Jerry Morano

Jerry Morano was a central figure in the original migration of half a dozen or so Jersey City folks to Chico in the late 60's and early 70's. As you learn in this interview, Jerry's vision and musical instincts have been a big factor in the musical evolution that has taken place in Chico over the last 25 years.

Jerry has recently reunited with Spark & Cinder after a ten year absence, so get out there and check it out, folks. You can also enjoy Jerry's music with The Steve Cook Band and Los Franciscos.

Jerry...Well, it was 1969. I had just gone to Woodstock. Me and my friend Victor Esposito from Jersey City. We had this dream of getting a band together. We had a few players that we had in mind, and a few people who wanted to be a part of it. So me and him, right after Woodstock, left to go to San Francisco. This is where I thought we were gonna get the band together. And as we got there he tells me that his ol' lady, his girl friend, Donna, is gonna be going to Chico State.

Donna? Are we talking about Donna Romano who wound up with Zack for awhile, and marrying Jimmy?

Right, she was gonna go to Chico State. So Victor says, "I guess I'm going to Chico State too."

So Victor and Donna had already been together back in Jersey City, and he calls her up or something, and she tells him she's going to Chico?

He already knew that she was gonna come here, but he never told me.

Until you got to San Francisco.

Right, and then he says he's going to Chico, so I'm like, "Well, I guess I'm going too." Then we wind up here in Chico. At first I didn't know where I was going, and then once I got here it's like, "I can't believe this place, it's beautiful." Coming from the armpit of the world, Jersey City.

When did you graduate high school?

In 1968.

Had you already been playing music back there, yourself?

I played the bongos a little bit back then. The thing was Jimmy and Victor were trying to get a band together back there. They were looking for somebody to sing, so they handed me a microphone one time, and they had me sing a few verses, you know, of some Doors song or something. Then when I came out here I was just gonna be their roadie I thought.

Were you a long-haired, freaky looking guy then?

Not until I got out here. No, we all kinda looked like trashy Jersey City guys.

This was during the hippie era, but you hadn't quite fallen into that yet?

Well, Victor looked more like a hippie guy. He had a fringe jacket on, and stuff. But me and Jimmy, we looked like typical guys from Jersey City. Anyway, we got here the first night, and me and Victor go into Denny's, which is now Jack's. We're like, sitting there, "what are we gonna do, we don't know anybody." All the sudden I hear this plate crash, and it's this guy Mark Weisburg, you know, [local character] Boo, he's from New York too. So he's like, "Oh, you guys must be from the East Coast!" "Yeah, how'd ya guess?" "I just took a look at ya and I knew." So he gave us a place to crash, and we wound up staying there. I still had this thing, we were gonna get this band together, so we started making calls back east to all our friends who could play. Jimmy, and Zack, and his brother, and Gary Ducina. We were gonna try and get a whole band from there. We wanted to get all these guys that come from there, to come here. We started trying to talk them into like, "You oughta see this place, there's fruit growing on the trees!" They're like, "No, no..." "Yeah, yeah, come on out!" So finally, one by one, they started coming out here. I guess Zack was the first one, and after him, his brother John showed up, and Gary Ducina, and my friend Paul Vacca, who played the keyboards. We finally got a band together called Supa Nova. This is 1970. I guess that band lasted from 1970 to 1975. You know, everybody in it, the whole band was from Jersey City when we first got here. So, we'd gotten together here in Chico, and we started playing gigs around, and stuff. Then, after a couple of years, some of our friends back east told us, "Come on back! We'll manage you, we'll live in Woodstock, and become famous, like." So we moved back there, from Chico, the whole band, and lived up in Hunter, which is right above Woodstock. It turns out our manager got busted for selling hashish, in Morocco, or something. So were like, stranded there with no money and no gigs. So the band kind of broke up. Jimmy and Victor decided they weren't gonna come back to California, they were gonna stay back there. The rest of us came back here. That's when Jimmy and Victor got together wtih Billy and Bobby [Baxmeyer], and called themselves Jack Straw. They did like, a Country Rock thing. We came back here and got together with [bassist, vocalist] Sam Yarbrough, who started playing bass for us, and this guy [drummer] Dave Peck; some Chico people.

This is Supa Nova.

This is still Supa Nova. We went on the road with that band for, oh I guess a whole year, throughout the west. Through Colorado, New Mexico, Washington, Wyoming; you know, the whole western circuit. And we kind of used ourselves up on each other. Zack got crazier and crazier, to the point of becoming like, a megalomaniac. You know it's like, the band was him. Zack was the band, and were all like, just side guys, as far as he was concerned.

The Jack Straw guys are still back east?

What happened was, Dave Peck wound up leaving the band, and Jimmy wound up coming back west with Jack Straw. They were living in Phoenix, and they came up here to visit us. So, when Jimmy came back up here he kind of joined the band to help us get through some gigs and stuff like this. Then he was like, in both bands, Supa Nova and Jack Straw, at the same time. Then we kind of had this interchange thing going on between the two bands. We had a bluegrass band going.

That was the acoustic version of Jack Straw?

Yeah, Jack Straw. It finally came down to the point where Zack was just getting too crazy on the road, and the band broke up around the middle of 1975, the Supa Novas. At the time there was another band around called the Butte Creek Family, and they kinda took me and Jimmy in as their rhythm section. Billy started playing with Zack, because Zack just decided he was gonna get some side guys, and keep Supa Nova going. So Billy hung around to play with him. Finally Michael [Cannon] said that the Butte Creek was breaking up, 'cause Michael Hart, their bass player didn't want to play anymore, and seeing as me and Jimmy were in it already, we might as well just start forming this other band. The band would have us as a rhythm section, from the east coast, and we'd get the top guys from the west coast, and we'd call it the East-West Band or something like this. So that was like, the basis of the East West Transcendental Spark & Cinder Band, which has transformed into just Spark & Cinder over the years.

In the early days there had to be like, thirteen or fourteen of us. We were more like a caravan than a, it was still like Butte Creek Family Band. We had like, two singers, and three guitar players, keyboards. It was not a really tight thing, at first. We had met Joe Hammons when Jack Straw was making a promo tape. At the time Victor was being chased by the police and had to leave town, so we got Joe to play on the tape with us. So we wanted Joe to be our guitar player. John Glick was supposed to be our guitar player.

John had been the guitar player with Butte Creek?

Yeah, but we had this thing where we wanted Joe as our guitar player, because he was like, the hottest guy in town as far as we were concerned, for doing the kind of stuff we wanted to do.

Me and Jimmy had become interested in reggae and salsa music as time went by. So Jack Straw had started mutating into a country rock band that did reggae songs as well, and we used to do spaghetti-western instrumentals; weird kind of stuff like that. That was the direction we wanted to go. Not into a hard rock thing like Zack wanted to keep us in tune with. Doing old Kinks songs, and stuff like that. Rocking old Fleetwood Mac songs. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but we just wanted to get into like, you know, I was playing the congas more and more and more. And Jimmy, and Billy, we started listening to The Wailers constantly. At this time it was 1976, and people around here really didn't know what this was about yet. Bands like the Who, The Rolling Stones, were basically what was happening, you know, Lynard Skynard and things like this. And we started playing this other kind of thing that nobody around here, it was like, a really new thing for people around here. They were really open to it, and hip to it, and we were just learning about it ourselves. Jimmy had the thing down. There was nobody around that could play that "bottom" bass drum like he could. It was a unique thing.

It's still that way, actually.

Right, you know, he had that thing; the authentic riff. And the same thing was true with the salsa music, and we did a bunch of funk tunes, too. We were doing like, War, The Meters, before they were the Neville Brothers. And this was like, a new thing for around here too: people just playing funky music, black music basically, instead of just like, white rock type stuff. And we just went with that. I think the first gig we played was like a "Ban Guns On Campus" thing.

This is Spark and Cinder?

Yeah, I think it was at Melody Hall. And Steve Cooley's band was the headliner. Steve was one of our patrons from when we first got to town. It was like, the Chico musicians, and then us. And Steve was like, the one guy who put a bridge out between us, and hung out with us and stuff. When we first got this band together they were like, the headline band, he said that we could open up for him. And we did this thing, and the town of Chico awed to hear this kind of stuff come out of us. They basically knew us, but they didn't know what were putting together. When we came out with this reggae world-beat thing, it like, really turned them on. All of our bands had been mutating toward this, but we came out with this new thing, it was like, a really new sound. Then we started paring down the sound. We went from like, thirteen people to about eight people. The nucleus kept getting tighter.

Back in the early days, the singer in Butte Creek was Martha [Days], she did all kind of country rock songs. When we got Spark & Cinder, we loved Martha, but we wanted this lady who we met, Kim Cataluna, who was like, the funkiest, blackest, white sister that you ever knew. So we got her to sing for us. She just was the sexiest. We would play gigs on the road, and guys would bring her flowers to the gig. People had seen the band before, and we were coming through on the second tour, there would be like, flowers there waiting for her. She was like, the hippest thing; one of the best singers I had ever heard. She was only like, 19 years old. She was just super hot, so we decided we wanted her in the band.

So we put on this show that was kind of like a revue. We had like, three or four different singers that we featured in the band, and songwriters. It was almost all original material as well. Everybody brought their original songs into the band, and everbody would be featured. I had some songs, that I did.

That you wrote?

I think we did two of my songs, I had my ear out for the funkier material, I would do Meters songs, and stuff like that. Jimmy would basically write all of his songs. Jimmy would write me songs as well. Two or three songs he wrote for me to sing.

Which ones?

"Feelings 'Bout You," and "Dangerous" were like, two that I sang that he wrote.

He actually wrote them with you in mind to sing them?

Right, back in the old days.

And Cannon had a few songs?

Yeah, Cannon had at least five songs that we used to do either he would sing, or Kim. Kim hung out with us for, I guess it was about two and a half years. She had aspirations to go to San Francisco and do her own thing. When she left the band Sam Yarbrough, our old friend from Supa Nova, was hanging around, and when we thought of the next best singer in town, he immediately came to mind.

I should interject here that the bass that Sam used to play in Supa Nova was the first bass I ever bought. It was that red Gibson EB 2

The hollow body one.

Yeah, the hollow body bass. I bought it from Sam, I think, in 1976, when Prairie Biscuit started. And I still have it.

That's like, a relic.

It is a relic. If we were really famous it would be worth millions.

John Borland [Zack's brother, of Supa Nova] used to play a Rickenbacker. And that was amazing to me that he knew that John Lennon used to play one of these, and the guy in the Byrds used one of these. That made our sound distinctive in Supa Nova, but didn't even realize it at the time, that like, a Rickenbacker guitar had a sound like no other.

Anyway, we got Sam into the band after Kim left. At this point we had really started refining the sound. It was like, John Lapado was playing rhythm guitar, and pedal steel, Michael was playing the keyboards, we had had Marilyn Cannon playing the flute with us. At this point another good friend of ours came along, Phil O'Neill. He was a friend of John's, and he was a really great sax player, played with alot of soul. It just fit into our sound completely.

Marilyn had quit 'cause she'd gotten pregnant.

Yeah, but it was also a thing of like, we were progressing musically more and more and more to the point of like, you know Marilyn was a great player and stuff, but Phil had this soul, you know.

So did it go from Marilyn right to Phil, there was never a time when there was no horn player?

Right, it went from Marilyn right to Phil. Phil was hangin out at the Odyssey, and like, jamming with us. Nothing was official until, it was one of those deals where he was a great sax player, and he also had a van. Me being from Jersey City, I put two and two together and said, "This is our sax player." But like I say, he was a terrific fuckin' player, and it was that thing as well.

I think Kim went on a few trips with us down to the Bay Area. We opened up for Terry Garthwaite one time. Every time we would open up for someone that was semi-famous, she would like, schmooz and hang out with them. And they would tell her, "Well, come to the Bay Area," and that's where things were happening, so she left the band and Sam came in, and we continued to go on the road, up to Oregon, and up to Tahoe, we played up there alot. I guess that went for maybe about a year or so, with that band. This was about '78 or '79. This is where I start getting like, kinda drug crazed. I had a very bad period where I was totally fuckin' nuts. This was about the time where Joe Hammons was leaving the band and we got Scott Pressman We were playing at Cabos at the time, and Scott was playing across the street in his band, Makin' Bakin [with Ralph Shine]. We were aware of them; they were a really good band, and we kinda got to know Scott a little bit. When Joe was leaving the band we auditioned for players. We had three or four applicants try out, and Scott meshed perfectly. By this point were looking for personality as much as chops, because we were thinking about going on the road again, and we wanted to have someone that meshed completely with us, not just a great player. Scott was like, one of the nicest guys you could ever meet. So he auditioned for us, and there was basically like, no contest. We hired him on. So we started practicing, and playing gigs around town again.

In 1979 I got in touch with an agent. That's when we went back out on the road with the Spark & Cinder Band.

That was a pretty trimmed down version.

Jimmy had a trip where he felt John's [Lapado] playing was not progressing along as fast as everyone elses at this point, so we kind of parted ways with John at that point. [It was during this time period that most of Spark's gear was stolen out of Phil's van. John's amp and pedal steel were taken, and this was another reason for his leaving the band...kg]. It was just Scott, Billy, me, Jimmy, and Phil. There was only five of us. I started calling around to some agents, and I found an agent in Montana who was interested in us. So he was gonna book us all over the west. And we went on an extended road trip. We started in New Mexico and wound up in Washington. Somewhere along in that tour there became kind of like a rift between the band. Billy and Scott really got into the New Wave thing. That's where the X-Factors [with Mike Dufloth] came into being. They wanted to start wearing like, yellow cover-alls; we were all going to wear yellow cover-alls. And me, Phil and Jimmy were like, "No, we're not gonna wear yellow cover-alls," and they got really pissed at us. I had already had my hair cut like, really short, and everbody else still had long hair at the start of this tour. About half way into the road trip they both cut their hair real short. Even shorter than mine. So when we were on the stage, those guys were wearing their yellow cover-alls, and we wouldn't be.

There's a song called "Nothing Yellow" that came out of that, by Scott.

It just got to be like a rift. I mean, we were still friends with each other, we just knew we weren't going in similar musical terms at this point. So we came back to town, and Billy and Scott decided they were gonna start a punk band. I guess that's when you guys got together and started the X-Factors, and then into being The Hats, and the Night Knights. That was like, Chico's first punk-type scene. You guys started that.

Well, it was us and a group called the Agentz, with Matt Hogan, as I recall, that really started doing that. I think it was in '79 when that happened.

Yeah, towards the end of that year, after we got back from being on the road. When we were on the road I was still buying like, U-Roy albums and stuff, Scott was buying like, Elvis Costello. So when got back to town, and they decided they were gonna go their separate ways. So, we got back to town and we started like, hunting for a guitar player and a bass player. So we got the bass player for Peter Berkow and Friends, Paul Abrahms, who wasn't really meshed in with us perfectly, but played the bass really well, and we got this guy, Dana Olsen, who was a phenomenal guitar player, and another really nice guy, and we kept the band going.

Billy actually quit for four years, but didn't Scott hang for awhile?

When it came to making the album, me and Scott were not in the band. We're both on the album, but if you look at the album you'll see our names in small letters, and that meant that we weren't in the band.

[Upon checking, I found Scott's name in large letters, and Jerry's and Dana's names in smaller letters. In fact, two of the eight songs on the record were written by Scott...kg]

This is when I got my first job, my first like, straight job. I'd never worked before, so I was like, working this job, and the next thing you know, Jimmy and Michael and Phil want to make an album. So we start going down to Cotati to make a record. I was like, working, so I couldn't be there with them.

Where were you working?

I was working at the Work Training Center, in 1980.

Where you still work today?

Right. So they went down there, and were living at the studio, and started making the record. I was kind of like out of it, stoned alot, wasn't really participating as much as I would have liked to, but I had a job. I could only go like, every other weekend, or once a month to lay my tracks down. I wasn't contributing as much as I possibly could at that point. So we finally got finished making the album, and this is when my departure from the band came. We were like, listening to recording of the album and then, one of songs that I supposed to sing on, they had erased my vocal from.

Which song?

It was called "Dangerous." I had originally sung it. When I was singing it, the producer kept saying, "Can you put on more of a Jamaican accent? You sound like Lou Reed. Can't you sound more Jamaican?" I'm like, "I just sound like what I sound like. That's how I sing, you know?" Anyway, no one had told me I had been erased from singing anything on the album. I just felt kind of let down that people weren't honest with me, until I actually heard it. Jimmy says, "Oh yeah, we forgot to tell ya." "Oh, OK, I guess I'm quitting now." So I like, quit at that point. And I stopped playing music for about five years. I sold my drums, I had a pair of bongos I just fucked around with. And then I got a new pair of drums, and I wood-shedded, and I tried as hard as I could to get my chops back up. I also had a regular drum set I was playing. I was gonna try and join a country band if I could, 'cause I didn't know if anybody else would have me. Then Stevie [Cook] would say, "Come on and jam with us," with the Steve Cook Band, which was you and Stevie, and Jim Hall, and Jimmy, and Dana. And he was nice enough to like, let me come and like, play with you guys. I just kept playing and playing, and would practice all the time. I was like, separated from my wife at the time, so that's all I did was play. And I just got my chops back up to where Steve let me actually start playing with you guys. It's been the best change in my life that has ever happened.

Really!!

Yeah, just to get to play again, cause that's my life, you know.

That brings us to the current time. Can you mention other groups you've played with lately?

Well, when I started getting with you guys, I started jamming with these other guys. Doctor Frank Ficarra, and a few people from where I work. And we're doing like, a latin-jazz, kinda off the wall thing. It started getting a little bit tighter and tighter, and I finally said, "Well, why don't we name ourselves a band, and try to get some gigs?" And we called ourselves Los Franciscos. We do a little latin-jazz thing in town.

Tell me how you feel the bands that you've been involved with, especially early on, impacted this community, and helped to change it to whatever it has become.

I think that because of the Spark & Cinder Band people's minds got opened up to world music in general -- reggae, or African music, or whatever. Things that we were interested in that we brought to the stage in Chico opened people's minds up to fact that there was more out there than just straight 4/4 rhythm, or a blues lick. Not that that wasn't good stuff; actually, we incorporated that into our thing. We were certainly by no means a reggae band or an African band, we were Spark & Cinder. We used those beats, put rock stuff in with it as well. In 1976 we opened up alot of people's heads to that kind of musical experience.

I was a definite recipient of the knowledge, let me tell you.

It wasn't like we thought we were above anybody. We just really thought that we were opening people up to this kind of experience, and from that it would just take off. I think that within Chico that has happened. I see the Wailers are playing here in a week or so. That's like, incredible. That's like, the natural progression. In 1976 for me to imagine that the Wailers band will be playing here in Chico, it's mind boggling.

Well, in a way what does that say about the Wailers? You can see it both ways. Like, Chico is on the map now, and in a large way that's due to Spark's groundbreaking work all these years. But on the other hand, Bob Dylan played in Red Bluff, so what the hell is that? But, I know what you mean, having the Wailers play here is amazing. Maybe next, Paul, George, and Ringo will come to town.

In my mind, it's come full circle. First there was the musical inspiration they gave us, and now the actual members of the band are playing here. That's what I think our contribution has been: to open up people's minds to other musical idioms. The kind of music that I love.