I continued in to the new decade where I had started to work in eighty-nine. Working in the computer operations section of a small bank in Germantown, Tennessee -- located just east of Memphis. In the late spring of ninety, it was bought out by a larger bank and I was asked to stay on with the new owners and after converting the small bank to the new system, I was transferred to their central computer operations section, located in downtown Memphis. The way I figured it at the time was until I decided what I really wanted to do, it was an easy job and paid a pretty fair wage for not a lot of work. I also had the opportunity to go back to school and took a lot of computer related classes during this period. Something that I'm very proud of and will always cherish is I made the National Deans list in 91 and also in 92. Although it didn't help my paycheck much, it did wonders for my self esteem in the sense it gave confirmation to something that i has always know. I was really into computers at this point and though I did do some song writing, I wasn't doing much if hardly any playing.

This changed with the aid -- or persistence, depending on your view -- of several friends. Once in a while they would call and get me to a party and music jam for the day. They had made several attempts at pulling me back into music including a stint as the bass player for a three month period in a club band with Jim Santoro - founder and the publisher of the music publication, the Memphis Star.

After several attempts to get me back to playing, they finally got my interest when they called wanting to put together a group playing all original music. The first version of that group was “The Casuals”. The Casuals was made up of a very talented bunch of musicians and included the following:
Sharon Smith on vocals, guitars, percussion and songwriting
Deb Parkinson on vocals, keyboards, trumpet, percussion and songwriting
Rick Malchow on guitar, keyboards, flute, trumpet, percussion, vocals and songwriting
(Note: Rick did most of the arrangements, however a lot of theses were done in rehearsal when we would just start playing and get the groove and see what worked)
Gene ‘trainman’ Dawgs on drums and percussion (one of the most talented, technical and precise drummers I ever played with)
Bob Norwood on bass
Myself on vocals, guitars, harmonics, percussion and songwriting

The Casuals was probably one of the most talented groups that I ever worked with. The musical chemistry was awesome. After several months of working on arrangements and rehearsing music and vocal parts, we were rewarded with a group that was as musically tight and diverse in styles as Little Feat and as vocally diverse in arrangements and lead vocals as Manhattan Transfer (five of the six of us could sing and four of us had fronted groups as lead vocalists at one point in time or another.) The Casuals only made maybe 4 or 5 public appearances. But, with each show we did, the audience reaction was great and with each appearance, the audiences grew larger. One of those venues we played several times, was a small music showcase bar near the University of Memphis - located just west of Park and Highland - called The Daily Planet. If you are familiar with singer-songwriter Todd Snyder - while in Memphis - this was one of his favorite hangouts as well.

Though the group had a lot of chemistry, not all of it was good. After months of work, Bob and Deb exited the group by way of intense negotions and moved on to another project they wanted to do. The remainder of us, augmented by the addition of a new bass player named Jim Monahan, continued to work and invest long hours recording the tunes we had assembled, with the intent of releasing an album under the name “High Fashion”. This was an ardgious process that took it's toll on us all. We did managed to get tracks on about twelve tunes, but only one of those were completed. Unfortunately, the balance of the tunes were abandoned in various states of unfinished before we could complete the project. We had all become involved in other projects and High Fashion had become stagnet, so the project was never completed. Comment: What happened to this group was most unfortunate, because it had so much potential because of the musical chemistry. But, like so many groups with this much talent, the personalities were so intense, that it was just too hard of a drain on all of our energies. I stay in regular contact with all but one of the remaining members of the group and my friend Rick Malchow and I still work on music projects fairly frequently.

Another musician and songwriter I worked with some during this period, was a guy I had wrote and played music with, several times throughout the years. A guy named Ray Creasy. Ray shows up in a number of places and in several decades on my site.

Ray and his family had spent some time in Memphis from ‘88 to ‘91. He and his family stayed with me in in ‘89 and ‘90 when they first moved back to Memphis until they could get a place of their own. Often during this time we played a lot and spent some time writing and kicking around ideas for songs we each were working on. Though there were several tunes we wrote during this time, two of those tunes that are in my current repertoire are tunes that Ray and I wrote together in this period. They are: “I Never Knew” and “(I've) Loved You Forever.”

1994 was a year of playing out some with friends. It was a year when I realized how much I enjoyed and missed playing out for a live audience. It was also a year and a time that allowed me to reinforce my attitude that I had adopted in ninety and ninety-one of playing only for fun and only the venues and gigs that allowed me the flexibility to stretch out and do only what I wanted to - primarily play my original music or only the tunes I enjoyed playing.

The photo to the right was taken at the annual ACRDC Alread Arkansas fall festival. I was invited to play with 94's headline act - Singer-Songwwriter, Ray Creasy. The group included Ray out front on guitar and vocals, Mike Bilderbach (sp?) on drums, Rob Henderson on bass, John Voseck (sp?) on violin and myself on guitar and vocals. We performed a repertoir that included Ray's tunes, tunes he and I both wrote together and several that I wrote, as well as a few by other writers. The weather was a warm fall evening, the audience was appreciative, the hosts were very accomidating, the band cooked and the music was Hot as anyone could have hoped for!

Thanks Ray, it was a blast!