable if he had been listening to Sick Dick and The Volkswagens. 1979 — Ron Asheton of the Stooges says hi during a Sick Dick break at Georgio Gomelski’s Zu club. Thompson joins Sick Dick for a performance at Zu. 1982 — Works with downtown choreographer Cydney Wilks on three different pieces. Plays live for the second — records music for the other two. TheNew York Times is positive. 1983 — Moves back to Ohio. Takes up with recording with Thompson again at Bob’s new digs (pun intended — it’s an underground house Bob designed and built). 1985 — Hard to imagine, but Snyder and Thompson play their first gig, together, ever! The Newport Music Hall in Columbus, Ohio. 1987 — Having moved from Columbus to Yellow Springs, Ohio (arts community — population 4500 — home to Antioch College) Snyder releases a solo LP called The Conversation. Has been recording it since late NewYork days. Thompson guests on one cut. Brian Doherty of Sick Dick and The Volkswagens guests on another. Once again New Music Distribution Service distributes. Option magazine calls it “stylish post-rock.”Snyder plays bass, keyboards, and drum boxes as well as guitar. 1989 — Snyder and Thompson begin a regular series of concerts at Antioch College’s Kelly Hall. This venue had been the site of many Cecil Taylor concerts attended by Doug and Bob when Taylor was in residence at Antioch in the early ‘70s. 1991 — Releases a series of cassette tapes on the New Frontiers imprint. Material is drawn from his various musical associations. 1998 — Daily Dance reissued by Warm O’ Brisk (Newport, Rhode Island) to rave reviews. 1999 — The Rules of Play, featuring one of the Antioch College concert recordings, to be released by Dead Earnest (Dundee, Scotland). Snyder and Thompson continue to practice at Bob’s home studio. (They must be getting pretty good by now!)
Bob was born in Ohio in 1946 — about three weeks before me. We both grew up on farms in the same county, but didn’t know each other until we were teenagers — when the five little country high schools merged into one. Actually we met in the high school band. Bob was quite a good drummer by then, and I never quite mastered the trumpet (although I continue to “use” it — and dream).
The 'Rules Of Play' CD was actually released in December 1999, but sadly its whole promotion and sales push was almost immediately halted folowing the label ownwe, Andy G, having to put Dead Earnest activities 'on ice' following a serious stroke suffered by his father, and the ramifications of that..
Early 1950s — Grows up on a farm in Ohio. Listens to Dad’s prewar swing 78s.Committed to being unconventional by ignoring rock ‘n roll — considers listening to Stravinsky instead.
1956 — Gives in. First 45 single bought is (a good one!) “Love IsStrange” by Mickey (Baker — great guitar) & Sylvia. “How do you call your lover man?”
Loves all the contemporary pop music!
Starts trumpet lessons.
The Rolling Stones on The Hollywood Palace (U.S. TV — first American tour). Play “I Just Wanna Make Love To You.” Brian Jones on harmonica. Likes them a lot! Little brother doesn’t!
Off to college in Cincinnati. In the vast minority as a Rolling Stones fan. Roommate’s band opens for ‘Stones (second U.S. tour) in Dayton,Ohio. Room mate won’t get autographs!
Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable with The Velvet Underground and Nico comes to Cincinnati Music Hall. Likes what he sees/hears (Thompson there that night, too — also with college art class).
Finds out Exploding Plastic Inevitable will be in Columbus, Ohio the next night. Drives 100 miles north to find them at Valleydale Ballroom(old, swing-era ballroom). Takes a tape recorder. Velvets equipment manager loans extension cord. Tape becomes much bootlegged “ValleydaleTape.” Goes down in Velvets history as only audio documentation of Exploding Plastic Inevitable. A portion (uncredited) on official VelvetUnderground box set.
Miles Davis releases “In A Silent Way.” Later, Tony Williams Lifetime’s“Emergency” and Pharoah Sanders’s “Tauhid” (with Sonny Sharrock) influential.
Snyder much influenced by Velvets, Stooges, and Sonny Sharrock (hope I’m not giving anything away). Thompson already influenced by drummers like Max Roach and “Philly” Joe Jones.
Snyder and Thompson record Daily Dance in October. Borrowed Sony 4-channel reel-to-reel and good microphones. Set up in Thompson’s kitchen; record there. Thompson “engineer.” Crazy music box sound in“Living With The Crocodiles” is Thompson playing African thumb piano with sticks (African stick piano?) — through Snyder’s fuzz-wah.
Daily Dance is issued on the duo’s own label, New Frontiers. It’s distributed by New Music Distribution Service in New York. When asked if she would distribute it if they put it out, Carla Bley (the jazz composer who, along with her husband Michael Mantler, runs NMDS) replies“Put it out! I like it!”
Moves to northern Ohio. Lives in a cottage forty feet from Lake Erie. Landlady (next door) thinks storm is shaking shingles on her house. Finds out Snyder plays guitar.
Sees Ornette Coleman trio at tiny gallery space in Detroit. Sees Miles Davis’s cosmic-groove band in a large, outdoor setting — also inDetroit.
Snyder and Thompson play their second gig — at photographer’s studio in Cincinnati. Sponsored by local arts organization.
Snyder works with (and later marries) choreographer Pat White. They collaborate on a piece commissioned by Antioch College. It’s his highest-paying gig ever. (She hasn’t hired him since.)
Bob Thompson, drummer
(A musical biography as related by Doug Snyder)
Bob took up the drums in the mid 1950s (instead of clarinet!), absorbing the recorded work of Max Roach and Hal Blaine. He began performing in public early enough that his father would have to carry his drums forhim. Amateur performing turned into real, professional work in the early 1960s with a rock ‘n roll band called The Cavaliers. The Cavaliers remained a covers band throughout its varied history — lasting into thelate 1960s — but always had a gritty kind of hoodlum appeal. They didn’t do any mass-market recordings, but did hook up with a soon-to-be-jailed shyster who took them to Europe in the summer of 1965 (and maybe seduced their bass player). They played at the Berlin wall, and bought clothes on Carnaby Street.
The Cavaliers probably came apart when Bob got a little more serious about art school at nearby Wilmington College. By the way, Bob was the star high school art student — and had quite a way with the girls (according to him). He always had a little more money than the rest of us because of the constant band work. Bob drove a Triumph TR3 and then graduated to an Austin Healey 3000. Bob never made it through college, though. I think his parents blamed it on rock music. Aside from a brief stint as a traveling Encyclopedia Britanica salesman, he has never had a regular “job.”
Bob and I started playing together in 1972 — after I finally got it together with really loud electric guitar playing. Bob has almost always lived in Fayette county, Ohio — where we both grew up. In 1972 he was renting a small farm house on a gravel road. The house didn’t initially have running water or an indoor bathroom, but it did have electricity! Bob and I continue as we started: never planning anything; never discussing the result outside acknowledging the success of a particular recording. It’s become a kind of superstition: if we talk about, we might scare away some of the magic.
What Bob and I do is the result of a fortuitous paring. My guitar playing could fit roughly into the “psychedelic” category — but the relative success I’ve had with it comes from playing with a really excellent free jazz drummer. This is something I’ve finally come to realize: how Bob was able to create a whole style of drumming in ou rmusic he probably didn’t get to play elsewhere — and excelled in it!Most guitarists of my ilk are accompanied by metronomic drummers — and are ultimately boring and/or quickly dated (Can and The Grateful Dead exempted — although we’re like neither).
Bob worked at some farming on a small scale beginning in the mid-1970s,and he eventually married a convenient girlfriend. He has done numerous one-off gigs over the years, accompanying many semi-known/unknown bluesguitarists, and at least one Windham Hill pianist, Scott Cossu. He also accompanied a hero of his, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders — when Pharoah came though Dayton, Ohio, needing a drummer. Bob and I even did a gig together in a Miles Davis-style cosmic groove early '70s band. I was living in the Detroit area at the time, and came down with my guitar and trumpet (I was Miles!!!). When I moved to New York in the late 70s, Bob did a gig with my band Sick Dick and The Volkswagens.It was the only gig in the band’s history which used a real drummer (six dollar bargain drumboxes not withstanding).
When I moved back to Ohio at the end of 1983, Bob was already living in an earth-sheltered house he had designed and built on eight acres of family farm land he had bought. The countryside there is rolling, and Bob’s house-in-the-hill looks down on Paint Creek — itself rolling through the farmland. Because of the shape of its plan — and Bob’s interest in native American artifacts — the house became known as the Human Effigy House. Most of our recording has been done there (Human Effigy Studio). The house is 3/4 of a mile off a little country road —the perfect place to make noise!
The last ten years have been Bob’s high water mark in professional music(as far as I’m concerned). For a long time, he was the “drum and percussion artist” for the Mad River Theater Works. Based in a small northern Ohio town, they created original musical theatre pieces based on Ohio history (and fuelled by Ohio grants). They were performed in Mad River’s own tent theater outside the town of West Liberty, and usually toured across Ohio and the rest of the country. Bob would be gone for months at a time. Real magic and beauty was created in stories involving the underground railroad (a way for escaped slaves to travel safely inpre-Civil War times), Annie Oakley (Buffalo Bill’s sharpshooter was from Ohio), and The Polka King. Mad River eventually burned itself out — butI didn’t miss any of their shows — and took my family!
A year later, with the good will of Doug and Bob for all the hassles, the promotional activities are back on track and already, the CD is getting good press from a variety of
magazines and internet publications, with more to follow. I would ask any magazines who review Dead Earnest CD's and may have accidentally not been sent the Doug and Bob CD, to get in touch for a copy.
The duo themselves rarely play live or do that much recorded music, but there may be a project or two in the pipeline, and more will be revealed soon.
Of all the artists on Dead Earnest, these two will be the least prolific, so don't expect too much in the way of news that often!!!
An edition of Audion magazine carries the feature I did on Doug and Bob about 8 months before the CD was actually released but it makes good reading, and the magazine, as ever, is an indispensable read in its own right (with a sort of non-committal review of the album) so well worth you picking one up. Catch the review on the review page
