Bowling Green. Through the Ages. Part One.

By Tommy Womack

Ah to speak of Bowling Green, Kentucky. The place where there’s something in the water.

I graduated from Western Kentucky University in December 1984 and immediately went down to a newly opened Lee’s Famous Recipe Fried Chicken restaurant on the 31-W Bypass. With my diploma in a drawer in my apartment at 12th and Park, I got a job at Lee’s and set about forming a band. Not a cover band, we’d do our own songs, Athens style. We’d dress weird and be a real rock and roll sensation like R.E.M and The Replacements and Jason & the Scorchers. That was the plan, anyway. Two hours before the first gig, we decided on the name for the band. Government Cheese.

But the Cheese story this is not. I’d lived in Bowling Green five years before the Cheese got going, and in those earliest years I saw people in Bowling Green who could play, and do it soulfully, up-tempo, blues, whatever was required. And not that I had sophisticated ears yet, but it appeared that most of the local musicians never played their instruments, they played the songs.

The music scene goes way back, but I’m not that familiar with Billy Vaughn’s hits in the ‘50s. Nor am I one of the people who saw the legendary ZZ Top in a Bowling Green tobacco warehouse back sometime in the early ‘70s. Or early New Grass Revival featuring Bowling Green native, and now superstar mandolin player, Sam Bush. I wasn’t there for those early days… I wish I had been.

What I’ll tell you about is what I experienced in the first 5 years I lived there before the Cheese happened: 1980 to ‘85, all the music part of my college days. I did play some actual gigs maybe starting my sophomore year. Frat bands? Played ‘em. Woodshedded with my guitar in my dorm room? Done it. I also played solo at the Catholic Newman Center Friday Coffee House, and even some Wednesdays at Michael’s Pub, playing covers and originals mixed in together. I think the lasting impression of my friends was that I had a long way to go. And besides, Bowling Green already had Clayton Payne.

Clayton Payne was a peerless musician with an amazing finger-style technique on his 12-string Guild acoustic guitar with a pickup in it which he ran through a chorus pedal to add a bit more shimmer, and then into the PA.

He did James Taylor songs, Jimmy Buffett, “Dixie Chicken”, “Kansas City”, “Misty”, “Ventura Highway” and a thousand more. Clayton’s world-class finger-picking ability and his relaxed appealing vocal delivery did justice to, and even outdid, some of the original hit records. And he was playing in bars six nights a week. He played at the Lit Club on the Bypass Monday through Wednesday, and then from Thursday through Saturday, he played at Michael’s Pub on Fairview. That’s six nights a week playing music. If you think musicians are layabouts, try playing three sets a night for six nights in a row, and after Sunday off, Monday you start it again, and again. There’s nothing indolent about that.

And then there was Jeffrey Smith, called “Smitty” by everyone. He was the best guitarist in town. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, he accompanied Clayton at the Lit Club. (The actual name of the venue was the Literary Club, which it was not. It was a bar.) I went there whenever he played - and he also played there Thursday through Saturday with his band - Los Juages.

As for musical chops, Los Juages buried every other musician in town. Trent Shaftner played a super cool Rickenbacker bass, either Jeff Harr or Kevin Lovelace played drums, and the keyboardist’s name escapes me. One minute they would play “Talking in Your Sleep” by the Romantics and the next song might be, of all things, “Long Distance Runaround.” And they would play it right. And consider this, Smitty worked a full-time all-day job at the Music Shop, ran a guitar repair business and Trent Shafter worked a fulltime job in the daytime as well. It’s amazing that they had time to even eat, or get a good night’s sleep, working all day long and playing every night. I saw them (and Clayton) every chance I got.

But the biggest band in town by far was the Ken Smith Band. Ken started a nightclub called Picasso’s - in part because it relieved the labor of roadie gear after the show - and the Ken Smith Band played Tuesday through Saturday. Future stars were in that band. Bassist Byron House would move to Nashville and years later play bass for Robert Plant, the Dixie Chicks and Emmylou Harris. (Byron also produced the first Government Cheese EP.) Jonell Mosser, with her frighteningly potent channeling of Janis Joplin, moved to Nashville as well and became an institution. The band also had a floating fifth member, Jane Pearl, already a legend in Bowling Green because of her own cannon of a voice.

Special mention must be made of Sgt. Arms, active in the early eighties with future pop and country star Bill Lloyd, guitar cohort David Surface, drummer Marc Owens and keyboardist Ernie Raymer. They were doing original material and put out a single that I remember seeing displayed in the Record Bar. They were by all accounts an awesome band, with a predilection for power pop, which filled a hole in the Bowling Green scene. I saw a reunion show at Michael’s Pub in 1985 and they were as good as I’d always heard they were.

Bill moved from his native Bowling Green to Nashville and he had not only the talent to make it big, but also the temperament needed of what musicians call the “hang”. In Nashville, it’s not enough to be a great musician or singer - EVERYBODY does that! - what matters as much as anything is being a personable bloke who is easy to get along with, whether in the studio or on the road in a tour bus for six weeks in the Midwest. And Bill is the most-get-alongable person in Nashville. In 1986, he released a brilliant first album called “Feeling the Elephant.” But not long after that, as a duo, he was passing time with future country superstar Radney Foster. They signed with RCA Records, and Foster & Lloyd shot to the top. They had multiple hit singles and they were innovative ones. Look for an electric 12-string guitar on a record before Foster & Lloyd. There wasn’t any. With Bill’s pop sensibility and Radney’s country-ascow-shit style, they meshed into something new. It’s hard to remember now how influential they were. The broke up amicably in 1991 because they (it is said) had just run the well dry. Radney went on to have country mega-hits and Bill has released a multitude of brilliant power-pop records.

And that’s all for now. Next will be my memories of the Government Cheese era, and all the bands that formed in our wake. (It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.) Also, let me get researching on both the Bowling Green scene from prior my moving there, and all the scene has become today.

I used to tell interviewers back in the mid-eighties, “if it could it happens in Athens, it could happen here.” And we did it. Before I came on the scene, the old guard had already done it. And today’s bands - many of them to discuss, from Cage the Elephant on down. Bowling Green is rife with music, and always has been. Like I said, there must be something in the water.