Mike Parks: Guitar Slinger, continued 2020 - by Ricki C. (and Jim Johnson)

The world of rock & roll and the planet in general lost Mike Parks two years ago today; January 7th, 2018. (For the uninitiated, Mike Parks was the lead guitarist of Colin’s band The League Bowlers and – in my humble opinion – the GREATEST lead guitar player in the history of Columbus rock & roll. You can read much more about that in my original Mike Parks: Guitar Slinger Pencilstorm blog from 2014, linked here.)

Last week my lovely wife Debbie & I were driving home from New Year’s Eve dinner when The Blues Magoos’ “We Ain’t Got Nothin’ yet” came on my Sirius/XM car radio courtesy of The Underground Garage channel. Right at that moment I missed Mike more than I had in a long, long time. There’s no reason most of the Pencilstorm readership would know that tune by The Blues Magoos (or indeed, even know or remember WHO The Blues Magoos WERE) but Mike & I used to talk about them – and many more of their mid-1960’s rock & roll brethren – A LOT back in our tenure in Willie Phoenix’s True Soul Rockers in the early 1990’s. (Mike was the 2nd lead guitarist & resident bad-ass of The True Soul Rockers, I was a roadie.)

I originally wrote a whole other blog to run here, but that one was sad, and kinda contemplative, and I decided this morning in the shower, “Fuck that, Mike would HATE sad and kinda contemplative.” So instead, I decided that I would attempt to preach and spread the True Gospel of The Rock & Roll Rama-Lama by gathering up a few 60’s videos that I know for a fact Mike would have loved and deliver the message, “Fuck Donald Trump; fuck the board president of Nissan in Japan fleeing to Lebanon to escape prosecution; fuck the fact that the super-rich don’t even have to PRETEND to respect the law anymore; fuck wildfires in Australia; fuck the Golden Globe Awards, I just WANNA HEAR SOME ROCK & ROLL!”

Mike, I raise a glass to you today………

THE BLUES MAGOOS / “WE AIN’T GOT NOTHIN’ YET”

THE MUSIC MACHINE / “TALK TALK”

THE YARDBIRDS / “HAPPENINGS TEN YEARS TIME AGO”

THE MC5 / “KICK OUT THE JAMS”

MOTT THE HOOPLE / “AT THE CROSSROADS”

I’m including this video because if Mike told me once in The League Bowlers days, he told me 20 times, “I’m gonna work up the Mott The Hoople version of “At The Crossroads” as my first lead vocal in the Bowlers.” “That’d be great,” I’d reply, “you should run it by Colin, I know he’d go for it.” To my knowledge, in all the years Colin, Mike, Dan Cochran and Jim Johnson shared stages, Mike never once brought it up.

I bet it would’ve been great.

For a different commemorative slant on Mike, check out this blog entry by Jim Johnson from January, 2018:

Jim Johnson -  I guess it's time to post my thoughts. I lost one of my best friends yesterday. Mike Parks passed away peacefully yesterday, with his wife, Danya Linehan, and his cats by his side. Mike had a lot of cats. More than one household really needed, but Mike loved his cats. He had this thing, a sort of telepathy with cats. If you know anything about cats, you know cats don't trust anyone. Cats trusted Mike. They knew he was one of them, and they loved him as much as he loved his cats. It really was amazing to see.

I first met Mike, back in the "Sugar Shack" days. I think he was playing in Flasher, and I was playing in Lizzy Borden. I used to watch Mike play, and he would do this thing, with a violin bow and an echoplex. It was amazing. Every bit as good as Jimmy Page, but I didn't have to go to Madison Square Garden to see it. I could stand 5 feet away, at the Shack, and then walk home. Those were amazing days. I thought to myself, "I hope I get to play in a band with this guy someday." My wish came true. Mike and I played in three bands together: The Retreads, Willie Phoenix & the True Soul Rockers, and The League Bowlers. All cool bands, and it was a pleasure to share the stage with Mike. The Retreads used to play at Bernies, and we had a gig the day Mike's first child was born. We weren't sure if he would make it to the gig. After all, his kid was being born. Mike showed up 5 minutes before we were supposed to go on, dressed in full Operating Room scrubs, including surgeon's mask, and played the gig. I wish there were pictures. That's the Mike I remember. There are some tapes of the True Soul Rockers playing the High Beck Tavern in 1992 floating around in cyberspace. The band was really at its best in those days, and if you ever get to hear that music, you'll hear Mike and Willie Phoenix, tearing it up. Those two together, man, it was magic. That's the Mike I remember.

After the TSR's broke up, Mike quit playing for a while. I used to call him, and he'd say, "Man, I'm retired. I'll do my sculpting. I got other stuff I can do." I said "We'll see." I went on to join The League Bowlers, and when we needed a guitar player, I suggested Mike. I said "Come down & jam, and if you hate it, you can go back to your sculpting." Long story short, Mike had a new rock & roll home. Colin Gawel had some cool songs, we recorded them with Rick Kinsinger and Some Balls was born. Rick reminded me of a story about Mike not long ago. Mike was having a little trouble coming up with a lead for a song, so I told him, "Play it like Chuck Berry would, if he was in a surf band." Needless to say, Mike NAILED it. He had an amazing amount of Rock & Roll Knowledge. After all, he lived with the MC5 for a while. That's the Mike I remember.

Some Balls Deluxe is finished now, and Mike left some great guitar playing for us to remember him by. Colin said not long ago, "There are a lot of guitar players that are artists. Mike is an artist that plays guitar." There's a difference. The world lost a gifted human being yesterday. I'm lucky to have known him, to have him in my life, and I have some great memories. That's the Mike I remember. - Jim Johnson

League Bowlers (featuring Guitar Slinger Mike Parks) @ The Fair, July 26th

The League Bowlers will be appearing at the Ohio State Fair Wednesday July 26th with Erica Blinn and McGuffey Lane. The show is free and runs from 7-9 pm. (Details here)  Also, the new League Bowlers CD Some Balls Deluxe will be available for pre-order any day now.  With so much Bowling going on, we thought it would be a good time to revisit this piece about the finest guitar player I've ever stood next to onstage, Mike Parks. - Colin G. 

-----------------------------------

(I'm having trouble coming up with anything new & coherent to say about Mike Parks right now, so I'm gonna harken back to a piece I penned for Pencilstorm in earlier, better days, January 27th, 2014 to be exact.

 I mean it all now as much as I did at that time, and then some.  I love ya, Mike. - Ricki C.) 

MIKE PARKS / GUITAR SLINGER / JANUARY 27TH, 2014

Today is Mike Parks’ birthday.  I’m not sure exactly how old he is, but he’s older than Mumford & Sons and too young for Social Security & Medicare.

I thought I first met Mike when I joined the road crew of Willie Phoenix & The True Soul Rockers in 1990, but after Mike and I got to talking one night at a gig and discovered our shared West Side roots, it turned out we had actually met – though fleetingly – 20 years earlier when I was a senior at Bishop Ready High School.  

The band Mike was in at that point – The Tree (which later went through various permutations and ended up as Pure Prairie League of “Amie” fame) – played a dance at Bishop Ready and my Catholic school nerd rock & roll friends and I put together a “light show” to accompany the appearance.  (Said light show was cobbled together from oils made with colored Jell-O and overhead projectors from the Bishop Ready audio-visual lab.  I think Life Magazine had run an article on “hippie culture” that week and provided a tutorial.)

The members of The Tree – including, I believe, longtime Parks friend & bandmate Phil Stokes – were drawn from that most dangerous of 1960’s subcultures: Greasers Who Took Acid.  Laid-back run-of-the-mill hippie types who did acid were problematic enough when bad trips got into the mix, but Mike’s particular band of brethren – working-class toughs who had formerly beaten up on longhairs before they discovered the pharmaceutical joys & benefits of the late 60’s – were a particularly volatile mix.  (Think, those clearly whacked-out-of-their-skulls bikers at the side of and ON the stage in the Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter.”)

Anyway, The Tree sauntered into our Bishop Ready high-school gym like gunslingers: arrayed in a mix of boots, blue jeans & black leather jackets, topped off with the longest hair we had ever seen close up.  They looked, and moved, more like a gang than they did a band.  My friends and I were afraid to even speak to them.  After the dance, Mike came up to us in the gym at our pathetic little audio-visual station and said, “Hey, cool lights.”  We couldn’t have been prouder, but were struck so dumb by Mike’s acknowledgment of our existence that I think only one of us managed to stammer out, “Th-th-thanks.”  Mike just turned and walked off in a haze of badass guitarslinger cool.  (Somewhere around that time, Mike lived in the house The MC5 maintained at 1510 Hill Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan, FOR TWO WEEKS before the communal-living residents figured out that no one in the house knew Mike and that he didn’t belong there.)

By time we met up again 20 years later, Mike had become one of the five best lead guitarists I have ever seen in Columbus, Ohio.  (Actually, we later discovered I had seen him one other time in the intervening years, when I was writing for Focus magazine and reviewed Brownsville Station in 1978, a show Mike’s then-current band – Shakedown - opened.)  (Right around there Mike also served time in The Godz, see photo below.)  Mike’s white-hot guitar style was especially cool when he played alongside Willie Phoenix – no slouch of a lead player himself – in The True Soul Rockers.  Mike’s straight-ahead solid-rock lead guitar attack contrasted and dovetailed with Willie’s more idiosyncratic playing to killer effect in The Rockers: having Mike & Willie onstage together was like employing Duane Allman & Richard Thompson in the same band, no small musical feat and treat.  (Sadly, there is not one bit of recorded evidence of the dual-lead guitar fireworks Mike & Willie deployed nightly.  Tragic.)  (2017 editor's note: We have lately come into possession of a KILLER live show from the High Beck Tavern in 1992 that it would be great to release as an "approved bootleg" if we could get Willie Phoenix's permission.)  

One of the things I love about Mike is that he doesn’t just PLAY rock & roll, he actually THINKS about rock & roll, has IDEAS about rock & roll.  One of those ideas about rock & roll brought about his and my biggest dust-up ever.  By their natures, guitar heroes and roadies are gonna run into problems.  One night at Ruby Tuesday’s when Willie gave me the song list for the first set I had the bright idea that I would line the guitars up in the order Willie & Mike were going to use them, so it would be easier for me to hand them up to the stage between songs.  We didn’t have a guitar rack in the True Soul Rockers, just individual guitar stands.  More to the point, we had EIGHT OR NINE individual guitar stands between Willie and Mike, some with guitars in alternate tunings.    

As I was sorting out various Fenders & Gibsons, Mike walked up, watched for a minute and said, “What are you doing?”  “I’m arranging the guitars in the order you’re gonna use them,” I replied.  Mike was quiet for a coupla beats, then said, “You can’t do that.  It’s not very rock & roll.”  “I don’t care if it’s rock & roll or not,” I said, with an edge in my voice, “I’m juggling eight or nine guitars here and it makes things simpler.”  “It’s still not rock & roll, though,” Mike said, “I’m taking all my guitars onstage with me.  I don’t want you handling them anymore.”  I watched incredulously as Mike made six trips back & forth to haul all of his guitars up on the stage.  It was the one and only time in my roadie existence that I ever wished for a guitarist to break a string, so that I could refuse to help.

Mike and I got along ever so much better when I wrangled guitars for The League Bowlers – Colin’s offshoot covers band when Joe Oestreich first moved away and Watershed was on hiatus – and we could use Watershed’s guitar rack.  Again, Mike’s endlessly inventive lead guitar style – imagine Chuck Berry if Chuck had ever deigned to PRACTICE the guitar after 1957, or picture the bastard mutant offspring of Keith Richards & Wayne Kramer – was set off perfectly against Colin’s Cheap Trick-inspired stylings.  Mike’s playing in the Bowlers really was quite stunning.  He could play anything Colin tossed at him – from Gawel/Oestreich originals to Tom Petty to George Jones to Georgia Satellites to Dwight Yoakam – and, on top of that, Mike could play ALL NIGHT LONG without repeating a lick.  I’m pretty sure I saw, from my roadie station at the side of the stage, every show the latter-day incarnation of The League Bowlers played and I don’t think I ever saw Mike play the same solo twice.  (For a full eyewitness account of the last night of The League Bowlers when they imploded and broke up ONSTAGE at the old Thirsty Ear in 2008, check out Growing Old With Rock & Roll, The Friday Night Massacre, August 1st, 2012.)    

Happy birthday, Mike, it’d be great to see you on a stage again sometime.  – Ricki C. / January 25th, 2014

And now I will get to see him, this Wednesday at the Fair.  You oughta come, too. - Ricki C. / July 23rd, 2017

Mike (extreme left) in Shakedown, mid-1970's.

Mike (second from left) in The Godz, late 1970's.

Note: I am frankly amazed that Mike was not pistol-whipped by Eric Moore (extreme left)

for showing up at a Godz performance in this get-up.

Mike (extreme left) in The True Soul Rockers, 1992. Jim Johnson, extreme right, Koz & Willie in the middle.

Tags The League Bowlers, The Godz, Shakedown, Willie Phoenix & the true Soul Rockers, Columbus rock & roll, Willie Phoenix & the True Soul Rockers

Mike Parks - Guitar Slinger by Ricki C.

(We’re interrupting Ricki’s three-part series – The Perfect Age For Rock & Roll – for this time-sensitive entry.
The Perfect Age For Rock & Roll will conclude later this week.  Click here to check out part one  & part two )

Today is Mike Parks’ birthday.  I’m not sure exactly how old he is, but he’s older than Mumford & Sons and too young for Social Security & Medicare.

I thought I first met Mike when I joined the road crew of Willie Phoenix & The True Soul Rockers in 1990, but after Mike and I got to talking one night at a gig and discovered our shared West Side roots, it turned out we had actually met – though fleetingly – 20 years earlier when I was a senior at Bishop Ready High School.  

The band Mike was in at that point – The Tree (which later went through various permutations and ended up as Pure Prairie League of “Amie” fame) – played a dance at Bishop Ready and my Catholic nerd rock & roll friends and I put together a “light show” to accompany the appearance.  (Said light show was cobbled together from oils made with colored Jell-O and overhead projectors from the Bishop Ready audio-visual lab.  I think Life Magazine had run an article on “hippie culture” that week and provided a tutorial.)

The members of The Tree – including, I believe, longtime Parks friend & bandmate Phil Stokes – were drawn from that most dangerous of 1960’s subcultures: Greasers Who Took Acid.  Laid-back run-of-the-mill hippie types who did acid were problematic enough when bad trips got into the mix, but Mike’s particular band of brethren – working-class toughs who had formerly beaten up on longhairs before they discovered the pharmaceutical joys & benefits of the late 60’s – were a particularly volatile mix.  (Think, those clearly whacked-out-of-their-skulls bikers at the side of and ON the stage in the Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter.”)

Anyway, The Tree sauntered into our Bishop Ready high-school gym like gunslingers: arrayed in a mix of boots, blue jeans & black leather jackets, topped off with the longest hair we had ever seen close up.  They looked, and moved, more like a gang than they did a band.  My friends and I were afraid to even speak to them.  After the dance, Mike came up to us in the gym at our pathetic little audio-visual station and said, “Hey, cool lights.”  We couldn’t have been prouder, but were struck so dumb by Mike’s acknowledgment of our existence that I think only one of us managed to stammer out, “Th-th-thanks.”  Mike just turned and walked off in a haze of badass guitar slinger cool.  (Somewhere around that time, Mike lived in the house The MC5 maintained at 1510 Hill Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan, FOR TWO WEEKS before the communal-living residents figured out that no one in the house knew Mike and that he didn’t belong there.)

By time we met up again 20 years later, Mike had become one of the five best lead guitarists I have ever seen in Columbus, Ohio.  (Actually, we later discovered I had seen him one other time in the intervening years, when I was writing for Focus magazine and reviewed Brownsville Station in 1978, a show Mike’s then-current band – Shakedown - opened.)  (Right around there Mike also served time in The Godz, see photo below.)  Mike’s white-hot guitar style was especially cool when he played alongside Willie Phoenix – no slouch of a lead player himself – in The True Soul Rockers.  Mike’s straight-ahead solid-rock lead guitar attack contrasted and dovetailed with Willie’s more idiosyncratic playing to killer effect in The Rockers: having Mike & Willie onstage together was like employing Duane Allman & Richard Thompson in the same band, no small musical feat and treat.  (Sadly, there is not one bit of recorded evidence of the dual-lead guitar fireworks Mike & Willie deployed nightly.  Tragic.)   

One of the things I love about Mike is that he doesn’t just PLAY rock & roll, he actually THINKS about rock & roll, has IDEAS about rock & roll.  One of those ideas about rock & roll brought about his and my biggest dust-up ever.  By their natures, guitar heroes and roadies are gonna run into problems.  One night at Ruby Tuesday’s when Willie gave me the song list for the first set I had the bright idea that I would line the guitars up in the order Willie & Mike were going to use them, so it would be easier for me to hand them up to the stage between songs.  We didn’t have a guitar rack in the True Soul Rockers, just individual guitar stands.  More to the point, we had EIGHT OR NINE individual guitar stands between Willie and Mike, some with guitars in alternate tunings.    

As I was sorting out various Fenders & Gibsons, Mike walked up, watched for a minute and said, “What are you doing?”  “I’m arranging the guitars in the order you’re gonna use them,” I replied.  Mike was quiet for a coupla beats, then said, “You can’t do that.  It’s not very rock & roll.”  “I don’t care if it’s rock & roll or not,” I said, with an edge in my voice, “I’m juggling eight or nine guitars here and it makes things simpler.”  “It’s still not rock & roll, though,” Mike said, “I’m taking all my guitars onstage with me.  I don’t want you handling them anymore.”  I watched incredulously as Mike made six trips back & forth to haul all of his guitars up on the stage.  It was the only time in my roadie existence that I ever wished for a guitarist to break a string, so that I could refuse to help.

Mike and I got along ever so much better when I wrangled guitars for The League Bowlers – Colin’s offshoot covers band when Joe Oestreich first moved away and Watershed was on hiatus – and we could use Watershed’s guitar rack.  Again, Mike’s endlessly inventive lead guitar style – imagine Chuck Berry if Chuck had ever deigned to PRACTICE the guitar after 1957, or picture the bastard mutant offspring of Keith Richards & Wayne Kramer – was set off perfectly against Colin’s Cheap Trick-inspired stylings.  Mike’s playing in the Bowlers really was quite stunning.  He could play anything Colin tossed at him – from Gawel/Oestreich originals to Tom Petty to George Jones to Georgia Satellites to Dwight Yoakam – and, on top of that, Mike could play ALL NIGHT LONG without repeating a lick.  I’m pretty sure I saw, from my roadie station at the side of the stage, every show the latter-day incarnation of The League Bowlers played and I don’t think I ever saw Mike play the same solo twice.  (For a full eyewitness account of the last night of The League Bowlers when they imploded and broke up ONSTAGE at the old Thirsty Ear in 2008, check out Growing Old With Rock & Roll, The Friday Night Massacre, August 1st, 2012.)    

Happy birthday, Mike, it’d be great to see you on a stage again sometime.  – Ricki C. / January 25th, 2014

Mike (extreme left) in Shakedown, mid-1970's.

Mike (second from left) in The Godz, late 1970's.

Note: I am frankly amazed that Mike was not pistol-whipped by Eric Moore (extreme left)

for showing up at a Godz performance in this outfit.

Mike (extreme left) in The True Soul Rockers, 1992.