Shango
1977
Ferdie Braithwaite - keyboards
Barry Braithwaite - bass guitar
James Llewelynn - drums, replaced by
Billy MacBeth - drums, vocals
Dawni Martens - lead vocals
Bob Deutscher - guitar, vocals

    Dawni Martens, former lead vocalist with the Regina group The Flying Colors, had called me around the time I had committed to Granfalloon about joining the Calgary band Shango so I passed. Upon leaving Granfalloon however, I gave her a call and found the chair was still available. So in January '77 I headed down to Cowtown and rehearsed for a month with Dawni, Barry and Ferdie Braithwaite and Jim Llewellyn (Bob Ego's replacement in Painter) in a back room at Lou Blair's club The Refinery. Dawni was the first female vocalist I had ever worked with and one of the finest, most natural bluesy singers I have heard. Just before our first gig Jim bailed and we recruited Bill MacBeth, former drummer with Scrubbaloe Caine, to fill in. That was the only gig we ever did. The band folded shortly afterwards.

    After Shango I was offered a job by an ex-Reginan, Barry Thompson, at a Calgary music store, Sound One, where I worked 18 months playing only the occasional casual gig. However, this was a period when I got to hear a lot of bands and also mixed sound for my roommates at the time, a band called Nosey Parker, occasionally sitting in. I  met Patricia Conroy while mixing them at The Tradewinds Motor Hotel bar. I  moved into a house the basement of which had an 8-track recording studio called Jonathon Sound Productions run by Mike Chursinoff and did several sessions for him there in return for studio time to do my own thing. I recorded half a dozen or so original songs there even playing drums on a few tracks. In the summer of  '78 I got a call from Paul Dean who had been let go from Streetheart. He had wasted no time in his attempt to put something new together and had been auditioning several Calgary musicians and making demo tapes. He wanted to do some mixing on these tapes and asked me what it would cost to use Jonathon Sound to this end. I told him to come on down with a bottle of scotch which he did with Mike Reno. Mike and I drank the scotch and Paul, being the workaholic that he is, got down to business with the genesis of what was to become Loverboy.