The Mick Rhodes Band Evolution

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Mick Rhodes Band Evolution

A history of the creation of each of the Mick Rhodes Band tunes.

Open Wire The music came when I was working on Harry Dell's roving line crew, out of Hawthorne, Nevada. Part of our job, besides doing line construction, was to inspect and repair the various open wire circuits around the state. Open wire is a 19th century technology that we still had lots of in Nevada during the 80s. Consisting of many bare copper wires arranged on a wooden cross arm, each copper conductor is supported by a glass insulator. (Think telegraph, and you'll have the picture.) Read more ...
Mr. Bad This song was written in 1979, while I was a Washoe County, Nevada patrol deputy stationed at the Incline Village substation. Incline Village is a mountain community near the northeastern shore - on the Nevada side - of Lake Tahoe. Cops see humanity up close in the worse circumstances, and I found that I was taking the stress home with me. After being involved in an investigation of a particularly nasty assault case, I went home and wrote the music and lyrics in one pass. You might have called it "Chicago Blues Primal Scream Therapy."
Working Man 1996. I was training a line crew in Winnemucca, Nevada. The song started as a tribute to my dad, but soon became an anthem to all the working class people I knew.
Backwards How do you say you're sorry when you've stepped over the line big time? You put your tail between your legs, and write a song, of course. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This one didn't work, but it's still a pretty cool tune, with a string arrangement written by Jay that would make the very stones weep.
Small Town Being alone is always good songwriting fodder. When I wrote this one, I was working in McGill, Nevada on Harry's crew. The thing that keyed the first verse was watching a man come home to his family as I stood in the snow covered street. Read more ...
I'm All Right So now we go back to '96, and the line crew I was training. Bob Decker, Bill Hunt, Mike Ellifritz, and Tim Kavanaugh, of Winnemucca, Nevada. This song is about them, and about liking your job and the guys you work with. That's rare, isn't it?
Walking In The Rain A song about a married couple that have taught me a lot about myself. George and Judy Keele and I went to high school together, so we have a lot of history. The tune is pretty literal, as I thought it up while walking in the rain one day. It's about having good friends as a lifeboat when you need it from time to time. The original version was recorded as a country tune with a killer pedal steel part by Ernie Hagar. This version uses Greg Floor's soprano sax to give it a jazzier feel, but it still has that "wet down the back of the neck" feel that I liked on the original.
Middle Age Malaise In '95 I was feeling down in the dumps about not having any music in my life. I turned to the want ads in the Reno Gazette-Journal to see if anybody needed a bass player for local gigs. One ad caught my eye, "Bass player wanted for 70's and 80s cover band." I called. The guy on the other end of the phone was very nice, and we spent some time discussing our influences. The conversation was going along swimmingly, and I thought perhaps I was the man for the job when he asked, "How old are you?" Read more ...
Cut Me Some Slack When your local songwriter gets whipped into a frenzy about senator Hornblower's latest political faux pas, this is what you get. This is a bipartisan effort, by the way. I don't trust anyone on either side of the political demarcation line.
We Move Our Hands When We Talk OK, literal. I was watching a guy giving directions to someone in a car, and he was flapping his arms like Big Bird while trying to show the guy where to turn. Later, I noticed the same thing about me. The only tune we did with a lot of sequencing (on the drum parts). What a pain in the butt. I like the Afro-Cuban feel, but the song kind of got complex in a hurry. The best time in the studio, though, was watching Kelly Eisenhour and Dave Halliday "trading four's" at the end of the song. That was pure inspiration.