Billy Spears Band

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We were playing at the Golden Inn in Golden, New Mexico, which is about twenty miles northeast of Albuquerque, heading into the Sandia mountains. The Golden Inn was a faux-log-cabin place which specialized in booze, drugs, live music, and buffalo burgers. The guy who ran the place would shout from time to time, "Lines on the baah!", as I believe he was from back east somewhere. I don't recall actually seeing any lines on the baah, but I think there was some of that going around. Bud Pettit reminded me recently that, when we walked into the place to set up, there was a leaving of dog poop on the stage. Some things I've just blocked from my memory...

One night, a young man calling himself J.B. Brown came into the place. We struck up a conversation, and it turned out he was on hiatus from playing with Dusty Drapes and the Dusters, a Colorado band that was somewhat like us but a little more into contemporary and not so much into "roots" music. We had seen Dusty Drapes in Boulder on our first trip to Colorado. One thing led to another, and J.B. sat in. The guy was AMAZING. He could sing like Ernest Tubb and Ray Price AND play guitar and pedal steel guitar like nobody's business.

That night, he invited me to go back to his place after the gig, and I figured it couldn't be any worse than sleeping in a room with my flatulent band buddies, so I accepted. We drove to his trailer in Cerrillos in his powder-blue 1952 Cadillac. That night, J.B. and I had a long drunken talk about music and other topics, far into the wee hours. He gave me some ginseng for my inevitable hangover, and it worked. The next morning, we took a ride around Cerrillos in his OTHER Cadillac, a huge 1938 touring car. When I returned to where the band was staying, I had a talk with the other members, and we decided to offer him a job. We did, and he accepted, and that is how J.B. Brown, known subsequently as Junior Brown, came to be in the Billy Spears Band.

Junior Brown, shortly after we knocked on of his trailer in Cerrillos to take him away with us... I love this photo.
And after he had made himself presentable.

Junior had a bad back, which exempted him from toting heavy equipment, and he was often cranky and made us mad, but he sure could sing and play.
He also introduced me to a vice which has stayed with me these many years, dipping Copenhagen snuff.
When I talked to Junior at Billy's 60th-birthday party in 1990, he told me he'd quit a long time ago.
I quit smoking in 1989, but I'm still dippin' snoose - not that I'm proud of it.

My wife and I caught Junior Brown's act in May of 2008 in St. Louis. He can still play and sing just fine, and I think he's doing just what he needs to do in performance. He's a real American Original!

Also, Junior managed to show up for Billy's 78th birthday party in November 2008. He still has the Gibson ES-330 dot-neck and can still play the hell out of it.

Saw Junior at the Grand Ole Opry in October 2013.

When we got back to Lawrence, we had a new publicity photo shoot.
This photo was taken on the stage at the Off-the-Wall Hall, with cool vintage instruments supplied by McKinney & Mason Stringed Instruments,
who had their shop in the front of the hall.
Notice that Carol is not in the picture, as she was taking some time off to be with her new husband, Carl Latham.

The Billy Spears Band, 1975-1978 - page 5