In 1970 I had the good fortune to meet the folk duo "Larry and Roxy" (Huls) in Columbia Missouri.  Larry was a conscientious objector to the war in Viet-Nam and was serving his deferred duty as a hospital orderly for the University of Missouri. Within a year I would join their group as bassist and vocalist although I had no previous experience.  In 1972 I moved to Mammoth Lakes, California and was able to find work for out group at a restaurant and club in that resort area.  
We soon migrated south to the Los Angeles area landing at a Reuben's restaurant in Riverside.  Living in sleazy apartments in the neighboring town of Rubidoux we wanted to get out to the coast and started looking for a way out of the smoggy hell-hole of Riverside.  After a couple of months we found work in Laguna Beach where we met John "Zack" Zachariou. Zack was a native of the San Francisco Bay area and his guitar playing stunned us. We became fast friends and Zack soon joined the group on electric and acoustic guitars.  We played our first gigs at the Fleur de Lis on South Coast Hiway in Laguna.  
After a return trip to Mammoth with the expanded group, we took the band to Kansas City to explore our opportunities there.  We made our headquarters at the R&R Ranch in eastern Independence.  The "ranch" consisted of a mobile home and a two room house.  The trailer served as kitchen and housing quarters and the house was used for a practice studio and bedroom annex.  
At that time the "River Quay" area of Kansas City was being discovered and after a trip to a new bar there named "Madame Lovejoy's" I convinced one of the owners, Tom Kramer, that they needed entertainment and that our band, now called "Country Heir" would be a great fit.  An agreement was made and soon we were playing to big crowds at that venue.  It was about that time that we joined forces with David Storms, a high school classmate of mine, and he became the band's first drummer.  
During that time we also met Don Young who was playing pedal steel guitar in a band called "Medicine Wheel".  We met at a little coffeehouse "The Crook of His Arm" on 39th Street in Kansas City.  Again, the fit was perfect and Don joined Country Heir.  We continued with that lineup for a couple of years with the highlight of that period coming when we opened up the show for the final concert at Cowtown Ballroom which also featured Brewer and Shipley and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
With the River Quay in decline as a result of the influence of the Kansas City mob, we decided to pack up and move the band to Santa Barbara California.  We were well received there largely on the basis of the way we covered a lot of Grateful Dead material, but we never found consistent paying work and with the situation bleak, David Storms opted to leave the band.  We carried on without a drummer for a while performing more acoustic sets at places like "Barsoti's Coffee Shop" in Isla Vista and the iconic "Cold Springs Tavern" in the mountains outside of Santa Barbara.
Once again, feeling destitute we headed back to Kansas City and the R&R Ranch.  We began a search for a new drummer and somehow found Dawson Braden.  His claim to fame was a stint with the Hager Twins of Hee-Haw fame.  Dawson joined the band and we began to perform in the area again, now finding more work in Lawrence, Kansas and elsewhere outside of Kansas City proper.  But there was more trouble on the horizon and sometime around 1977 Larry Huls, who was in many ways the heart of the group, decided to leave the band.  It was tough to accept, but we soldiered on and some of the first show that we played without him is on record here as the outtakes from the "Off the Wall Hall" shows in Lawrence.

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