The Bittermen, Part 2
KDOG is an offshoot of The Bittermen Blues Band. This is part two of their story. The band featured Nick Ciani, our harmonica player and dynamic male vocalist. This takes us up unitl just before the band breaks up the first time.
NICK: At the end of the second show, Bob and Carol, who lived down the street, said “Hey, look. We’re having a party. Our annual spring party. Will you come and play for it?” And we go, “Sure.” They said, “We’ll pay you.” And I thought, “Wow - a paying gig! That is a transition now from this garage band. Technically, once we get paid, we’re professionals.” Technically. So now we’re scampering for a few more songs. We really don’t’ know what we’re doing. We’re just throwing this stuff together. It’s coming out okay. So we go to Bob and Carol’s, thinking that things are going to go along as they always have. Well, we’re now playing to a bunch of people who don’t know us. Who don’t really know each other. Who don’t think it’s all that cool that we’re a bunch of buddies that got together. They’re at a party. And they’re expecting some higher level of entertainment that we did not meet. So at the end of this, our first real, legitimate, paying gig, Bob came out. We were going to charge him five dollars each. Just to legitimize ourselves. Five bucks each. So he comes out with bottle of wine and says, “Hey, you guys were great. Thank you.” He was really pretty cool. Now the bottle of wine was worth far more than five bucks each. But: does a bottle of wine really now legitimize you as a professional musician? I didn’t really feel like it did. I would’ve rather had the five bucks.
The next gig that we had: my brother Phil was coaching for Sacramento High, the baseball team. They were gonna take the kids to Osaka, Japan. The whole baseball team. They were thinking about ways to raise funds. So he came over and asked me, “Hey, would you guys play a fundraiser for Sacramento high? So, you know, I called Tom. “They want us to play this fund raiser." Everybody was up for it. Except the drummer, who said, “Hey, man, you know, I need to get paid. This should be a paying gig. I didn’t go to Sacramento High.” Again, there was that whole issue of, “Are we just a bunch of buddies that got together? Because we love each other an enjoy each other?" The second part of that is the adventure aspect of it. And then, maybe down the line, there may be a payday in it. But we you get an outside guy, they’re looking mainly for the money. They hope that they like us. The adventure aspect of it is irrelevant. So the issue of payment comes up. And we’re saying to the drummer, “Wait a minute, dude,we’re a bunch of buddies. We’re amateurs.” We worked that all out with him. I think we got him twenty five bucks or something. So we did this gig for Sacramento High over at the Fox and Goose. There were gonna be two bands there. This friend of Tom’s had a band, a professional band. We were going to be the “headliner” and play last. So this first band came on. They had down range mixing boards and everything. They were really good. They were nailing these standard tunes. Just sounding really good. And then we came on with our stuff. Because of the mixing aspect of it, we sounded pretty good, too. We sounded great. We were a bigger hit than they were. They were coming up and going, “Wow. You guys, you’re knocking ‘em out.” So that was our fourth gig. We wound up raising, I think, five hundred bucks. They printed t-shirts, with all the donors on it. And we’re learning more songs.
TOM: Hatley was aggressive. He wanted to play shows. He wanted to be famous. He wanted to get out there and perform. We, on the other hand, were “let’s go slow. We’re not that good. Let’s get better.” And Hatley’s one of these smarmy, lounge singer kind of guys who likes taking to the crowd. He’s up there, “Hey, baby, how you doin’?” He loves being up there, stretching songs out. We’re doing 10 minute songs, 12-minute songs. He really was a good front man.
JIM: He worked the crowd well.
FITZ: We were holding him back.
TOM: So we were together three years the first time. We probably did twenty performances in that time. We played at the Limelight twice. We played at the Argonaut, the biker bar, twice. We played at the Stoney Inn once. That was one of those Second Saturday deals where they opened up the whole art walk there. And we played on the K-Street mall a couple of times. We played at a wedding. We played at a winery. You know, we played actually a pretty good amount of shows. At one point, we picked up a sax player. We had even a trombone. We played at the Press Club.
JIM: One of my favorite gigs was at the Limelight. We had a really good sax player. There was a guy in the audience who had a trombone and just brought it up. That sounds like an odd mix, but man, it was a lot of fun. About the only problem we had was our drummer, who, it turns out, was some kind of a drug dealer.
NICK: Well, he would always disappear and you wouldn’t know where he was. Whether it was a rehearsal break or a gig break, he’d disappear. And we couldn’t find him. It was always “Where’s Dave?” Ultimately, he’d show up. The way we’d get him to show up is we’d all get on the stage and start playing. Then he’d come running out of nowhere.
TOM: Unlike some drummers who come in to fast and they’re playing too fast, he would slow down. He’d start the song almost at the right tempo and slow he’d slow down as the song went. A couple of things that happened, because of his drug use is that, one breaks, he’d go get a fix. And sometimes, that’d take a good amount of time. He didn’t come back once. So the sax player just started playing the drums. He was actually better. It was actually a good set.
JIM: Another incident at the Limelight, in between song, I looked back just in time to see him falling off his chair with a crash, knocking over cymbals. So that was a typical Dave experience.
FITZ: One time he showed up at one of our more important gigs without his bass pedal. That was when we were an hour late.
TOM: Well, that’s drummer problems for you. But we kept him on because we’re The Bittermen: we never fire anybody. If you piss us off enough, we just all quit.
NICK: Hatley was like KDOG: He could get gigs. That was his real talent. He could get gigs. He was in this arts circle. And he got us a gig at the Crocker Art Museum. It was an early evening gig. So we got together in the afternoon and started setting up all our stuff. And for some reason, they gave me the responsibility for getting Fitz and Hatley there.
JIM: The truth be known, do not depend on Nick Ciani to be your clock. He’s talented, but there were times we he just wasn’t “feeling right.” So he just wouldn’t play. He was a little more fragile.
FITZ: I remember it was time for him to solo. I go, “It’s your turn baby.” And he’s not there. He’s hiding behind the speaker!
JIM: If he wasn’t feeling it that night, there’d be just nothing. I remember one time he actually walked of the stage and sat down. We we were calling on him to do a lead and he’s sitting in the audience.
TOM: Anyway, everybody’s dressed up. Wine. Catered event. And here we are, this blues band. They had a huge stage set up. So we went and set up. It was an early evening show or late afternoon. We went and set up early. Everybody goes home to change. But they live in the area, so no problem. I got back with my outfit on. The time of starting the show is coming up. I’m sitting out in the crowd. The stage is empty. Nobody else in the Bittermen Blues Band is there. Finally, fifteen minutes later, twenty minutes later. The organizer is going, “Is your band here?” I go, “No.” They say, “Well, can you call ‘em?” I said, “I did. Nobody’s answering.” They go, “Well, can’t you play something?” I go “I’m a bass player. What do you want me to do? Get up there and do a bass solo?” Then its 45 minutes later. And they’re like, “Where in the hell is your band?” I said, “If I knew, I would tell you. I’m this close to leaving myself. They’re an hour late. Everybody’s pissed. I’m pissed. The organizers are pissed. They audience is like, “Hey we thought there was gonna be a band! So we start. Nick is so pissed that he unlplug’s Fitz’s amp. So Fitz had no sound. The drummer had been taking drugs too long. He can’t play. We muscle through this show. Fitz do you remember why you guys were late?
FITZ: All I know is I thought the time was an hour earlier. But they didn’t’ pick up up until twenty minutes after the time we were supposed to start. I’m like “Oh, shit, guys, I thought we were supposed to start at 5 oclock.” No one’s saying anything. I’m thinking everyone is cool And so we get down there. I’m none the wiser. Somebody comes up to us and says “You guys were supposed to be an hour a ago!” I’m thinking, “I gotta walk in there? We’re an hour late? Well, I guess the show must go on.”
JIM: They were late because Hatley took too long getting dressed.
FITZ: Nick had my car! I couldn’t’ get there because he had my car. I woulda been there at five.
NICK: Somewhere in here, Hatley starts to play the guitar. Tom says it sounds like a cat scratching the chalkboard. But he’s got Paul Bunyan balls and a dinosaur hide. He’s impervious to insult. He was great a fronting a band and he was great at getting gigs. That was his main thing. So he’s getting us all these gigs. And Tom is starting to get a little stressed because the power structure is now shifting. At one time, Tom was the manager. Everybody agreed on it. It was kind of defacto. His management style was more laizze fare. We knew what we had to do, so let’s just do it. But now Hatley comes in. And now he’s getting us gigs and it’s kind of stressing the whole thing. And he introduces this guitar thing. Now we have like three guitars, a drummer, a bass and a harmonica player. Hatley was playing guitar, Fitz was playing guitar and Jim’s playing guitar. Tom is playing bass. Basically what we have is three guitars soloing all the time. I mean all the time. And Hatley is getting us gigs that the other guys are not agreeing to. And they also don’t like the drummer. He’s taking breaks. He’s going through Fitz’s house. Every time he takes a break, Fitz is running after him. They don’t’ know where he is. They can’t find him. Then we start playing and all of the sudden, he appears. This whole thing is going on and stressing Fitz.
TOM: Hatley wanted to play so much, it was getting to be a lot like work. Over a three year period, you go from “Hey, this is fun. Let’s get together, play our instruments once a week, maybe have a couple of beers and we’re having a good time” to “Okay, now we’ve got something on Friday night." So we’ve got to practice two times during the week to get ready for that. Pick up the equipment at five in the afternoon. Go get set up. Play until one a.m. come back and take the stuff down maybe on Sunday or something. It was just way too much work. But Hatley really was into it.
JIM: I think most of us really enjoyed playing house parties. Because that’s what we started out doing. You have a soft audience. People love what you’re doing. They’re having a good time. Then that transitioned into playing clubs. Even though it’s a small amount of money, it’s still a “professional” gig. You’re getting paid. They expect a product. And it’s not a soft crowd. It wasn’t as much fun.
TOM: And the lead singer, Hatley, became a monster. First of all, he wants to join. We gave him a couple of songs. He’d do those. Then he wanted three songs. Four songs. It ends up, he basically want to do every song. And he decided singing wasn’t enough, he wanted to play guitar, too. And he didn’t know how to play guitar. He started off just holding the guitar in his hands while he would sing. Then he’d maybe play a few notes. Then he just started playing. And he didn’t know how to play guitar, so it sounded a lot like a screaming cat.
FITZ; I’m telling you, by the end, when we started doing that stuff at Socal’s, the every Sunday night blues gig – you two guys had quit – I swear to God, Hatley had gotten good at guitar. No questions about it. This was like just two years later. He could do it.
TOM: Yeah, but he couldn’t play guitar for like a year. He’d carry that guitar everywhere. After our gigs, we’d go into Lyons and eat. It’s be like three in the morning. Hatley would bring his guitar into Lyons. Just to show everybody in there that he’s in the band.
FITZ; Nothing wrong with that. He’d divorced my sister by then.
JIM: He had a nice guitar, too. A nice Gretsch. He did not buy cheap stuff.
FITZ: One of the best gigs we ever had was at the Stoney Inn. The crowd fuckin’ loved us. The chicks wanted us. It was unbelievable. Nick leaves. Doesn’t play the second set. Cause his girlfriend wanted to go home.
TOM: We played at the biker bar, the Argonaut on Del Paso. It’s further down Del Paso from the Stoney Inn. Right next to the ice place. It’s a known biker bar. It was owned by a Hell’s Angels member. It has a reputation that goes back. We knew it was risky to play there. The only people in there are bikers. We were afraid to go play. But Hatley, our big singer, he got us this gig. So we set up. We start playing. Nobody is even acknowledging our existence. Everybody’s just sitting in their chairs not doing anything. It’s late at night. Maybe midnight. Then it’s like a switch gets thrown. Everybody’s up and dancing, having fun. We go until two. They’re patting us on the back. During that gig, there was a huge fight. Some black guy accidentally came into the bar. We’re up there playing. There’s big fight going on in the audience. We’re kind of stopping, looking around, getting ready to run. I mean, they beat this guy up just for coming in! Anyway, we’re done. They pay us. And the way they pay us is the lead biker guy clicks his fingers. This chick with, you know, huge tits, walks over all pissed off, grabs the money, walks over to us and says “Here’s your money.” Then she goes. “You can come back.” Now we’re trying to take all the stuff off the stage. All the Harley’s are lined up by the back door. It’s a big deal. There’s a big sign that says “Harley’s Only!” Well, our drummer is pissed off that these Harley’s are in his way for taking his drums out. So he’s yelling at these bikers. “Hey you son of a bitch, your bikes are in the way! I can’t get my drums out!” They let him load up. He leaves. They didn’t say anything. Turns out, later one, the bikers got a code. They won’t beat up retard guys. They’ll be up anybody else. If you try to be a tough guy on their terms, they’ll kill you. But if you’re just too stupid to live. they ignore you.
JIM: They’re other code is, they protect the band. Because they other time, there was another fight in there. I was walking in. And they literally had this guy up in the air. The way they work is they beat the tar out of ya. Then there’s about two or three of them and they literally throw you out the back door. This guy went right by me, over my head. The only thing I’m thinking is ‘If we get out of here with our lives, we’ve done good.' But in fact, they don’t mess with the band.
FITZ: It was fun!
NEXT: In part 3, Kenton "KDOG" Lee joins The reformed Bittermen!
©2007 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.