I started Right Side Up with Dan Kirkpatrick in November of 2014. I met Dan in July of that year when he was brought to our annual July 4th “Bandemonium” bash by Rich Marchetta. I’ll post some photos of the bash later on this web site.
Sometime in October 2014 Aurora and I stopped in to Vincenzos Pizza in Newhall, CA, shortly after Steve had bought the place. At the time, we had been hosting an open mic night there and Steve asked us to continue. At the same meeting, he inquired as to whether we could play a gig for New Years Eve (2-14-15), to which of course I said yes, not giving a second thought to the fact that I did not have a band at the time.
My first call was to Dan, to see if he would be interested and he said sure. I said I’d send him the list of tunes we played as The Convictions and he could start picking out tunes. My next call was to Rob Pierce (Drummer Rob) who had been a member of The Convictions. Rob promptly reminded me that he is never in town over New Years Ever, going to his cousin Dave’s cabin in Yosemite each New Year.
Oops. No drummer. So I checked in with Dan to see if he knew any drummers and he said a couple but they were all busy. OK, so I figured we’d be fishing around a bit. Next I called Tim Baker, also ex-Convictions to see if he would come and join us. Sadly, Tim wanted a fee that was just not practical to expect from a pizza joint so, no keyboard / rhythm guitar / second vocalist.
Well, as panic started to set in, our good friend and ex recording engineer, Art Dyer stepped up and said he knew a good drummer, Paul Stillman, who had just come back to town after a few years away. He volunteered to ask Paul and we said great. Turned out, Paul wasn’t initially very enthusiastic and it took a few weeks to convince him we were not hacks.
Long story short, sometime in November Paul agreed to join the band and RIght Side Up was born. When I get a moment I will paste some audio, video and photos here. For the time being you can trip on over to the original Right Side Up web site and check out the band there.