Paramount Theater opening for Jimmy Cliff When I first came to Austin, I was in musical heaven. Coming from Baltimore, I had never seen anything like Austin. I also lived at 34th and Guadalupe. One night at Third Coast I asked to sit in with the band. They already knew me as a regular fan. I told them I played reggae and they kinda looked at me sideways but let me sit in, just the same.
I played a couple of songs with them and Moe, who has been my musical partner for 37 years now, asked how close to the club I lived. Johnny Reverb Holston was the only guitarist in the band.
He is an amazing guitarist, and I think he was pleased to have someone to hold down the rhythm and free him up to solo. Johnny and I have written country songs together and after The Lotions broke up.
He was, briefly in Pressure, my second Austin reggae band. His songs are wonderful, his singing and guitar playing are out of this world. David Roach played keyboards. David is a genius. If your computer makes a sound, he may have had something to do with it. He could break and fix a synthesizer, at the gig. He was also a founding member of our Bee Gees Songbook band, one of my favorite bands.
Madrile Wilson played percussion and sang a great falsetto. I believe, he was, more of less, the business manager of the band, too. Alan Moe Monsarrat, you can read about elsewhere on this blog. He was afantastic front man for this band. He had talent and energy that you could not deny. When I started playing, regularly with the Lotions I was never a formal member , I had never played with any band on that scale.
