Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 24, 1992 TAG: 9201230030
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By JOE TENNIS CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: WALTON LENGTH: Medium
SHOOTING STAR PLAYS THE OL' SWITCHEROO
Guitar player Steve White, a self-proclaimed weekend warrior on the Southwest Virginia music circuit, considers it a miracle he's still playing rock and country music."I've played damn near every weekend for 20 years," the part-time singer said. "And what I've got to show for it is bad ears and a bad back."
What keeps the Salem musician going is a desire to get crazy on stage a couple nights a week with his band, Shooting Star.
However, the struggle to keep people in a band can overwhelm the artistry in music, he says.
"There's a lot of crap in the music business . . . And people just quit or die on the vine. They can't take it anymore."
Shooting Star will play Saturday night at the Walton House Dance Club on Morning Glory Drive, off Virginia 663 in Montgomery County.
Admission is $10 per couple. Liquor policy is B.Y.O.B. The club furnishes set-ups.
White and singer Teresa Lynn Cole started the band three years ago as The Shakers. The sound was less country and more rhythm-and-blues in those days, and the set list ranged from Merle Haggard to James Brown.
Cole, 29, came to Shooting Star as a seasoned country performer in the Roanoke area. Her resume includes a stint with TLC and the Country Cookin' Band, where she met her husband, Shooting Star band manager and former bass player Harold Cole, 48.
White, 37, spent his glory years in the business making music in Florida with the Linville Star Band, led by legendary country music fiddle player Charlie Linville. Linville was a staff musician on the original "Beverly Hillbillies" radio show in the 1930s and a former member of Tex Ritter's band.
Drummer David Amos, 34, and bassist Randall Bolen, 39, grew up together in Boones Mill, playing music for years with a string of bands.
One group they fondly remember is Helicopter, a high-energy Southern rock road band modeled after Lynyrd Skynyrd. While in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on a gig in the late-1970s, Helicopter jammed with the boys in Alabama at a club called The Bowery.
Keyboardist and guitarist Doug Hancock, 34, of Buchanan joined the band a couple weeks ago. The 1990 Virginia Tech graduate had jammed with a New River Valley band, The Locomotives, which played "classic rock with a Southern touch," Hancock said.
Shooting Star played a rousing set at the Montgomery County Moose Lodge Saturday night, wooing the audience with throwbacks to two classic college anthems, "Wooly Bully" and "Louie Louie."
It also had a foot-kickin' version of the Allman Brothers Band's "One Way Out" and Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Suzie Q."
They topped the show with some romantic Patsy Cline numbers, a little Motown and the rock standard "Knockin' On Heaven's Door." The last one left the audience wondering: Who did this song - Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton or Guns N' Roses?
Couples tried slow dancing, the Texas two-step, the bunny hop and the monkey walk during the band's country-variety show.
White sees his group not unlike any other band trying to get gigs: It's all a game called switcheroo.
"One night a band will have on their ball caps playing rock'n'roll, and on another night they'll have a wad [of tobacco] in their jaw singing George Jones."
Now with a decade in the business, Teresa Cole dreams of making it big in country music. "I want to ride all the way if I can," she said.
The guys in the group, on the other hand, say they jam only for the fun of it.
Bolen, a dead-ringer for the late Allman Brothers bassist Berry Oakley, doesn't even care if he gets paid. Music, he says, is the easiest job he'll ever have.