May 23, 1970: Dale Thomas and the Pioneers

 

If this is the same Dale Thomas I just found on Facebook, then he's alive and well in Michigan, near Grand Rapids. He now goes by the name of Dusty Chaps, still leads a country band and has his own line of custom Fender guitars.

 

Saturday, May 23, 1970

 Dale and the Pioneers

Tune Up for Japan

 Dale Thomas glances around the Elma Room again. Some nights everything happens late. Here it is, almost 10, and where’s the crowd. 

        “Say, where’s Wally Weber?”

“Well, if he isn’t here, you get the $5 this time,” Dale tells his drummer. Mickey Bechtel nods.

“It’s only the second time it’s happened,” Dale explains. “But if a guy’s late, I dock him $5 and one of the rest of us gets it.

“I make the most because I do the most. Wally’s second and Mickey’s third. After Mick starts singing, we’ll give him a raise. It gives him a little something to work for.”

* * *

DALE THOMAS and the Pioneers are wearing red shirts tonight. Light, but not matching, scarves. Black, but not matching, vests and black pants. Other nights Dale has them dress exactly alike, but this is Sunday.

After a year out here where the Aurora Expressway runs the city into the country, after three nights a week with the Pioneers and three nights a week with Wally’s banjo, fiddle and guitar-playing uncle, Ernie Weber … after all that, Dale knows what to expect.

Friday, Elma Manor gets a young crowd. They want rock. You can get good crowd on Sunday but for comedy, well, Saturday’s more the night for comedy.

“You can’t do comedy with a rock crowd,” Dale says. “They seem a little stand-offish. With a country crowd, they’ll laugh and you can go down, sit anywhere and talk with anybody. You can’t do that with rock.”

* * *

DALE USED to play rock. In fact, here comes Joe Pappagallo, his brother-in-law, who used to be the bass player.

“We played the Village Hut for $8 a night,” Joe says. “That was back in 1960. I don’t remember what we were called. Dale, what was the name?”

“The Shadows,” Dale says. “We did all this Ventures stuff. We used to stay upstairs over the place. Remember when you found the bug in your bed? That was terrible.”

* * *

DALE CHECKS his watch. After 10. He motions to Mickey across the room. No Wally.

“Say, why don’t you play the bass till Wally gets here?” he asks the reporter. “C’mon.”

So it’s “Stormy Monday Blues.” In G. This is a country band?

Dale’s the impetus of the group, no doubt about it. His tenor rides over the strict arrangements. His guitar puts tight frills around the beat. And what’s that, an organ? No … he must do that with the guitar. Foot switch somewhere. Weird.

* * *

WALLY’S IN for the next one. Merle Haggard’s “Silver Wings.” He and Dale sing a sweet Everly Brothers harmony. The crowd is here now. There’s applause.

Then it’s Blood, Sweat & Tears’ “You Made Me So Very Happy,” a country “There Won’t Be Any More,” last fall’s “Good old Rock ‘n’ Roll,” the ballad “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di,” the ballad “Everybody’s Talkin’” from “Midnight Cowboy” and “Mornin’ Dew,” a folk song gone rock.

The comedy is one-liners: “You folks, if you’ve got a request, just write it on a sheet of paper, roll it up into a ball and swallow it. We’ll get the message somehow.” And Zap! Into the next song.

Night club humor, Dale calls it. He feels it makes the crowd more receptive.

* * *

“HEY, WHAT happened to you?” Dale asks Wally back at the table.

“It’s a long story,” Wally grins.

“I’ll bet.”

“You see, I fell asleep in the bathtub.”

“Ha, ha. I can see Mickey and me flying to Japan and we call Wally’s house – ‘Well, I’m in the tub, man.’ You know, I hear some of those Japanese can really play the bass.”

* * *

JAPAN IS the first stop in the band’s two-month Oriental tour, which begins June 8. They’ll go on to Okinawa, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines and maybe Korea. Army and Air Force bases and a few civilian clubs.

“From what Ronnie Frey said, they’ll dig our style,” Dale says. “He told me the civilians, half of them can’t understand what you’re saying, but they love the music.”

That’s Ronnie Frey of Ronnie Frey and the Capers.

“They’re our idols,” Mickey says. “Whenever we get a song down real good, we say we’ve got it Caperized.”

“They were playing the Atlas Hotel in Welland,” Dale recalls, “and we went down and got our band up and they really dug us. They’ve been over there a couple times and they said, ‘How’d you like to go to Asia?’”

* * *

“WE’RE BOOKED with Var Jac Productions out of Warren, Mich., for at least two months with two one-week options. After that, we’ll come back here.

“I just got back from New York City with the visas Thursday night. It was the worst hassle I ever had in my life. You’d swear we were at war with the Philippines, the way they were down on us.”

* * *

STILL, IT should be a nice tour. The group will make twice what it makes now. The $4,200 plane fare is paid, so are rooms. All they pay for is food.

“We’ll have a lot more time for rehearsals,” Dale adds. “We don’t have much chance now. It’s hard to get everybody together.”

It sure is. Dale plays six nights a week. Mickey is a sheet-metal apprentice and Wally installs Formica counter tops. On free nights, they go look in on other country bands.

* * *

THE VISITATIONS make the local country scene like a big family. Everybody knows everybody. And most everybody lets most everybody sit in. Except for Dale, who apparently is the black sheep of the country clan.

“They don’t like what we’re doing,” Dale says. “They see me and they won’t let me get up and play. They say we’re doing rock ‘n’ roll.”

* * *

IN WALKS another brother-in-law, Dick Lobdell, who with his Wanderers plays the Colonial Lounge in Orchard Park. Like Dale, he’s urbanized his country sound too.

“We used to play all old-fashioned country,” he confides, “but now we do a lot of Glen Campbell.

“Why? Well, you can only play country music on Saturday nights. That’s the only night you get a country crowd. I changed because I wanted to play more nights a week.

“You play a few rock songs, you play a few country songs, you play a novelty song, you see some couples and you play a ballad or two. There’s something there for everybody. If they don’t like that, they just don’t like music.”

 

And now the box/sidebar

 

After Asian Tour, a Larger Group

 

Some pertinent and impertinent information about Dale Thomas and the Pioneers:

Dale Thomas, 26, guitar and vocals, father was captain of the Canadiana, the former Crystal Beach boat, left West Seneca Junior High School, married, two children.

Wally Weber, 21, bass guitar and vocals, comes from a country music family, graduate of Williamsville South High School, single.

Mickey Bechtel, 25, drums, graduate of Maryvale High School, married, one son.

* * *

DALE, AFTER his rock experience, worked on lake ships and played with brother-in-law Dick Lobdell, then joined Porky Witherill and the Pioneers about five years ago. Wally, who played at the Club Utica at age 7, already was with the group.

When Porky left to join the WWVA Jamboree in Wheeling, W.Va., Dale and Wally kept the Pioneers together. “Porky could really communicate with the audience,” Dale says. “Before he left, I never said anything to the crowd.”

Mickey began drumming in Denver while in the Army, then came back to the Club Utica. The week he quit there, Dale called and offered him a job. That was a year ago.

* * *

DALE MAY ADD a steel guitarist and maybe a piano after the group gets back from Asia, but it depends on the money. He also has plans for a record.

“I’d like to get a tape recorder in here on a Saturday night and put a lot of comedy on it. It would be sort of a party record. We’d sell it ourselves.”

As for serious records, he has a backer if he wants to go to Nashville, “but I’d rather work on the road and ask a good buck rather than wait around looking for a recording.”