The Eli Radish Band was one of the few Ohio groups to record for major labels, and “make it” nationally. In fact, several members of this group went on to considerable success, and continue in the music and entertainment industry today :
After Radish, Danny Sheridan began producing radio spots for WMMS, then recordings for mid-west favorites like Pat Dailey, and Deadly Earnest (on Monkee Michael Nesmith’s Pacific Arts label). Later relocating to Los Angeles, his “astute management” (US magazine, Sept '83), launched the career of original MTV VJ Nina Blackwood. He began composing and/or producing music for TV/Film projects like “CHiPs”; “FAME”; “Roseanne” and the 1999 2Pac / Jim Belushi film "Gang Related". He has toured extensively, eventually leading his own “Bandaloo Doctors”, (featuring his wife Bonnie Bramlett; Aerosmith’s Jimmy Crespo; and former CSN&Y drummer Dallas Taylor) as opening act for Ringo Starr’s All-Starrs. Danny’s homecoming to Cleveland’s Blossom Music Center on their 1992 tour was an event chronicled by “Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous”. He is a consultant to the venerable SWR Sound Co., and has designed their new Workingman’s™ Bass. He is writing a book on bass, and artists as diverse as the soulful Bramlett, to David Crosby, to former Eli Radish bandmate, David Allan Coe, have recorded his songs.
The Eli Radish Band was also Coe’s jumping off point for a major Nashville based solo career. After several years in the band, DAC shook up the south with the “Outlaw” attitude that permeates his music to this day. Critic Andre Buquet wrote: “Undoubtedly, Coe is one of the most influential factors of country music in the past fifteen years ... (he) supplied a controversial hit in the form of the eloquent “Would You Lay With Me”, for a then teen-aged Tanya Tucker, and the ultimate anti-labor tune, “Take This Job And Shove It”. He has racked up a string of very big hits ... like the song every jukebox must have, “You Never Even Call Me By My Name”; “Willie, Waylon, And Me”; “Longhaired Redneck”; and 1983’s haunting number one single, “The Ride”.
But it all began with The Eli Radish Band...
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Still in his mid-teens, Danny Sheridan was under contract to Phillips, a Mercury Records imprint, when he decided to leave his hard rock-blues trio, Spontaneous Corruption. His interests in the loud psychedelia of the day were balanced with an equal affinity for rural blues, country, and bluegrass. The S.C. power trio format, with two former members of “Time Won’t Let Me” hitmeisters The Outsiders, (Kenny Hamlin and G.G. Gregg) had become limiting. Gregg’s playing career soon segued into many years of success as a booking agent, and Hamlin went on to become a major record executive at several labels before becoming president of Asylum Nashville in the mid 90s.
When Danny started skipping school to hang with the “fringe element” at the Hell Angel’s favorite Adele’s Bar, the adjacent Coffeehouse, and legendary folk club Farrager’s Backroom, he would often sit in with older players, like blues-man Mr. Stress, or Robert Jr. Lockwood, and demonstrated a prowess on electric bass well beyond his years.
Guitarist Tom Foster, known by his street name “The Foss”, was playing dances with his high school buddies, on the same N.E. Ohio teen circuit that The James Gang, and later Eric Carmen and The Raspberries were beginning to milk. But The Foss had a wilder edge to his playing style and his personality, so would steal away to play in the downtown underground scene. It was at Cleveland’s The Coffeehouse that Danny and Foss first jammed, backing poet/vocalist Dirty Tom Hendrickson in a short lived musical experiment. But when Danny needed a radical thinking guitarist for his new musical vision, he called Foss.
With that first phone call Foss agreed to start a band, and brought vocalist Ken Frak, known as The Reverend, to rehearsal. When drummer Skip Towne passed his audition, a five-year party began. The boys started writing what they assumed would be the first album, began booking shows at local clubs and colleges, and imprinted the notion on one another that “party” and “music” were inseparable ...
Danny and Skip spent hours, then weeks, attempting to put a rock groove under their “country-blues” songs, blending traditional C&W with rock’n’roll roots. It seems a simple task now, but it was groundbreaking at the time. With the psychedelic 60’s over, the group had no model to work from. When they achieved the morph, they called it “Country-Acid”, truly an ill-fated moniker.
James Gang drummer Jimi Fox introduced Radish to an astounding classical violinist, San Francisco’s Evinka Karasik. It is unclear at what moment she actually joined the band, but she did. She became their “Little Eva”, and the guys became her “Animals”. To lose some of her symphonic polish, Danny recalls teaching her to drag the bow across the strings, “more like sawing”. He also remembers a moment backstage at a Who/Radish concert, when her father Moña, (then first chair viola in the San Francisco Symphony) saw her 200 year old instrument covered with silver “roadie tape” to hold a contact microphone over an f hole. Moña nearly made her quit the band.
But Eva stayed, and her fluid improvising encouraged long, classically structured jams. During gospel flavored refrains, the Rev began preaching, “Don’t send your money to the Lord, send it to me, the Reverend Will Cain”, then gave out his address and phone number while swilling whiskey, and spiting tobacco. These tongue-in cheek sermons lasted until the crowd became as frenzied as any Holy Roller revival audience.
Word of this radical country/hippie/biker/rock band had reached Los Angeles. Danny’s former producer, Roger Karshner, called to see if they would make an album for Capitol Records. Danny said sure. The deal was made during that phone call, and within weeks the band was living at the Hollywood Hawaiian Apartments, showing both the LA groupies and fellow apartment residents Savoy Brown what a real party was like.
Since the band was already heavily involved with the anti-war movement, it was decided that the debut album would consist of horrible C&W versions of serious old war songs. If the songs became too polished at their S.I.R. rehearsals, the boys would loosen it up later at Sunset Sound Studios. They made Eva sing a track, and although she had never vocalized before, they used her first take. The Rev. did one entire vocal symbolically singing through his hat! The band even asked Capitol if they could borrow a Beatles track, Yellow Submarine, to play under Radish’s version of The Ballad Of The Green Berets. Radish was sharing the recording studio with The Beatles, and heard playbacks of the Liverpool stars' previous day’s progress. The Beatles wouldn’t part with their track. Radish wasn’t taking this war song recording very seriously, but no one else seemed to get the joke.
Some LA encounters proved musically fruitful however. One day Foss’ pedal steel licks wafted down the rehearsal hall corridor, and into another group’s room. They also had a pedal steel! This was very unusual in California, and the two players rushed to meet, and swap techniques. The other player was Rusty Young, his group was called Poco, and they too were preparing a first album. Influences were definitely exchanged. Later, Foss spent a decade and a half playing out of Austin, TX, touring with some of the finest groups from there.
Capitol Records released the Eli Radish Band’s “I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier” LP just in time for a new, and violent wave of nationwide anti-war protests. The band soon made the nightly newscasts spearheading “the revolution”. They performed at SDS rallies, campus protests, and even some Cesar Chavez or Black Panther fund raisers. They played on the Kent State campus the night of the shootings, to raise bail money for the students still in jail. Danny himself made front-page headlines, “Rock Stars Arrested”, for allegedly inciting to riot. Soon the band became darlings of the new political mainstream, and performed benefits for senators, governors, and even presidential hopeful George McGovern.
With their protest statement complete, The Eli Radish Band started writing the next album. This was a serious effort, a total departure. But their label didn’t understand the change, and Radish asked to get out of their contract. Unfortunately no one yet suggested calling their music “country-rock”, a marketing tactic that worked well for so many groups in this genre like The Flying Burritos, and later the Eagles, etc.
At a late night poker game among band members and crew, the Rev. accused someone of cheating. Guns were drawn, and after he ran his friends out that night, the Rev. never performed with Radish again. College folk circuit singer Rick “Muskrat” Kennedy replaced him. Muskrat added additional songwriting prowess to the group’s already admired catalog, and a brooding sex appeal.
The Eli Radish Band put on a powerful live show, but felt that they never put their best efforts on record. In spite of constant live dates, disillusionment set in. Foss took a hiatus, and was temporarily replaced by Gary Dixon. Radish had picked up tour dates with The Who and The Doors. They played live with a list of the era’s finest groups, from Asleep At The Wheel, Commander Cody, Mountain, and Bob Segar, to Country Joe, Grand Funk, and The Kinks, but a hit record still eluded them. Eva moved back to San Francisco where she took a second chair violin position with the symphony. Dixon, later the co-founder (with Cramps’ tour bassist Fur Dixon), of LA’s cow-punk “Hollywood Hillbillys”, still performs solo around Austin.
Shortly after his parole from prison, David Allan Coe released the first of his 43 records, “Penitentiary Blues”. Late one night Coe sashayed into an Akron rock club looking for the now notorious Eli Radish Band. He joined them on stage for a blistering set of country standards, and this new version of the group was booked into a series of college shows. Says Danny, “David would open with an acoustic set of his own tunes, then the original Radish Band would do an hour or so of ours, but instead of an encore, we brought David out with us to close with an hour of hard country. And we were playing this stuff to a biker-cowboy-hippie audience!” (Hence Coe’s composition, “Longhaired Redneck”).
In Coe’s own words, from Country Music Magazine in 1985, “We had hair down to our waist, and we were playing country music before it was fashionable ... We were playing country and rock’n’roll at the same time, and that was long before the Byrds or any of those people came along (and did it)”.
This new band played together for several years. They moved to Nashville, shared a house with another Tennessee rock band, and recorded a concert album for (now) Sun Records at the famous Broadway Barn. It wasn’t long before they began a studio album. They recorded it without session players, no small feat in the Nashville studio system of the 1970’s. Unfortunately, management disputes put a stop to both record projects, which landed in the can, and Radish left to pursue a pending RCA deal in New York.
The band’s New York City sessions lacked a certain spark, but Pure Prairie League producer Bob Ringe heard them, and suggested that they check out PPL’s female vocalists, Starr Smith, and her sidekick Barbara. At first meeting the rowdy pair began working with Radish as backup singers. It became apparent that Starr was a truly exceptional singer, and when Muskrat’s persona became to wild for even this mob of desperados, Starr replaced him up front. The vivacious Barbara left to pursue a career as a stripper, and soon headlined the national burlesque circuit as Dyna White Mead. Muskrat returned to the Cleveland clubs with several Radish-style groups before moving to Vail, CO. where he recorded with his own “Airboure”. Since the early 90’s he has performed solo acoustic shows at East Coast resorts.
Foss had rejoined before those departures, and soon the band started a new recording at Motion Picture Sound Studios. Starr played basic piano parts while composing her soulful songs, but the tapes went unfinished. Foss left again, and was replaced briefly by Jonathon K. Bendis, whom Radish friend Joe Walsh had recommended to Danny. Only one live recording of his work with Radish, (cut at The Smiling Dog Saloon), and a Los Angeles Screen Gems Music tape survives. Bendis and Sheridan were later tapped to record Chris Hillman’s first solo effort at Boulder’s Caribou Studios, but Hillman’s personal and marital troubles delayed the project so long that the pair decided to return to Ohio. In the 80s, through his connections with Danny’s management client Nina Blackwood, Bendis was introduced to the MTV brass, and became a well respected rockumentary producer. He eventually landed one of MTV’s early comedy shows, “The State”, and currently produces the very classy TV interview show “Musicians”.
Jonah Koslen became the last member of Eli Radish. Although plucked from virtual obscurity, Jonah displayed a well developed, if yet untried, songwriting maturity. He also excelled at lead vocals. Combined with Starr’s sweet gospel ability, Radish now had a world-class singing twosome, equal to any vocal duo recording so far, from Delaney and Bonnie to Jefferson Starship. The group concealed themselves in the vast basement of manager Roger Abramson’s Shaker Heights mansion. When they emerged in Abramson's long black limo to do several nights of unannounced “woodshed” shows at The Viking Saloon near CSU, their material was fresh and well honed. In fact, the new music was such a departure from the rough-hewn country rock that The Eli Radish Band themselves coined, that Mr. Abramson convinced them to rename the group. They would play one fateful concert as “Snakeyes”. The following weekend would be their debut, opening a show for Commander Cody, and it was well attended by New York A&R personnel. The concert was fabulous, and the first record offer came backstage from an upstart label called Arista. But the cash advance didn’t seem high enough, and knowing that many offers would be coming in over the next week, the group decided to wait it out.
Meanwhile, a drunken “thank you” show was arranged for the Cleveland fans that had supported the band for so long. The band celebrated excessively, and gave a raucous performance. Starr nearly toppled from her piano several times. A mild mannered vegetarian, Jonah was appalled. The next day he called a band meeting to announce he was quitting music altogether. The band was too wild for him, and he was moving to Colorado to meditate on a mountaintop. Starr swung at his jaw, trying to knock him out, and had to be held back from wrestling him to the ground. Jonah disappeared for several years, eventually resurfacing as a founding member, and guiding force of the very popular and durable Michael Stanley Band.
The remaining Radish Band members moved first to Boston, then to Los Angeles, recording and renaming the group again. Danny toured on and off with DAC, finally leaving due to record producing commitments. Eventually actress Amy Madigan replaced Starr Smith, and stayed just long enough to get a singles deal offer from Polygram, and to tape a music video before marrying fellow actor Ed Harris.
Over a decade after their last contact, Danny was working on a soundtrack for the MGM TV show “FAME”, and called Jonah to his LA studio to help. These sessions led to Danny and Jonah co-founding “Bandaloo Doctors” with Bonnie Bramlett, and Aerosmith guitar hero Jimmy Crespo. Their first band photo soon appeared in Rolling Stone, Danny’s wife Bonnie’s appeared quite controversially in The Star, while People Magazine and TV’s “Lifestyles Of The Rich & Famous” documented the married member’s home-life in 1992. That group, sans Jonah, continued to widespread touring and television success. In fact, under Danny’s management Bramlett, calling herself Bonnie Sheridan, enjoyed two season’s on ABC’s hit sitcom “Roseanne” wherein Danny portrayed “Hank”, David Crosby’s bass player, and wrote music for the show.
Still based in Los Angeles, by the late 90s Danny was once again managing Nina Blackwood and Norway’s hot new techno group, dePresleys. He continues to write, record and produce for a number of respected artists, and has acted in his first motion picture opposite star Pauly Shore.
The Foss left Austin for Cleveland to attend to an illness in his family, and performs constantly in that area and on the road, while drummer Skip Towne is reported to be spinning turntables as a DJ in the Bay area.
Jonah performs to thousands at Michael Stanley reunion concerts, is releasing certain back catalog recordings, and is expected to debut a new version of his popular group Breathless.
David Allan Coe continues to perform over 250 tour dates per year, with an entourage of limousines and buses that often includes his own rolling museum. With several films and books under his rhinestone belt, his rabid fan base supports two major web sites, and David’s team successfully markets everything from DAC whisky to stage memorabilia.
Several of Radish’s road crew died in the line of duty, while other former members and crew are missing in action.
Please email home.
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Prepared by various writers over the last 25 years.
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Exerpts from the book "Rock'N'Roll and the ..." (see Amazon.com)
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By Deanna Adams
How to describe this band's music? With country overtones fused with blues, and rock, that was a good question. Members Tom “The Foss” Foster (guitar and pedal steel), Danny Sheridan (bass), Skip Heil (drums, a.k.a. "Skip Towne"), and "The Reverend” Ken Frak (their first lead singer) were making music that was hard to come by on the North Coast in the late ‘60s. The group played few covers (Neil Young's "Down By The River," and some country-western standards), preferring to focus on their original material, including a few songs by Ohio musician, Nanker Tillis, a relative of Mel Tillis. Their originality got them booked with groups like Country Joe and the Fish, The Doors, The Who, Grand Funk Railroad, and the Kinks. They were country-western. They were country-rock. They were country-blues. They were eclectic. They were different. They were the Eli Radish Band.
"I called up Foss one day and said, “Let's start an insane band," Sheridan recalls. "We struggled for months searching for ways to put rock grooves under country, or country blues, material ... blending traditional country & western with rock ‘n' roll roots. If we'd had the sense to call it "country rock," we would be legends now. "We chose to call it "country-acid," a takeoff from the psychedelic music of the era - truly an ill-fated moniker!"
Eli Radish quickly began making waves on the club circuit, and college campuses, because they offered a different style of music. The group was renowned for their protest songs and the anti-war sermons that singer Frak would inject into the songs, fitting right with the political activism of the day. As a result, Frak was nicknamed "The Rev”.
Because of their unique style, Roger Karshner [then national vice president / promotions manager for Capitol Records], who had taken The Outsiders to national fame, saw a fortuitous opportunity. “Karshner had all this sheet music from the first and second world wars," Foster recalls. "He said, “I want to put this to country music and have you maniacs play it. So we spent the next couple weeks learning all the songs off the sheet music, and put ‘em down and made the album. "It was an exciting time. Capital flew us out to California, putting us up in the Hollywood Hawaiian Apartments. They gave us a practice studio, which happened to be next to the room the guys from Poco were in. Then we signed on to Capitol Records. It was great. They gave us transportation, any instruments we wanted, amps. That was back when the Sunset Strip was really hot. So we'd practice all day, and hang out on the strip all night."
The appropriately titled, "I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier." contained ten famous war songs such as "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," and "Ballad Of The Green Berets," but done in a very different style. "We purposely performed offbeat and out of tune," Sheridan recalls. "We thought it was funny and helped put our anti-war message across. But the label just didn't get it." Despite limited radio airplay, the album caught on fast with the college circuit and ended up selling 50,000 copies nationwide. Through the years, Sheridan has heard that Boston station, WBCN, plays the LP every Fourth of July.
Local entrepreneur Dan Gray, founder and president of The Creative Studios of Daffy Dan's (a multi-million dollar company selling T-shirts, coffee mugs, and basic Cleveland-related memorabilia), served as roadie for the band. "Those were the most outrageous times," he says, referring to either the band, the decade, or as this author suspects, both. "One moment that stands out was when the band opened for the Doors at the Allen Theater. I remember Jim Morrison had locked himself in the dressing room, and it took this big, black guy to finally break down the door to get him to come out! And then there was the time Eli Radish toured with the Who. Because it was my job to get the trucks to the events early, and I was the last to leave after the bands played, I was known for scoping out places to go and party. Keith Moon, especially, was always seeking me out ‘cause he, of course, always wanted to party, and he knew I was the man to see."
In 1970 Eli Radish members welcomed a true country boy into their fold - David Allan Coe. "We met David when we were playing in a club in Akron," Sheridan recalls. "He was fresh out of prison and had just released his first album, “Penitentiary Blues.' He had heard about this crazy band, and after the gig, we got to talking. Not long after, David started opening for us on acoustic at some gigs in Kent, then joined us once we started playing (our show). We did some Nashville recordings and some shows. He played with us until ‘71 when he started writing his string of hits in Nashville." After the breakup of the Radish Band, Sheridan toured on and off with Coe until the early ‘80s.
The inclusion of ex-con Coe merely added to the group’s bad-boy image. “We had kind of a wild reputation,” Sheridan notes with a laugh, “which, of course, we promoted and encouraged!”
By 1971, this "radical/country/hippie/biker/rock band" had added women to their formation. Fiddler Eva Karasik, a San Francisco native attending the Cleveland Music Institute, was first to join. "I wanted her to lose some of her symphonic polish, " Sheridan recalls. "So I taught her to drag her bow across the strings, like a saw. It worked great. Her father, the first chair viola in the San Francisco Symphony, came to see us when we were opening for the Who. He saw her 200-year-old instrument covered with silver "roadie tape" to hold a contact microphone over an f-hole, and let's just say he was not amused!"
Soon after, Starr Smith (vocals and guitar), and Barbara Merrick (vocals) came along for the ride, after singing background vocals with the group, Pure Prairie League. In the midst of all the rock groups peppering the North Coast landscape, Radish’s unique musical style was a welcome change for many. Despite just one released recording, the group earned a large following beyond the Ohio border, taking their hard, country boogie sound, and war protests, from their hometown bars to various venues across the country.
Although this eccentric band broke up in 1973, their impact remains.
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