Bruce Evans, Lead Singer and Guitarist , Shotgun Band (Wilkes County)

Bruce Evans The Shotgun Band (Wilkes County)

When I met Bruce he was performing with a band called "Bruce Evans and Gold Fever". They had a real good band and were very active at the clubs. One weekend their bass player Rick Whitley had to be out and Bruce ask me to come and fill in, in which I did. Things went real well that night and not long afterward he gave me a call and said he was organizing a new band called The Shotgun Band. We got together to practice and the rest was history. 

Some things that I learned from Bruce's past was that he attended North Surry High School and played in a well known local band in the 1960's from Mt Airy North Carolina called The Nomads. They had written some original tunes which were charted on Billboard Magazine. We later rerecorded on a  45 record at Star Recording in Millers Creek the song "Fields of Peppermint". The Nomads performed a lot of the places that our band The Caboose did but I believed we were at our peak 3-5 years after The Nomads. Bruce performed all of his life up until his very end. When I met Bruce he was working for Lowe's Hardware as a lawnmower mechanic. Bruce new a lot about engines. Later in his career he left Lowe's and began investing in rental real estate, sold insurance for the National Association for the Self Employed, and was also a Gideon. He also went back to college and finished getting his college degree where he lacked only a few courses. I visited his house one day and there was his daughter sitting on the fender of her car climbed down in the engine compartment putting on a water pump and Bruce was instructing her how. He taught his girls how to be mechanics and musicians. Bruce knew how to make money. He was very ambitious. He kept us booked solid throughout the whole tenure The Shotgun Band was together. Bruce had a fantastic voice and vocal range for lead singing whether it be rock or country music. He used the same old guitar that he had from the sixties which was a 1965 Fender Mustang all throughout the years we were together. Bruce was always good with a joke. If you told him one he had five he could tell back to you. Bruce could tell you a lot of stories from back in the day The Nomads. There is a lot to say about our fearless leader but we may end here and break it down in several post.

The Shotgun Band (Wilkes County) The Middle Years

The Shotgun Band (Wilkes County)

The Middle Years.

Midway during the life of the Shotgun Band we had a major change in members. We lost Keith Hamlin on drums and picked up Clayton Handy Jr from McGrady NC and lost Mike Beeson and we picked up  Mike Reeves on Keyboard from Wilkesboro NC. Bruce Evans and myself continued along with these two members. One thing about Junior he sang and played drums which Keith Hamlin didn't sing. It was an interesting mixture. We performed a lot of the same songs but lost a lot of the Alabama tunes which Mike Beeson did a great job on baritone vocals. 

With this band we entered the Marlboro Country Music Championships in Greensboro NC and won over a lot of bands and placed third in the competition. 

The next change of members was when Mike Reeves left us and we went down to a three piece band. This didn't stop Bruce we continued to perform. It was Clayton, myself and Bruce. I always wanted a fourth man but Bruce and Clayton wanted just three because the money was more. With three members  we were forced to perform a lot more rock tunes. It was harder on me without the fourth man where I had to overplay to fill in the holes. On the end of life of The Shotgun Band we lost Clayton and Keith Hamlin came back to play until we disbanded. 

The Shotgun Band never practiced except at the beginning the first two weeks of organization and if we learned any new material we would run over it before a show and polish it up each time we performed it. We did get together a few years later and performed at Jacks Drive In, in North Wilkesboro NC and used Charles Dockery from Dobson NC

on the drums.

Oddly enough Clayton Handy and Mike Reeves are Pastors of churches, Bruce was a Gideon before he passed away and I perform in a Gospel Group and teach Sunday School.

Origin of the Shotgun Band (Wilkes County)

Origin of The Shotgun Band (Wilkes County)

There will be several blog post on this topic because it was the longest running band that I performed in. 
We organized The Shotgun Band as a result from a split in the Whiskey River Band and the Gold Fever Band. The original members were Bruce Evans from the Gold Fever Band on guitar, Mike Beeson on multiple instruments from Bruce's old band The Nomads  which originated from Mt Airy NC from the 1960's. Mike played guitar, fiddle, keyboard , and pedal steel with Shotgun. There was myself on bass and Keith Murphy on drums both from the Whiskey River Band. I feel the reason Bruce ask me to play bass with him was when he was with Bruce Evans and Gold Fever his bass player Rick Whitley was sick or away one weekend so he ask me if I would fill in one weekend and that's where we began our friendship. Later Bruce left Gold Fever and started The Shotgun Band. 

A lot of times there were leaders in the Bands and they were called for instance Bruce Evans and Gold Fever or Max Phillips and Whiskey River and many others titled their bands in like manner. Looking back in time the band members always felt why put them out front and that the other members were just as important as its leader but from hindsight it was a good thing. You could change members without losing the bands identity, however we were just called The Shotgun Band. Another thing to note is that Max Phillips had also performed together with Bruce in the past. We changed members during the time The Shotgun Band was together but we continued with the same name. 
When we first organized and began practicing Bruce said we were already booked and that our first gig was in two weeks. I thought the time was too short because we didn't have enough songs but we somehow got through it and the good thing about Bruce was that he kept us booked continually for the next 16 years. I made a lot of money in The Shotgun Band in so much we had to file taxes every year and keep up with our expenses. We kept up with mileage, expenses, and depreciation of our equipment. 
We started performing at the small clubs and dances when we first began such as the North Wilkesboro Moose Lodge and Willies Tavern in Roaring River NC. One thing I remember was that there was a lot of drama between the couples at the Moose Lodge. We also performed in 1984 at Richard Petty the race car drivers home at Level Cross North Carolina when Jim Martin was running to be the Governor of North Carolina. Keith Murphy left the Band a little while after that and we picked up Keith Hamlin on drums whose uncle owned The Bible Book Store, a large music store in North Wilkesboro NC. Keith Hamlin worked there part time. With this current band we performed the next six years together. This will conclude this post.

             Left to Right: Keith Hall, Bruce Evans, Richard Petty, Mike Beeson and Keith Murphy

                         Left to Right: Keith Hall, Bruce Evans, Mike Beeson and Keith Murphy

Sacketts Night Club, Radford Va, The Shotgun Band

Back in the mid 1980's I played electric bass in a band called the Shotgun Band. We were based out of North Wilkesboro NC. The members of the band were Bruce Evans, Mike Beeson, Keith Hamlin and my self Keith Hall. One of the many interesting places that we performed at was called Sacketts in Radford Virginia. Its motto was the New River Valley's #1 Hotspot and truly it was. Radford was a college town and Sacketts was the place where many would go to hear some of the area's top bands perform. There was bands like Streetfeet, January Rose, Cimmaron, Blackwater, Southern Cross and of course Shotgun. I have performed a lot in my day and I have never saw so much beer consumed in one place in my life. When the night was over I never saw so many long neck Budweiser's lined around the dance floor one right after the other and in the restrooms there were about 50 or more in each stall on the tanks of the toilets. We would leave from North Carolina and travel our two hour drive to Radford Va and from the first time that we went there they fed the band member's real well. There was a restaurant attached to the night club called the Stationhouse Restaurant serving Mexican Food and

some of the best shrimp and prime rib that I have ever tasted. I had to stop eating the shrimp however because after peeling all of those shrimp and playing the bass the smell got kind of fishy on those strings. We opened one weekend with the national recording artist Ozark Mountain Daredevils. They brought their instruments and sound man and used our sound system. What I can remember was that while Ozark was playing some drunk was trying to give their sound man a beer and he ended up spilling it into our sound board and the sound kept going on and off the rest of the night. The sound system worked good on Saturday night after it had dried up and never gave any more problems. One weekend we left North Carolina for Radford in the Shotgun mobile which was a Charles Chip panel truck converted to carrying our sound system and all of the band and that particular weekend we hit a terrible snowstorm going up Interstate 81. The Shotgun mobile at first didn't have a good heater so with Bruce's ingenuity he used a kerosene heater inside that moving vehicle and I don't know why it didn't catch on fire or turn over but it didn't. You have to know Bruce not only was a lead singer and guitarist he was also a good mechanic. Later he solved the heater problem and hooked up a heater that was used under a school bus seat and we then had plenty of heat. We had a pretty good crowd that night with all of the snow but we were forced to get a room in Christiansburg Va and stayed there to perform again on Saturday night. In between the band's sets they had a DJ and one of the most liked songs at that particular club was Mony Mony, Billy Idol's version. Shotgun decided to learn Mony Mony and perform it at all the other clubs that we performed at. It was a good choice to get the crowd hopping. It seemed that every other band in the Carolina's began to perform Mony Mony and to think it was Shotgun who brought it back to the Carolina's from Sacketts. We got our foot in the door at performing at Sacketts because the owner's fired a band for a New Year's performance and they ask us to come at the last minute and that was our start in Virginia. They didn't mind giving you a fair pay at Sacketts because they had the place full every time the doors were opened. I am writing this hoping some of you can remember Sacketts in Radford Virginia even though it was 27 years ago to me it seems just a few years ago.