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thee Introduction

thee Begyning

thee Byrth

thee Heyday

thee Declyne

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Copyright (c) 2002

StanRay Entertainment Group

thee Heyday

I’d got there a bit early to help set up the sound and all that stuff, and by 9 or so there were about 50 or 60 people hanging around in varying stages of intoxication. We had set up candles everywhere and Pamela had put up some really cool paintings she had done (she was actually quite an interesting artist) that gave the place a real sense of the supernatural, like we were getting ready for a séance. It was the perfect backdrop for a band called thee Wytches.

When the tape was finally played for the crowd the place was bedlam. They had managed to capture the energy of that first show earlier in the summer and trapped it on tape! They also did some tricks that I didn’t know were possible…things like altering the guitar and vocal sounds and overdubbing guitars. I swore it was at least as good as anything I had heard on the radio. Not only was the sound great, but Eric and Ray were turning into accomplished songwriters. What kills me is that after that night I never heard the tape again. No copies were made except what was needed for business purposes, and this was years before you could just record something on to a cassette.

I’d assumed that some record would come out eventually, so at the time it was no big deal. I’d love to know who has that stuff now. Later that night I was talking with Jeff and Lenny out by the pool. Eric had mentioned that his dad had already heard the tape and liked it; enough that he had offered to bring it with him on his next trip to New York. He had a buddy there who was somehow hooked into the music biz. The word was that this guy had a lot to do with signing Tommy James and The Shondells. "That’s the ‘Shondells’ label, you know." said Jeff. "…My baby does the …" For some reason that cracked us up…that thee Wytches could end up on the same label as one of the biggest pop acts in the US! All I wanted to know was if I could quit school and go with them when they went big time.

Over the course of the next couple of months they played the usual circuit of those times. Car dealerships, private parties, VFW halls, colleges and the never-ending high school dances. All four guys were in college with Ray and Eric probably on academic probation. They had been visiting New York and staying at Eric’s mom’s in California. I had figured that a record deal was imminent. Around Thanksgiving, Ray called and told me that he and Eric had just got back from California. They wanted us all to get together up at Lenny’s family’s cabin in Vermont for the weekend, and bring a date.

Cool! He gave me directions and I went up with this girl Cheryl who had a car and a big crush on Lenny. Now, this part of the story gets a bit cloudy because of age and the circumstances. That was my first experience with drugs, and hanging with thee Wytches on acid can be unnerving to say the least. I soon found out how you can tell when those guys were tripping…they would be running around naked and trying to start an orgy.

Not just Eric or Ray, but the whole damn bunch of them…girlfriends and all. Between peaks they would tell some of the wildest stories I’d ever heard concerning their adventures is LA. I don’t know if any of it’s true, but damn…I wish I was there. I’m not going into all of what I remember from that weekend, but there was talk concerning wild parties at John Phillips and Denny Wilson’s houses, seeing the Doors and the Seeds …shit like that.

What was not clear was what was up with the tape. "We’re waiting for the word"…was the most common answer I remember. Whose word? I pushed a bit, but Jeff summed it up by saying that these guys could afford to wait until they had the best deal they could get. Knowing what I knew about Eric and Ray, I got the impression that this was more of a control issue. They wanted total say over thee Wytches sound, and judging from the tape it seemed to be a reasonable request. Anyway, there was no rush.