Pre Toto

[Goport]

I ain't saying you guys will like this but I just bought a cd that my dad used to play a lot at home - Boz Scaggs Silk Degrees and checking out the track listing it turns out that Steve Lukather and some of the toto boys are on it. Jump street is a great example of steve as a young teenager playing guitar. But the songs on this cd are so well written and played it is amazing. Hardly heavy rock - but a good piece of history nontheless.

[wbeacham]

That is one of my favorite albums. Great late 70's music at it's best. I think The Pacarro brothers played on that record with Luke. [img]images/smilies/afro.gif[/img] [img]images/smilies/icon_jam.gif[/img]

[Goport]

phew, gad someone agrees [img]images/smilies/smile.gif[/img]

[Stiglar]

does that have lowdown on it ? ...

i love lukes solo on that and the tune as a whole it rocks ! ..

i don't know much about the other guys but lukes playing was totally awesome on all the sessions he did !

[wbeacham]

Some Great tunes on that album.
1. What Can I Say
2. Georgia
3. Jump Street
4. What Do You Want The Girl To Do
5. Harbor Lights
6. Lowdown
7. It's Over
8. Love Me Tomorrow
9. Lido Shuffle
10. We're All Alone
Not all classics but overall a very fine album.

[blahblah]

my favourite toto song : africa, has no guitar [img]images/smilies/icon_mad.gif[/img]

[Stiglar]

it does have guitar ! .. the best bit of the whole song ... in the 2nd last or one of the last chorus' .. theres a distorted guitar line that totally fricken rocks ! .. makes the whole tune in my opinion ..

toto rocks not just cause of the songs but the guitar solos are always so melodically awesome .. steve lukather .. one of my heros ! [img]images/smilies/icon_bowdown.gif[/img]

[C_P_W]

I agree stig, Luke rocks. I used to go catch him all the time on off nights at a tiny little club in LA called the baked potato. Definetly some of the best 30 seater shredfests I've ever seen or heard. Ed Vh showed up and jammed on occasion, steve morse showed up once, david paitch, jimmie johnson, stu hamm, marco mendoza, david wekel (sp?) the chick who used to sing for the 80's group the 'Motels', were pretty regular.

It was very cool because no one really knew about the place, except for a handful drooling musicians, who loved to hear their favorites players just wailing away, making all kinds of mistakes, nothing was pre rehearsed, except for the occasional Luke Los Lobotomies tunes that would occasionally get played. I've still never heard anyone tear up hendrix's Little wing like luke would (of course with the exception of SRV).

Ah... the good ole days

[InstituteOfNoise]

I went to high school with Luke, Steve Porcaro, Mike Landau, John Pierce and a bunch of others in that group. If you ever watch the old Gary Wright video for Dreamweaver, you'll see Steve Porcaro and Peter Reilich playing keys, Peter also was in my class with Steve. I've got a great photo I need to get scanned of Luke, Landau, Porcaro, the late Carlos Vega, John Pierce and acouple of others playing the homecoming dance. Yep the memories...

You can still catch these guys sitting in around town for the heck of it.

[christopher99]

Originally Posted by Stiglar

it does have guitar ! .. the best bit of the whole song ... in the 2nd last or one of the last chorus' .. theres a distorted guitar line that totally fricken rocks ! .. makes the whole tune in my opinion ..

toto rocks not just cause of the songs but the guitar solos are always so melodically awesome .. steve lukather .. one of my heros ! [img]images/smilies/icon_bowdown.gif[/img]

You are sooo right on this one man! I am a totofan for years now and whatI now like best...well the last chorus cuz it has that extra touch of bobby singing ad-libs very raw and Lukather's distortion, you are correct. I think 97% of the Toto legacy has guitars, except for Only a secret love, is suppose and maybe 1 more? haha, lot of people hate it, but I love the full sound of Toto with all the guitar parts dubbed as in an acoustic guitar in most songs with electric, and synthesizer+organ+normal piano and stuff, that is Toto!

Lukather is the best guitarist I have ever seen live, since I didn't have the upportunity to see other legends live, but I believe in all that lukather is definately one of the greatest guitarplayers alive right now.

[Buggy]

Jeff Porcaro RIP. Still the greatest drummer ever....

[img]images/smilies/icon_frown.gif[/img]

[joe_schmoe]

GOPORT opened this thread, and wrote this:

"I ain't saying you guys will like this but I just bought a cd that my dad used to play a lot at home - Boz Scaggs Silk Degrees and checking out the track listing it turns out that Steve Lukather and some of the toto boys are on it. Jump street is a great example of steve as a young teenager playing guitar. But the songs on this cd are so well written and played it is amazing. Hardly heavy rock - but a good piece of history nontheless."

I hate to break it to you guys (who're probably long gone anyway, but thought I'd set the record straight): Lukather didn't play on Silk Degrees.

Since I'm Peter Reilich (replaced Jai Winding, circa 1978, as Boz's tour piano player), I'm fairly familiar with all this. In fact, that's Louis Shelton playing most of the guitar stuff on Silk Degrees. If you're not familiar with Louis Shelton, you should be, as he's one of the greatest guitarists who ever lived, and a fine record producer and music arranger who worked many times alongside Jimmy Seals, at Seals & Crofts' Dawnbreaker Studio in the north end of San Fernando Valley.

In 1979, or maybe it was 1980, Louis and Jimmy hired me to play some keyboard overdubs at Dawnbreaker, some funky clavinet overdubs, don't remember what it was I played on, what artist, but I remember it was Jimmy and Louis behind the board, it was late at night, just the three of us, 'bout all I remember, hey you know, it was "the 70s" and I was in my early 20s, pretty spaced out kid at the time what with all the inebriants going round etc.. ha ha

Also around that time my band, The Strand, had a song composed by our guitarist Scott Shelly "Can't Say No" that our vocalist Rick "Moon" Calhoun sang the living **** out of and also played the drums on a demo we made of it, the very first demo The Strand ever made, and strangely enough, Mike Landau played guitar on it, which was also one of the reasons the recording cooks: Landau's a very funky, rhythm guitarist & he and Moon LOCKED. That demo needs to be found and released, I swear to god! friggin awesome track that was. In fact, it was so good that Jimmy Seals heard it and just HAD to do it, I think there was some talk about him wanting to buy it etc. Anyway, the song had more of an RnB groove on it, not rock, and since The Strand was trying to be heavier sounding, we weren't going to include this song in our repertoire.

Like I say, Jimmy Seals heard it and wanted to record it with whatever it was he was doing, maybe Seals & Crofts, maybe something else, can't remember. But the result was all of us in The Strand going up to Dawnbreaker and re-cutting this tune for Jimmy. But the thing was, without Moon (bless his heart) singing and playing funky drums on it the way this Tulsa boy did and nobody else could, the tune just lied there. Really, that tune was a Moon Calhoun classic. Moon was a very funky drummer, which explains his involvement with the Gap Band and with Chaka Khan, with whom he was also in a romantic relationship at one point. Moon and me and Marci Levy (the voice singing the harmony on Eric Clapton's "Lay Down Sally" – album "Tulsa Time" -Marci's also from Tulsa, see the connection?) used to play together at the old nightclub The Corral up in Topanga Canyon. Great funk was had those nights, indeed.

This issue of Moon being largely an RnB musician explains a lot of why The Strand didn't take off: Moon was our lead singer, but I was pushing the band to be heavier rock. If you've ever heard our one lp release you see what I mean. I was into Van Halen at the time (I know it's weird for a keyboardist, but really that's becuse I had many fond memories of playing in Gary Wright during the Frampton Comes Alive tours 1975-77, and I was trying to make The Strand into an arena rock band). Meanwhile, our leader Scott Shelly was into The Cars, The Police and the New Wave, which was taking off right then. So, there were clashes in artistic taste and the band broke up in 1981 when I took a tour gig with Foreigner. Boy, was Scott mad at me for doing that!

I should make a point here of saying that Scott Shelly is also a great guitarist and songwriter. He lives in Australia, last I heard. Anyway, I think that if we'd gone with our lead singer's strongpoint, his real talent which was RnB, we would probably have become famous. The undeniable quality of the demo of "Can't Say No" was proof of how it would have made a lot of sense to take that musical direction. However, the music biz was really weird at that time, going through a lot of changes. I usually just blame it all on the New Wave, which I never really liked much, especially its politics. I mean, a band named The Police with a leader named Sting? No thanks. (By the way, no matter what he claims, Sting is NOT a jazz musician. Give me a break.)

The Strand found itself in the same image-dilemma that Toto struggled with. One day, for example, The Strand showcased at Leeds Instrument Rentals, and Prince also showcased that week. Needless to say, the management company in question picked up and promoted Prince while we got left behind, which actually made sense: that's what was happening in the biz: the beginning of the MTV era. You know, Prince could DANCE, while we were just boring Toto-like musicians, visually speaking. This is the same thing for Toto, as they struggled for years trying to be heavier rock than they were really cut out for. The reason? Toto was Paich's baby, and Paich wanted to be a rock star, tired of being a session cat. But many of the press' critiques of Toto were based on how boring they looked on stage, for a band trying to do pop-rock. The Eagles were boring on stage, but then the Eagles were deliberately dressed down, no need for glam there. Toto would get caught in the middle of that crap. Jeff Porcaro would have ongoing wars with the press over that **** etc..

Anyway, the proof is in the song that became their biggest smash "Rosanna" which was, again, more RnB than heavy rock. The lesson for people to learn there is for bands to go with their talent, not with their "idea" of what they think they want to play, or are good at. You know it's like the old adage: You ain't a writer until somebody says you're a writer. I don't mean to take away the importance of musicians' individuality or personal vision, but I do think it's important to listen up to what people are saying about you, to how you appear from the listeners' and crowd's viewpoint.

Getting back to Louis Shelton and "Silk Degrees," I would have to say that what I love most about "Silk Degrees" is Shelton's guitar stuff. Just really friggin tasteful guitar stuff on that record. (I know, I'm weird, I've always been a wannabe guitarist.) But I mean, this guy was a real original, the kind of musician who hears riffs out of the top of his head that become classics. A real producer's player, like Leon Russell and George Martin, guys that could take little ditty tunes and turn them into anthems by way of playing riffs that are very catchy, hooky. You know, like you get to the session and you see see 8 bars of Emaj on the chart, so what do you play? Of course you improvise, play what comes to your head. But some cats are just naturals when it comes to recording pop music, and they make a tune come alive, become a pop hit simply by naturally coming up with great, hooky riffs.

That issue was a big deal back then, too. Publishing problems arose between Paich and Boz over who should be the songwriter, since for example, the friggin groove on "Lowdown" is really what makes that tune a hit, not Boz scatting crap over the top. But publishing law states that lyric and melody are the songwriter and therefore whoever wrote lyric and sang melody collects all the money. You know how it is, even today songwriters are driving in Mazerati's while the bass player's struggling to make his rent because all he got was scale on the session. Big deal that was, and Jeff Porcaro used to get in the thick of all that, screaming at record company execs and ****. A great pioneer and voice for the little guy session musicians, Jeff was, and a great loss as a rebellious voice on behalf of musicians when he died.

Back to Luke, let me see if I can give you a chronology, which will only be based on what I remember of that time, and might be a bit sketchy because I didn't know Luke as well as I knew Jeff and Steve P. and Landau etc. I mean I know him, just saw him a few weeks ago over at Steve Porcaro's home studio. But when I was going to Grant High I didn't know him that well. Here's what I remember:

First of all, Luke and Steve Porcaro and Mike Landau and Dean Cortez and John Pierce and Andy Leeds and me are all the same age, all graduated in 1975. (Actually, I dropped out of high school, but that's a different story.) Point is, we all hung as teens, be it at the Porcaro house's garage/studio or wherever we were partying at that time etc. It was homecoming dance at Grant 1972 (10th grade) that was Steve Porcaro's Still Life band, the one Luke talks about. I was away at Interlochen Arts Academy, Michigan that year. Jeff Porcaro had a band called Homestead a few years earlier. Jeff and David Paich and Tom Scott and Andy Leeds' older brother were all 3-4 years older than us, so when they left high school, we came in. What few know about is that I also had a band called Homestead, which played Grant's homecoming in 1974 (12th grade).

Steve P. and Luke and Landau's Still Life may have been into Steely Dan some, but my Homestead the 2nd band played my favorite music, which was at that time: Tower of Power. Man, was I into them. We had the five horns exactly like them, and I would sit for hours and copy horn arrangements off those records and part them out for my five horn players. We also did a lot of Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, Cold Blood, Herbie Hancock, L.A. Express, you know, Jazz-Funk-Pop fusion.

My bassist Dean Cortez introduced me to L.A. Express guitarist Robben Ford, and that was the first time I was ever star-struck. I say this because this is a guitarist's forum: >>Go And Study Robben Ford<< - one of the finest blues-rock guitarists who ever lived. I mean, this guy was ZEN. Listen to L.A. Express album "Tom Cat." If you thought Larry Carlton was the king of Jazz-Pop fusion ala Steely Dan, Tom Scott etc., you obviously haven't been initated to Robben Ford. This guy was the bomb. Like Carlton chops-wise and melodic solos-wise, but heavier, more rockin blues, with edge. Kinda like Mahavishnu, is about the best comparison I can think of. Santana comes to mind, too. You know, that harder-edged, more raw sound than Luke and Carlton got. Has something to do with Mesa Boogie and probably the guitar used, but now I'm in over my head, as I'm a keyboardist, not a guitarist.

Anyway, I remember Steve P. frowning when I told him we were gonna call ouselves Homestead, after Jeff's band. He thought we should have named the band something more original, but Steve was always criticizing me for **** like that. Actually, it wasn't even my idea to name it that. I was one of these apathetic hippie types who didn't give much of a crap what a band's name was. Somebody else in my band suggested we name it the same as Jeff's Homestead, and I just went along.

Anyway, I never saw Steve's Still Life band because I never really went to Grant much. This was because, first of all, I lived across the street from Grant (a little triplex apartment that my piano teacher aunt rented at 13000 Burbank Blvd – I was orphaned at age 7 and raised by my aunt). And I hated school. So in 11th & 12th grades the only class I went to was marching band (I'm also a drummer), which was 1st period, after which I would walk across the street back home and curl up with a joint, the Gumby show on tv and whoever else wanted to get high those mornings would cut school and join me, usually this sax player I hung with named Alan Goldberg and my girlfriend Cindy. And second of all, late '73 me and Cindy ran away from home and joined a commune out in Topanga Canyon, so I wasn't around the Grant scene during Steve's Still Life scene. I was OUT THERE! Taking peyote and riding horses and tripping on waterfalls, you know, like what a teenager should be doing. ha ha

I came back in '74, returned to the same routine of only going to marching band and cutting the rest of the day (the school administration eventually kicked me out, but I got away with it during the first semester of each of those years) and then it was my turn to put together a homecoming band because Steve Porcaro was on this furlough program (get your diploma at home) and he was sick of the band crap. Steve was doing a lot of woodshedding and taking advanced piano study etc., so he was down on rock bands at that time. In fact, I remember that Paich had to woo him into joining Toto because Steve didn't want to play in a rock band.

The same thing for me and Landau: didn't really know him well during high school days. The reason Luke and Landau and Bea (Pierce) hung so much was because they lived around the corner from each other, near Woodbridge Park in Studio City. The Williams (famous film composer John Williams) also lived near Woodbridge Park, and his sons were part of that gang too, which accounts for why Joe eventually became vocalist for Toto. As I said, I lived in Van Nuys across from Grant during high school daze, though before that I lived in that old craftsman house that's still there on the northwest corner of Magnolia and Fulton in Sherman Oaks. Steve Porcaro took piano lessons from my aunt in that house in exchange for me taking drum lessons from Joe Porcaro. The Porcaros most famous house was the one in Sherman Oaks on Valleyheart, but when they first moved to L.A., the Porcaros lived on Milbank near Studio City park. Riverside Drive was the elementary school Steve Porcaro and me went to. I think I was 9 years old when I first met Steve.

Another interesting thing about Mike Landau is that he played for me in 1977 on the Keane Bros tour. I got the gig as band leader-arranger, through David Foster, who had produced their album on 20th Century Fox Records. (I knew David from playing with him on Gary Wright's album "The Light of Smiles") I think this was Mike's first, or one of his first road gigs. And Dean Cortez played bass on that tour. The Keane Bros. were a child family-variety act, like the Osmonds, drummer John was 10 years old and vocalist Tom was 11 years old, and we played venues like Disneyland Tommorrowland stage and lots of state fairs around the country opening for shows such as Red Skelton and John Davidson, very family, and they had a short lived CBS series and we also performed on the Tonight Show. That Christmas we were on the road back east when I received a call from Jeff Porcaro telling me that Boz was looking for players and asking if I wanted to do it and could I put together a rhythm section. So I said "Sure, let's use Dean and Mike" and the rest is history.

(continued next post below)

[joe_schmoe]

Now, the thing to know about these days 1973-75 is that while Luke and Steve P. and the rest of us were still mere school lads, Paich and Jeff P. were out of school and already top level session musicians. The most significant part of that is how David Paich shined in his work on Seals & Crofts records. This is a very important aspect of this closet of rock music history, so listen up.

Yes, Jeff P. was always wishing he could play in Steely Dan, his favorite band. I never knew Luke was so into Steely Dan back then until I read that interview that's all over the web, you know the one. What everyone was far more familiar with at the time, was Jeff's notorious climb into Donald Fagan's world, which included a lot of drugs of course, but there were musical differences. Fagan was very touchy about L.A. session cats and of course extremely picky about who would play drums on Steely Dan recordings. Jeff (and coke buddy Denny Dias) really had to convince Fagan to go in the direction that Katy Lied eventually went, bringing in Derringer etc. All that was very L.A. and Fagan wasn't an L.A. cat, he was New Yorker through & through. I don't have to explain the rivalries that went on between those two disparate music cultures. The recording of "Chain Reaction," with the Derringer solo and Paich playing elec. piano, that was really the epitome of Jeff's whole crusade into the Steely Dan world. What Jeff wanted, Jeff eventually got, a very strong-willed character, to say the least, as everyone knows ad nauseum.

Far more significant (than Jeff Porcaro or Steve Lukather) to the Silk Degrees story is the David Paich story. Don't forget, Toto was Paich's band, not Luke's. In fact, when Steve P. told me that Paich was impressed with Lukather's playing and was going to have him be Toto's guitarist, the news was a bit strange because none of us thought of Lukather as much more than a shredder type of player. I remember coming back from the road on the Frampton tours and going over to Luke's house (the family house across the street from the park) because Steve P. called me up and said, "Man, you gotta come over and hear how good Lukather is playing now. He's been taking lessons and his playing and sightreading has really improved."

Well, I didn't know Luke that well and it didn't really mean much to me. I didn't really know Landau that well either, but I had jammed with him a couple of times after his mom and him moved to Santa Monica, and I knew he was more musically advanced, in Jazz terms, than Lukather. I always thought Luke was like a shredder type of player, learned all the Zep stuff by heart, you know, not so much a Jazzer and sightreader etc. which is more important to being a session musician, and it seemed, would be important to playing in a band headed by David Paich. But you know, Paich was looking for a guitarist who wasn't so much seen as a session cat, someone who could add a rock edge to Toto. So that's really why Luke ended up being Toto's guitarist instead of Louis Shelton or Mike Landau etc. Actually, I thought David would have used Derringer or somebody like that if he wanted an edgy player. But Luke was young, unknown and you know, had that about-to-be-a-phenom personality, a pretty outgoing guy.

So Paich and Jeff were playing in Seals & Crofts, that's what I remember being the big deal back in 1973-74. Everybody loved Seals & Crofts what with "Summer Breeze" and the popularity of Folk-Rock fusion music at that time: America, Bread, Poco, Elton, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell playing with Tom Scott, Tom Scott playing for Carol King etc., that's where all that came together. And Paich, well he was a friggin natural in Seals & Crofts. I would go so far as to say that Seals & Crofts' successful foray into pop was largely due to their relationship with David Paich, Louis Shelton, David Hungate and Jeff Porcaro, four names that literally define the "Silk Degrees" album and Boz Scaggs' successful foray from subcult known Texan-gone-San Francisco hippie-blues-singer and Steve Miller friend to mega disco-pop superstar.

What cannot be overstated about this, is Paich's songwriting-arranging talent, including the use of his father Marty Paich's string arrangements on Seals & Crofts hits such as "We May Never Pass This Way Again." The David Paich songwriting-arranging-keyboard playing signature is all over Seals & Crofts most popular records. Yet, who ever mentions this important fact? Look at Seals & Crofts "Greatest Hits" album. It's like looking at David Paich's freshman thesis, if such a thing existed for junior pop-music songwriters. Yet, you can read dozens of reviews of this music at Amazon, for instance, and rarely find David's name mentioned. That is a major crime of misinformation.

When I Meet Then, Hummingbird, Diamond Girl, Castles In The Sand, East Of Ginger Trees, I'll Play For You, Ruby Jean And Billie Lee, King Of Nothing, Summer Breeze, We May Never Pass… all of these songs are great examples of the kind of excellent music product that can be created when you combine the folk-rock songwriting genius of Jimmy Seals with the naturally talented pop-music arrangements and production of David Paich and Louis Shelton. Those musicians represent the pinnacle of Folk-Rock, what subtle heights of integrity and pure, often quite complex musical stratospheres that could ever have been attained in this genre. In short, Folk-Rock never would, and probably never could have gotten any better than those songs and the exquisite production and arranging values achieved on the recorded masters of those hits.

So, it's really not much of a surprise that these same cats were the prefered choice of upcomer, new to L.A., Boz Scaggs. And boy, what a correct choice that was. But, having toured with Boz all over the world myself, it doesn't surprise me because Boz was always a shrewd player in the music biz. Look at the list of hits on "Silk Degrees" and once again we find the David Paich/Louis Shelton signature, only this time not in Folk-Rock, but in Disco-Rock, you know, Funk-RnB with smoothed out production, which is essentially what dance music had become by the mid-70s when this album was recorded. Indeed, this album represented the cutting-edge of that Disco style, at that time. Pop-music artists who followed that path would be Donna Summers, KC & the Sunshine Band, Earth Wind & Fire and the hordes of one-shot wonders hitting the big time in the disco genre of the mid to late-70s.

So, that's not Luke on Jump Street. Uh, uh. Nope. Louis Shelton. Luke played on tour for Boz after "Silk Degrees" was released. I was touring with Gary Wright during that time, so I never had a chance to see that tour band. The first time I saw Toto was when they played at the Roxy in 1977. The only time I ever saw Luke on stage with Boz was when he joined us on those shows we did at Universal Amphitheater when everybody showed up for a big jam-all on stage, I think there were like 6 guitarists on stage that night, ha ha, including Landau and Luke and Shelly.

This is what the lineup was for Boz when I toured with him 1978-79: me on piano, Jeff Porcaro played drums for the first west coast leg in '78, replaced by a drummer whose name I can't remember but who everyone called "kitty" --who was replaced by Jeff P.'s old buddy Kelly Shanahan (who became The Strand's drummer and today remains a close friend of mine and lives around the corner here in North Hollywood) Kelly's dad was, like Joe Porcaro, a session drummer from that generation and played on many films including "The Music Man" – Scott Shelly on synthesizers (also a guitarist and founding leader of The Strand) – Mike Landau on guitar – Lenny Castro on percussion – Dean Cortez on bass: bassist in The Strand and also remains a good friend who now lives in Big Bear, Dean's playing is better than ever today, really he's just friggin awesome these days. Hear us play with Dean's little brother, drummer Jody Cortez on a session we played a few months ago at Westlake Studio, L.A. with engineer Tony Papa (co-produces Weird Al Yankovich) for upcoming 16 year old Country-Rock artist Kristi Clanton: http://www.kristiclanton.com – note: as of this writing, these demos are still rough and Kristi's vocal tracks will be redone and improved --

Anyway, sorry about the book-long post. But as you can tell, I don't take the subject of my old friends from Toto lightly, especially when it comes to this particular subject. And hopefully, this info might interest anyone who decides to take a jaunt down around this corner of rock-n-roll history.

[Goport]

ouch!!!!! You know I realised this a few months after I made this post. Basically I re-purchased this lp for my father and made a mp3 rip for myself (seems fair as we both have it on vinyl). the credits that I checked were online were incorrect. IIRC the timeline was actually 1977 for scaggs on Down 2 Then Left.

Sorry for any confusion Peter

[joe_schmoe]

Originally Posted by Goport

ouch!!!!! You know I realised this a few months after I made this post. Basically I re-purchased this lp for my father and made a mp3 rip for myself (seems fair as we both have it on vinyl). the credits that I checked were online were incorrect. IIRC the timeline was actually 1977 for scaggs on Down 2 Then Left.

Sorry for any confusion Peter

no worries Goport - yeah, Luke did play on D2TL, by then he was the famous rock idol we all know & love, thanks to his involvement with Toto and the Boz Scaggs concert tours that he participated in--- thanks for everyone's groovy responses to my story, nice to hear a kind word regarding this old and mostly forgotten slice of rock history --- and shall we wish Kristi Clanton the best of luck on her budding career.........

Cheers!

Pete Reilich