The Decatur Daily Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 39

DECATUR SUNDAY HERALD AND REVIEW Decatur, Illinois, Sunday, November 5, 1978 if y. music has coonie home to stay Coy Doug York, owner and manager of D's Country Lounge, packs 'em in whenever he books the Havana Ducks. The Ducks croon, whoop and kid with their audience, meanwhile playing fine original and popular country songs. Other local bands who draw their own audiences are Bill Whyte and Shortline Express, and UPS both mixing pop tunes with the country. Out in smaller towns, country performers like Russ Woolen of Shelby-ville, Bill Patterson of Tuscola and Buddy Hagen of Pana draw local fans with country sounds.

-S i fax lit- fe ft fMtt r- s-f The opry's house band, "The Sounds of Country," acts as a warmup act for most of the performers and sometimes works as a backup band. Performers including Freddy Fender, Marty Robbins and Ernest Tubb are scheduled to appear. Other oprys billed as family acts in Central Illinois reach much of the same audience. The Okaw Theatre Opry in Findlay, and the Illinois Country Opry in Petersburg are usually open weekends with big names and as well as other performers. "Everybody who plays dreams of being a star," York comments.

For most performers, it's a long road. "This is a rough area for bands to work," says Campbell. "There are too many little places and not enough show-places." As a result, most bands work on polishing popular tunes to reach a wider audience before going original in public. What really puts the soul in country, some say, are the lyrics. "There's nobody at sometime or another that can't relate to some country song," York says.

"Country songs are about life, if you listen to any of the words." Or read over the titles. This week's Billboard Top 10 country hits include "Sleeping Single in a Double Bed," "Crying Again," and "Tear Time." Number 1 is Ronnie Milsap's "Let's Take the Long Way Around the World." "Now he's found somebody he wants to spend some time with," York says by way of explanation. In Central Illinois, the time for country music is now. By Mary A. Dinkel Yee-hah! The country's come home to the city to stay.

On the radio, jukeboxes, record shops, at the oprys, music festivals, and at big and little clubs in the city and country, country music is entrenched with a holler and a toe-tap in Central Illinois. In the words of one local club owner, "Nowadays, people don't mind anybody knowing they like country music. It's changed." Probably the biggest change has been in the music itself, the crossover of country with pop and rock 'n' roll, that's responsible for the surge in popularity. People who would never listen to the pure country sounds of performers like Lester Flatt or Roy Acuff, give Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers a chance. Sonny director of country music radio station WDZQ, divides the different styles into two categories old and modern.

Old country music features simple stringed instruments usually a guitar and lyrics about life at home, dissatisfaction urith the city, and religious Ui ernes. Modeiir country music adapts the themes with sophisticated instruments steel pedal guitars, brass, electric pianos for a lush sound that can't be reproduced in the hills and hollows back in the mountains. The most popular across a wide audience, the type that stars on most country music radio stations, is modern country. It's the type that's boosting the popularity of local country bands and the clubs that host them. A country music fan for all of his 43 years, from Red Boiling Springs, Staff photo by Doug Gaumon Havana Ducks, doesn't so much play revolution of quiet avana iljmck The Ducks have been popularizing many of the album cuts for the past couple of years at places like D's Country Lounge in Decatur, Panama Red's Champaign and The Lazy-J in Bloo-mington.

All the songs are written by Pork, including one which offers the Nowadays, people don't mind folks knowing they like country music. Not every country music fan steps into clubs or bars to hear his music. The oprys reach a totally different audience. "A lot of religious people are country music fans and won't step inside a club," says York. For that type of fan, Bill and Joeline Mann of Taylorville built Nashville North a little over a year ago, making the opry one of the most recent around.

"People come from all over," Mrs. Mann says, "some from as far as Missouri." Open year-round, with a seating capacity of more than 1,200, Nashville North features mostly performers from Nashville, a blend of old and modern country sounds. week's recording sessions in Indianapolis. His addition will round out a band already full of quality musicians. None is more noticeable than Donnie Markham.

Bom in Alabama, Markham has the deepest country roots. He has played the steel guitar with an assortment of Nashville musicians including the likes of Freddy Fender and Gene Price. His work on the pedal steel excites crowds, and even rival musicians who drop by to hear The Ducks marvel at Mark-ham's mastery. Markham is also a slick electric guitarist and plays a ragin' Cajun fiddle on songs like "Boil That Cabbage Down" or a smooth violin on the Ducks' own "Can You Make It." While assembling The Ducks, Pork was told about Markham by a producer and friend, Harry Washburn, in Champaign. "Harry sent Donnie over and when I heard him," Pork said, "I was floored." Markham's talent does not overshadow the other performers.

"Catfish" Evans of Decatur and Bruce Nelson of Clinton take turns generating imaginative guitar licks. "Doctor" Kent Le-couris makes his harmonica sound equally at home on a soft country ballad and gritty blues number. Aaron Woods prefers to listen to jazz in his free time, but he plays the drums with feeling on country tunes. And bass player Dan Henry of Decatur is one of the few around who can make a bass solo sound like something other than thump, thump, thump. Sound man James McGraw keeps the tones clear and sharp.

And of course there is Pork. The guitar he overwhelms is more of a prop than an instrument, but it doesn't matter. His voice is a sandy symphony. He If there were a local version of the Country Music Association's 'Entertainer of the Year' award. Pork Armstrong would win hands down.

a guitar as overwhelm it. people what country music is, you'll get 10 different definitions," Pork said. There is no denying that Roy Acuff on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry conjures one image of country music. Now, however, the definition has expanded. The music has attracted a new au- dience.

"The country audience is definitely younger Pork said. "I think Way-Ion Jennings and Willie Nelson had a great deal to do with that. They revolutionized the country music industry." Pork believes that young people were slow in developing an attraction to country music but now are tuning in. "One reason is that their parents probably listened to country. So they naturally turned away from it at first." Bands like Marshall Tucker and Charlie Daniels have presented country in a style that has kept people from turning away.

Instead, they are turning on. The same can be said of The Ducks. There is great variety in The Ducks' original material, from a soft, crooning tale like "Drummer Calls Her Darlin'" to the outrageous "Legend of Big Foot." Both are Pork Armstrong creations. Pork recorded a version of "Drummer Calls Her with the University of Illinois string ensemble. He has entered the tape in the American Song Festival, competing in the professional division of the country music category.

The song has survived three stages and is currently in the finals, where it will be judged in Nashville by people like songwriter Paul Williams. First prize is $10,000 and a job as a staff writer with a music company. The writing job doesn't interest Pork. He was a staff writer for Chappell Music in Los Angeles three years ago, and it was not all fame and glory. "They were interested in the songs I was turning out," Pork said.

"But I sent them 'Big Foot' and they thought I was completely nuts." "Big Foot," one of the Ducks' most popular songs, tells of a man who captures the sasquatch monster, trains him to perform house chores and sells "that yeti to J. Paul Getty" for $1 million. about good fortune, talk about good luck, I'm the man who captured Big Foot, and made a million While Big Foot is more comedy than country, many of Pork's songs are "just stone country," like "The Ballad of Me and Hawkshaw," "Blue Country Song" and "Pour Another Bottle in the Juke Box." Pork has always nurtured a love for country, even while playing in a cascade of pre-Duck bands that featured many other forms of music. Some of the people he has played with have gone in different directions. He once played in a Decatur band called The Light Brigade.

Steve Hunter played in that band and is now with Alice Cooper. John Sauter has hooked up with Ted Nugent. Ron Stockard, a keyboard specialist, has played with Rufus (writing two of their albums) and toured with Three Dog Night. Stockard will be the newest member of The Ducks, arriving in time for this hook line, "Operator, operator put me through to Decatur." "I've never been to a state that didn't have a Decatur," says Pork, who was born in Clinton, went to high school in Havana (the school's team name was the Havana Ducks) and lives now in Decatur. "Even Ronnie Milsap has a song with Decatur in it." A year ago, Ronnie Milsap was country music's "entertainer of the year." Pork would be the hands-down winner if a local version of the award was offered.

It's become a comfortable role for a 30-year-old man who got his start playing drums while his friends plucked tunes by The Ventures. "I talk to a lot of college kida that say they never realized they liked country music until they heard us play it," Pork says. "It's funny, but some people still think country is strictly the Grand Ole Opry with Roy Acuff singing 'The Great Speckled That's just not the way country music is anymore." Just what country music is seems difficult to define. "If you ask 10 different Pork Armstrong, leader of the EDITOR'S NOTE Sports reporter Mark Tupper has been following the career of the Havana Ducks for the past year and a half. Here he profiles the group that converted him to country music.

By Mark Tupper He stands 6 foot 4 and looks thicker than a buffalo. Once, while playing with a band in Texas, he pulled on a green velvet suit with seeds on the lapel designed to make him look like a human watermelon. Now, blue jeans and plaid flannel shirts have replaced the costumes. The days of gimmicks and games are over. The only game this mountainous man plays now is the music game working to advance his band and his music past a place of local prominence, hoping to "make it" in a business where so very few do.

Decatur's Jerry "Pork" Armstrong is getting close. Pork and the Havana Ducks. Not a menu combination but a group of seven musicians who call Central Illinois home: Pork Armstrong, Donnie Mark-ham, John "Catfish" Evans, Kent Le-couris, Aaron Woods, Bruce Nelson, Dan Henry. A band on the rise. A band that revolves around the multi-talented songwriter-singer called Pork.

The Havana Ducks are leading a quiet revolution that is turning more and more people young people in particu lar onto country music. It would be misleading to label The Ducks strictly a country music band. They also play rock and blues and an occasional chorus of "Happy Birthday." But they are known for their foot-stomping country renditions. And the music they will begin recording this Tuesday on their first album has a decidedly country and country-rock flavor. The Havana Ducks Pom, in can sound like a rabid wolf howling in a winter blizzard or treat a love song with a soft caress.

That group is the result of several personnel changes over the past few years. Pork and former Duck member Roger Henderson played together at The Embers in Champaign and added and subtracted musicians until they came up with a group they called "The Original Havana Ducks." Along the way the band performed as a threesome. An avid Chicago Cubs baseball fan, Pork named the group "The Manny Trio." In fact, the only time Pork contemplated a future outside music was when he considered enrolling in Al Summer's umpiring school. "I wanted to be an umpire in the Mexican leagues." He never pursued umpire school. Instead, he concentrated on developing a group of quality musicians playing original material, with an ability to entertain between and even during songs.

That's the reason the Ducks set an attendance record two weekends ago at Panama Red's in Champaign. The band has picked up a following, and it isn't unusual to see Havana Ducks T-shirts on the campus at the University of Illinois. "I like to get up there and see people having a good time," Pork said. "I'm very audience-oriented. I don't think music is worth a damn unless you've got an audience to listen to it." Pork has played in Colorado, Texas, California.

The other band members have hit the trail, too. "But around here, in Central Illinois, are the best crowds you can find," Pork said. "People around here come out and support you. I think any band that has ever played in Decatur will tell you that." US- MuVVMWMAuXWAHMiWW from left: Catfish Evans, Bruce Nelson, Aaron Woods, Pork Armstrong, Staff photo by Doug Gaumon Kent Lecburis, Dan Henry and Donnie Markham clown while rehearsing their first album..