The Real Story

It was about 1973. Carl O was 12, and he used to listen to Black Sabbath albums in grade school. At the time, it wasn’t exactly noteworthy. In fact, he and his buddy Dave probably got shut down shortly after side one of ‘Master of Reality’. Who would have thought that he was so far ahead of the curve.

The story of Rheme Cleo, like any other story involving multiple personalities, begins in various places, coming together to the apex of who they are now.

Scotty and his best friend Big Joe Watkins had been like brothers since they were kids. No doubt, Scotty and Big Joe started talking about starting a band when Scotty got his first guitar when he was 12. It was a conversation that would last for years.

Tim had been banging on tables, boxes, and any other stationary item since he was six years old. When he was in elementary school, his parents bought him a snare drum. He banged on the snare drum at home, and eventually was a drummer in the school band. When he was in junior high school, he lived in Germany and hooked up with a guy that taught him about playing rock n roll drums.

Jimmy and Carl both went to the same high school. They actually went to the same grade school where Carl listened to Sabbath, but their rock and roll paths were not yet ready to cross. At some point during high school, they connected. They shared musical tastes. They discussed each others influences. They swapped albums and gear. They even got together to jam occasionally.
As the seventies came to an end, a few notable events happened in the Rheme Cleo scope. Tim moved into Jimmy’s neighborhood, and they would occasionally set up Tim’s drums in Jimmy’s basement. One day, Jimmy invited Carl and a few other guys over to play with him and Tim. This short-lived project may have marked the foundation point of Rheme Cleo.

Within a year, Carl invited Jimmy to come and play with some friends that were forming a band, including Carl’s old friend Dave(the fellow Black Sabbath listener), and Dom, Scotty’s cousin(unbeknownst to them, at the time). The band, Prodigy, stayed together for a few years, then everybody went their own separate ways. At some point, during the existence of Prodigy, Monica was born…literally.

As the 80’s rolled on, everybody moved on with their lives. But making music always played a part. Jimmy and Carl did an occasional project. Tim played when he could. Scotty was busy playing mostly blues harp stuff. Monica got that walking thing down.

One day, in about 1988, a small, insignificant(at the time) event occurred that set the wheels turning.

Scotty came home from work and the neighborhood was rocking to the music that was blaring from a neighbor’s house. And it was loud. Really loud. Scotty explains it like this.

“I walked into our house and my wife was standing there waiting for me. She told me that she had called the police on the guy with the loud music across the street. Well I felt just terrible about that. It would have been easier to just go knock on the door.”

“A day or two later I ran into the guy from across the street. I had never talked to him before but felt kinda guilty about my wife’s actions.”

That guy turn out to be Carl O. Carl and Scotty became pretty good buddies and shared many an after work beer. “One thing about Carl O…he is all about the music, so it was just a matter of time before we were sitting in his living room playing our guitars.”

“Then one night a friend of his shows up to jam with us. This kid comes walking in carrying his guitar. I figured he couldn’t be much older than I was. He had this head of straggly gray hair. I remember thinking…”Look at this poor bastard…what kinda life was he living to give him all that gray hair.”

*Editor’s note: In the name of artistic freedom of speech, this incorrect description has been left unedited. The ‘poor bastard’s’ hair wasn’t quite grey…yet.

“So the two of them started playing their guitars and I started in on my harp. Either you click with other musicians or you don’t. We clicked.”

That moment marked, at least at the time, the first Rheme Cleo experience.

But again, life intervened. Carl, Scotty, and Jimmy all went their separate ways. It would be years before Scotty would cross paths with Jimmy again.

Between 1992 and 1995, Carl O and his friends, Jerry and Roger, used to play and write songs at Carl’s house. One day, they invited Tim over to play drums. This was the beginning of “The Men in Black”. MIB did tons of improvised jamming through 1996, before Roger moved away, and MIB was no more.

One day Scotty was rooting around in his favorite music store, Piano’s N Stuff, and bumped into Carl. Carl invited Scotty to a jam session that he was having at his house the following weekend with a bunch of local musicians. “I mentioned to Scotty that Tim and I were looking to hook up with other musicians to jam and play improvised music. When we got together for the first time Scotty had mentioned that he wrote some songs that he wanted to play”, Carl explains.

“Sitting behind the drum set was this smart ass…a real wise guy”, Scotty recounts,” and we hit it off immediately.” Of course that was Tim the Drummer.

The first song that Scotty ever offered up is the song ‘Ebony’. Scotty had written the song and played it a hundred times but never with a full band. In his head he had a specific drum line. “First time out of the box, Tim played it exactly how I had been playing it in my head. He has been my pulse ever since.”

Somewhere during this period, Carl had a Labor Day picnic at his home. Outside, on his patio, he had the guys set up their gear and play. Tim on drums, Carl on bass, and Scotty on guitar. Wide open jams. Long jams. Everybody loved it. Including Carl’s old buddy, Jimmy Mac. Carl had asked Jimmy to bring his guitar and amp over for a jam.

“I just remember standing there playing, for like, six hours…without putting my guitar down”, says Jimmy,”I dug it, but I was too busy at the time with another band.”

“It must have been right about then that I started thinking about my old friend…Joe Watkins”, Scotty recalls. One night, he made some phone calls and tracked down his old buddy Big Joe. It had been ten years. Joe was managing a blues club down in the city. Joe mentioned that he knew a couple of musicians that would be a perfect fit. Tony Bones, a smokin’ lead guitar player, and Rawny, a killer keyboard player. Big Joe could sing his ass off so he rounded out the group.

That lineup, known as Fat Chanz, was born.

“During the Fatchantz era, Jimmy Mac would occasionally come over and sit in. At the time he was playing in The Businessmen, but he liked to come around and play with us because we did very few cover songs and was a great way for him to express himself.”

“I remember the first time he showed up at my studio. No sooner was he plugged in and tuned up when he spilled a bottle of beer right in the middle of the floor. The engineers were pissed, but I wasn’t. His hair had turned silver by that time. ‘Poor bastard’ was all I thought. So I let him spill his beer anytime he wanted. I just asked him to stay in one spot.”*

*Editor’s note: Again with the silver hair thing. OK, it was getting there.

“Then one day we got a call from Jimmy…his band The Businessmen, needed an opening act for a show they were doing and asked us to step up. So we did. The show went great.”

The band continued playing, but eventually there were only Scotty, Tim, and Carl O remaining. The three of them kept on plugging, writing and performing. They were Rheme Cleo, Power Trio.

That was when their underground fan base really started to grow. “We busted our asses until we had built up an underground following on four continents”, Scotty says, “We took it about as far as we could and it became time to put down roots.”

Tim and his wife Linda built a beautiful house out in the countryside of Western Pennsylvania. It’s known as ‘The Farm’. In designing the house, they were smart enough to include a nice sized area that could be used as jam space and a recording studio.The pieces were falling into place.

“One night Tim and I were sitting in a bar out in the middle of nowhere. They announced that it was Karaoke Night”, explains Scotty. “I smiled and started reaching for the microphone.” Tim calmed me down and convinced me to wait my turn.

“So we were sitting there reveling in a blizzard or pop standards…all out of key of course. I couldn’t stand it anymore and was just getting up to take my turn when this voice came cutting through the bar noise. The place went tomb quiet as this girl sang.”

It was Monica Davis.

“I sat back down and ordered an other beer and listened. I had written a song called ‘Dime’. It’s a personal favorite of mine but the thing is, it sounds better when a woman sings it.” Scotty turned to Tim and said, “That’s our Dime Girl right there.” They invited Monica over and told her what they were all about…she’s been with them ever since. “It couldn’t have been more than a couple of months after that when we finally landed Jimmy Mac.”

Jimmy Mac had taken a long break from bands. In fact, before joining his buddy John Vento’s band, The Businessmen, in 1998, he hadn’t played in a band since playing with Carl O in 1982.

The Businessmen played about once every six weeks or so, doing gigs for charity, and usually inviting other bands to open the show. It was a great way to help promote local talent.

For almost the entire time that Jimmy was playing with The Businessmen, his old buddy, Carl, would keep him in the loop.

“Carl had been calling me once a month, religiously, from the inception of FatChanz”, Jimmy explains, “He would call to chat, and always remind me that I was welcome to come over and jam anytime. At the time, I was playing regularly with The Businessmen, and I told him that I couldn’t manage to fit it in.” He adds, “But the real reason was that this one guy, Scotty, made me nervous. He was always handing me beer towels, asking me to stay in one place, and looking funny at my hair.” Jimmy recalls thinking, “That poor, jealous bastard.” *

*Editor’s note: It’s good to be King, but it’s even better to be The Editor of the website!

Jimmy Mac visited FatChanz and Rheme Cleo when time would allow. Both bands had something that he liked. The ability to create on-the-fly. The ability to find a groove and ride it until it either blew up, or fell apart. The ability to create magic from time to time. And most importantly, the combined ability to pick up the pieces when everything fell apart, and continue on to find a groove, work it until it was magic, and blow it up!

Rheme Cleo had a bunch of songs that were in various forms of completion. Some were recorded, but weren’t played often, in lieu of wide open jams. Eventually, the band decided to focus on perfecting those songs, but leaving most of them with a ‘trap door’. This would enable the band to unhinge a song at anytime, opening it up for interpretation and improvisation.

While the band plays it’s structured songs to perfection, real fans know that the band shines when they are able to stretch their wings and flat out jam. Even during periods of heavy rehearsal for gigs, they always take some time off for creating and growing.

Most of Rheme Cleo’s songs are based on blues chord progressions, but have a definite sophisticated feel to them. They are not standard lyrically, either. Many of the songs are written from the heart. Complexity and duality oozes from every song.

The music itself has been described various ways. Possibly the best description was coined by a friend who is actually another piece of the Rheme Cleo puzzle. Rockin’ Ray has known Jimmy Mac, Carl O, Tim, and for Scotty for years.

He coined the description ‘Blues Fusion’.

Perfect.