Strange Loves
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Reverend Worley
It's funny that my spiritual journey and my musical journey, which are intertwined, should start off so violently.
It was 1970 and the whole damn country was wrapped up in the Vietnam War. I was living in a five story walk up in New York, spending most of my time drinking Thunderbird by the glass and working as a bouncer at a bar called Uncle Dee's. I had taken the job in this hole in the wall to hide from the world (and the draft) and to have the opportunity to occasionally vent my frustration on the more rowdy customers. While I would later choose to walk the path of non-violence, I was often forced to use my martial arts skills to settle seemingly unresolvable conflicts at Uncle Dee's. It was the strange dicotomy of having this job and the search for peace that led to my first foray in song writng. After buying a used Manderia acoustic in a pawn shop I wrote the song "Two Blood-soaked Steps Away From Heaven" which I later had the pleasure of playing at a folk festival in Rodchester with Joan Baez.
After an unfortunate incident involving the death of an Uncle Dee customer, I decided that my original plan of going to Canada was looking better and better.
My Maverick made it just inside the Canadian border before calling it quits, and I was picked up by a French-Indian woman named Cascade who was willing to let me crash on her floor until I found a place. She and her cuban-chinese roommate Karla had a band called Crisis Reservation and they had just lost their guitarist, so it had seemed that fate had taken a hand. Cascade educated me in the ways of native american philosophy and Karla, a practicing Taoist, would often compare the similarities of these philosophies with the new age christian reform that was going on at the time in Quebec. I hocked my acoustic and bought a Flying V and we hit the local bar scene, playing rock and roll and spreading our message of one world, one love. While in Quebec I stopped by the New Life Ministries Revivalist Church and became ordained as a minister. It was at this time that I swore I would walk the path of non-violence, barring some extenuating circumstances.
By this time we'd been together for a few years and Cascade was getting bored with the whole music scene so we parted ways.
When I returned to the states in 1979, Disco was the thing and man, it soothed my new and improved soul.
I hooked up with a band looking for a lead singer and "The Other Side of Midnight" was off and running. We slogged it out in clubs for a couple years and then we got lucky. After opening for the Reverend Al Green and Rare Earth, Rev. Green asked us to tour with him as his sole (soul) opening act. The now famous "Two Reverends, One Message" Tour was born and it was the perfect. After we came off this tour we expected the world to open up to us in a love embrace, but unfortunately without Al Green on the ticket no one really cared about "The Other Side Of Midnight." The band broke up and I took a job as a lounge singer to pay the rent. I was doing a lot of Tom Jones and Englebert Humperdink covers to drunks passed out on the table and 6o year old women telling me I reminded them of their sons on set breaks. It was dismal, but something good did come out of it-meeting Dan Dunlap. He was a righteous guitar player who was equally at home playing the blues or rocking out. I turned him on to some sweet "Platfrom Soul" and he turned me on to some acid rock and a fast friendship took root. We sat in with several bands at the time who were making the leap from rock to disco, most notably a Grand Funk Railroadesque band that was very popular in the Detroit area called "Love Train".
After Dan left I floated for several years with no real direction. During the 80's I got involved with a punk trio called Johnny Snot and The Mucus Memebranes. While I loved the music it reawakened the violent demon that had laid dormant inside of me for many years. I got arrested in North Carolina for killing a man with a guitar string, and even though it was self defense I spent three years in jail.
During my stint in the Pee Dee Correctional Facility lock up I meditated a lot and honed my Kung Fu. Once I had gained some well-earned respect in the yard, my fellow convicts pretty much left me alone and I spent most of the time that I wasn't in solitarary confinement writing songs and preaching to anyone who would listen. My message was simple: Peace, Love, Unity, and having fun (to quote Brother Brown) and it was one that my fellow inmates could get behind.
By the time I got out the 80's had passed me by and the 90's were in full swing. The kind of music I had loved all along was haivng a rebirth, and as the Phoenix did rise from the ashes so did my new band, "Can You Feel Me".
While entrenched in the hotel circiut I ran into Disco Danny's band the "Fuzzy Funkers". His drummer, Austin Powers, was a stone-cold skin smacker and they had a great groove, but alas it was not yet our time.
Our time would not come until 2001 when we got together with Bassist Groovy Gary Whiting and began playing with a tent revival preacher's fever. But something was missing. So we played and I prayed and we were visited by an angel with a golden throat. That's right- none other than De Dee Brookshire, the reknowned soul singer from Cleveland.
After Gary's accidental death, of which all charges were officially dropped, our search for a bass player led us to the smoking van of "Uninals" bass player Greg "doin' the" Bump.
We changed our name to The Strange Loves and began our journey anew, proving once again that the Lord does work in mysterious ways and that there is no greater love than that of a good backbeat, a wailing guitar, a fat bottom and a screaming voice.
The planets have aligned and my reincarnation is complete. Vishnu's hands are open and the path is clear. Strangeloves now and forever. Amen.