The Our Musical Memories series of articles is designed to remember and celebrate all the wonderful bands that have played in the Southern Kentucky region and become a part of its musical history and legacy. We are continuing our series with the band Sgt Arms as remembered by former members Bill Lloyd, David Surface and Marc Owens.

Ok, I have to ask, where did you get the name Sgt Arms?

David:  I got the first-hand goods on this one…Kyle Frederick and I were taking one of those long drives in the country (you know—the kind where you bring a lot of matches) when our car was suddenly and inexplicably attacked by a flock of screaming peacocks. (Really.) We both laughed so hard and so long that we were hyperventilating. Recognizing how seriously out of control we were, Kyle laughed, “We need a sergeant-at-arms” (someone to make us come to order, straighten up, rein us in, etc.) but Kyle was laughing so hard, it came out, “We need sergeant arms!” and instantly, I saw this great big, crazy comic book superhero appear in my head, and I knew it would be a great name for the band. (Bill did need some convincing—if he’d been attacked by peacocks too, he would have caved a lot quicker..!)

Bill: David Surface came up with the name. To my recollection, I wasn’t an easy sell on it… it didn’t grab me in the beginning. I grew to love it but I was hoping we’d go for some short-snappy-poppy name like so many bands had in that punk/new-wave era. The Sergeant At Arms is the guy who keeps control in a meeting…but Sgt. Arms brought to mind the image of The Hulk in army fatigues.

How and when did the band begin?

Bill: This is a long answer…I’m compelled to fill in the background because Sgt. Arms was really based around the songwriting of David Surface and me. That was the impetus for the band. There were several bands that David and played in the years prior to Sgt. Arms that led to Sgt. Arms being the kind of band it was. Sgt. Arms was an about-face or a reaction to the music we had been doing previously.

 David and I had met and became friends at Bowling Green High School but we worked more apart than together during high school days. He was in a band called Avian that was easily the most musically interesting band in the area. They were influenced by groups like Yes and Genesis and had their own pieces of music could last up to twenty minutes and went through all these musical and lyrical changes. Progressive rock was what everyone called it and they were good at it. I was playing in cover bands with Graham Hudspeth and other friends and doing solo acoustic gigs at pizza parlors and whatever I could get. I also was a part of a couple of original bands playing some of my songs (Hoodwink was a trio with Kyle Frederick and Kevin Lovelace and, later re-named Over, when Bobby Baldwin joined and the band became a quartet).

As I remember, David and I didn’t really start playing music together until we were out of high school and a year or so into college. We would sometimes play acoustic music together and even more often with David’s sister, who was a Kentucky Junior Miss and we would both back her when she would perform. We graduated high school in 1974 and met David Ray Walker and started playing acoustic music with him. The vibe was very much like the CSN&Y, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, John Prine kind of records we listened to at that time. Kim Richey was a WKU student I met at a basement club called The Catacombs and she wowed us with her voice, songs, everything… she joined and our acoustic unit became Southern Star. Kim was a great singer even then and is still making records and travelling all over the world. Southern Star was very much a songwriters band and acoustic/vocal harmony based. It was the first band any of us had been in that was on a record. We had a song on a radio station sponsored “local bands” compilation out of Louisville. WLRS used a song of David’s called “Fly to Regina” to kick off the side A of their 1976 compilation. David Dorris had recorded us in my apartment that was on the corner of 31-W By-Pass and 11th St. Southern Star made a few recordings during that era.

Southern Star sometimes played with drums and electric instrumentation as well. Randy Goodman (who had been in Avian with David and is now running a record label in Nashville) would drive back to BG from Nashville and play drums with us. He booked us at David Lipscomb College a couple of times as well. When Kim left, we met a talented guy from Louisville named Doug Carman who joined the group. He sang high, wrote cool songs and played good guitar. We kept using the name Southern Star, keeping that harmony driven half-acoustic/half-electric vibe. As ambition set in and the band started talking about touring and recording more… David Ray Walker opted out. Randy Goodman got busy and successful in Nashville so Kevin Lovelace joined us on drums and, in an effort to ditch the harmony and mellow vibe of Southern Star; we finally changed the name of the band to The Press.

 The Press (Kevin/Doug/David & Bill) recorded 3 sides in a studio somewhere close to Cumberland Falls…but we never made a record. Even though we didn’t call this band Sgt. Arms, this is the period that David and I started writing songs that had an edgier feel and drew on the punk explosion that seemed to be happening everywhere but Bowling Green. That band broke up and David Surface and I started recording with just the two of us. Ernest Raymer came to our aid, first as a recording engineer and later as a multi-instrumentalist in the live band.

Who were the members?

Bill: David Surface and myself were the only band members when we starting sending tapes around to record labels. Many of the tracks featured just the two of us. I started off playing drums in cover bands so I returned to the drums and David and I would both play guitar. David was always on bass. I must add that Kevin Lovelace and Kyle Frederick were on a couple of the recordings. The very first gig that Sgt. Arms played was a month after David and I returned from New York City in December of 1980. David and I had Kevin Lovelace and Kyle Frederick playing with us upstairs at the recently opened Mariah’s. Sgt. Arms started off almost like Steely Dan, two songwriters with no live band except when… they got a live band. We finally settled into being a live band and Marc Owens and Ernest Raymer rounded out the quartet and that’s the version on most the recordings and the band that played live the most. That line up was really a band. Both Marc and Ernest had played in a lot of other bands.

There were a lot of rock music styles in the early 1980s.  What made you decide to play New Wave?

Bill: We weren’t strictly a new-wave band…there were other elements in there but we were the first band in the BG area to embrace all that energy and unabashed pop style. Speaking to the bigger picture… it was an exciting time in pop culture and the music biz, almost like rock’n’roll was being reinvented and we had a chance to get in on it.

David: Like Bill says, although we were the closest thing BG had to “New Wave”, I don’t think we were a straight MTV “New Wave ” band (the skinny-tie wearing “chunk-chunk-chunk” eight-to-the-bar kind, although we did chunk-chunk-chunk sometimes (and I was guilty of the skinny-tie thing when we were called The Press). If you go for a “big”, “open” definition of “New Wave”, maybe we were. I mean that a lot of very different-sounding bands were sort of sailing onto the national scene under the “New Wave” flag.

Who were your musical inspirations?

Bill: I saw Bruce Springsteen twice in 1978 and those were life changing shows for me…I remember several LP records in the summer of 1978 as being special. We were still playing with Doug and Kevin in The Press but the records I played all that summer were Graham Parker’s Squeezing Out Sparks, Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker’s You’re Gonna’ Get It and Big Star’s Radio City (not from 78 but I discovered sort of after the fact). I remember being way into Lindsay Buckingham’s less commercialized Fleetwood Mac tracks from their album Tusk. Loved a lot of melodic new-wave pop from that era. I worked in a record store so I heard a lot of it. Elvis Costello. XTC. The Plimsouls. 20/20. Cheap Trick. Split Enz. The Cars. The Beatles were never/are never out of the equation either!

1980 Sgt. Arms performs Walking on the Roof

David: Everything Bill says, absolutely. Plus…Bill and I had quite a Rockpile buzz, as I recall; we ate up anything Mrs. Lowe and Edmunds cranked out separately or together, partly because we identified with their close two-part harmonies and liked the way they took that early rock and roll vibe and cranked it up to ten. Speaking of early rock & roll, that was also a huge part of the music Bill and I heard in our heads—Bill turned me on to Dave Clark Five (when we were 15!), and their monster snare drum attack was something we kept trying to replicate in the studio in songs like ‘Baby Never Gives an Inch’. I was obsessed with the Phil Spector sound and kept trying to bring that unreasonably massive echo-ey hugeness to our tracks. Personally, there was something about Big Star’s ‘Radio City’ album (which Bill turned me on to) that just freaking electrified me, that seemed to take the very best of the Beatles Revolver-era jangle and blend it just right with the kind of small-town American young romantic angst and wildness we were all living with every day.

Did you play covers? If, so can you name a few songs?

Bill: Sgt. Arms always played some cool covers. The Pezband’s “Close Your Eyes” was a then-contemporary and really obscure cover. We played some cool oldies like Crazy Elephant’s “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin” and The Easybeat’s “Friday On My Mind” and Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away”. We got adventurous playing “Open My Eyes” by The Nazz (Todd Rundgren’s old band), The Beatles “Strawberry Fields Forever” and The Pretender’s “Cuban Slide”. 

David: In addition we also covered:  The Who “I Can See For Miles”, Burt Bacharach “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself”, Elvis Costello “The Angels Want to Wear My Red Shoes”, Talking Heads “Life During Wartime”, The Music Explosion “Little Bit of Soul”, “Mystery Dance”, “Listen To Heart” by Tom Petty and The Ronettes “Baby I Love You”.

Did you write your own material? Who were the songwriters?

Bill: Sgt. Arms played mostly original material and all of it was written by David Surface and Bill Lloyd with the exception of “Caught In Traffic” which I co-wrote with David Dorris.

What sorts of gigs did you guys typically play?

Bill: Local bars/bistro’s that included live music. We played a place called Fontana’s that was a former Big Boy restaurant and they converted the basement into a music room. Patrons would slide down a slide to get down to the dance floor. We played The Brass A which was BG’s main music venue. It had been called The Caribou before that. Mostly, Sgt. Arms played at a place called Michael’s Pub. It was very small…people would be wall to wall. We opened for a St. Louis band called Head East at the local tobacco warehouse and even in Nashville a few times. Even before David and I had Ernest and Marc as bandmates, we twice threw together bands to play the annual Canoe Fest at Beech Bend so we could play our songs.

Marc: Local bars, a couple of Nashville gigs, (Cannery, and some other bar…) we opened for “Head East” locally.

Musicians always have stories. Can you tell us about one or two? particularly interesting gigs?

Bill: Sgt. Arms once played a Halloween show… must have been 1981 and we were all in costume. I think that’s the night I played electric guitar after climbing on top of a rickety bar table in a sumo-wrestlers outfit and crashed to the floor amongst the broken bottles. We took pride in our abandon!

During the time when Sgt. Arms was playing our original material, I was also playing in a side band with a singer/guitarist named Larry Dillard.  Our cover song duo/band played a lot around town. Somebody down at town hall in an office got an idea to create revenue for the city… they got the names and address’s of all the working musicians in town and sent letters demanding we all pay a musicians tax. These demands went ignored until the police started showing up, blue lights flashing, at the venues, wanting to see musician’s licenses. We didn’t have ours yet. While the blue lights flashed and the cops waited outside to ticket us, we played “I Fought the Law” and the law won. Even they thought it was kind of funny.

David: Definitely the one where Bill fell into the broken glass at the end of the last set. (He didn’t mention, though, that Marc and I dragged him offstage by his feet before we realized we were dragging him THROUGH the broken glass—when we rolled him over and checked him, there wasn’t a mark on him (proof, once again, that rock & roll can make you impervious to flesh wounds..!)

Did you ever go on tour?

Bill: Sgt. Arms never toured…just played regional shows.

I know you made a few records? Can you tell us about them?

Bill: Sgt. Arms music got recorded in a bunch of different places and there’s well over an album’s worth of material including the recordings that David and I made before we had a live band with Marc and Ernest. That final version of the band recorded a Morning Star Studios owned and operated by Bill Bitner and in Nashville at Polyfox studio. Marc Owens was in the process of making his basement a home studio (the original High Street Studio!) as the band was coming to an end but we did record a few songs down there as well. There are a few decent live recordings of the band as well. A lot of what would make up a comprehensive record would have to include recordings that were made by only David and myself.

Only four songs out of all our recordings actually made it to vinyl record at that time. We pressed up our own single of “Caught In Traffic” and “Walking On the Roof”. We also had two songs on a local compilation put together by David Dorris and WBGN radio. Those songs were “Baby Never Gives An Inch” and “Little White Rooms”.

Even at this late date, nearly 30 years later, there is a label that is talking to us about releasing a full album. One of our songs, “Walking On the Roof ” made the rounds on the internet after being featured on a CD compilation a few years back.

1980 Stg. Arms performs Radioland

I’ve seen your three videos on YouTube. Tell us about them.

Bill: Ernest Raymer was a great addition to the team because he not only had the most experience in recording but he was also into making videos, not only for us but also for other musicians in the area. The videos for “Caught In Traffic” and “Radioland” were done up at the television studio at WKU as student projects. Sorry I can’t remember whose projects they were. “Walking On the Roof” was done with Ernest’s involvement and with equipment at the local public access station. We didn’t have money so we did what we could with what knowledge we had. 

What eventually happened to the band?

Bill: In the summer of 1982, David moved back to NYC where he’s been ever since! I moved to Nashville that November. Marc and Ernest remained in Bowling Green.

Marc: David moved to NYC and we split up.

What would you like folks to remember about Sgt Arms?

Bill: I hear from people who still like that music we made so that’s about the best acknowledgement I can think of

What other local bands/artists influenced you?

Bill: There really wasn’t anyone in the area playing the kind of stuff we aspired to… the musical influence came from afar (the groups I mentioned earlier) but we always looked up to all the fine musicians in the area. I remember Sgt. Arms playing a Battle of the Bands at the WKU football stadium. Itchy Brother played as well. Both bands had very different styles but showed real promise in their original material. They later became The Kentucky Headhunters. Neither band won. It was the tuxedoed cover band that won the prize. 

What is each or you up to now?

Bill: David works in NY as a teacher and writer. I know he still writes songs because there hasn’t been a time in the last 30 years that we haven’t had a song on the back burner that we plan to finish up. I still write and play music and live in Nashville. Marc and Ernest are still musically active in BG.

David: After I came to New York, I played with Chris Kowanko and worked on his album with Lenny Kaye on the faders. After that, I played and recorded with my band, The Shiners who released two EP’s and broke up in ’98. Still writing and recording with Bill every chance I get—that’s the best.

Jack Montgomery is a librarian, author and associate professor at Western Kentucky University where he handles bookings for musical acts in University Libraries, Java City coffeehouse. Jack has also been a professional musician since 1969 and performs with a celtic quartet called Watersprite.