Aug. 8, 1970: Lenny Nast and Sheri Lane

 

I did an online search for these two country artists and the results were skimpy. However, I'm pretty sure that's Lenny Nast out in Elko, Nev., performing earlier this year with a little trio called Present Company, looking tall, grey and handsome with his guitar.

As for his sidekick Sheri Lane, tracking her down is complicated by the presence of another Sheri Lane, keyboardist with a ‘80s art rock band in Austin, Texas, called Glass Eye. However, there’s a video on YouTube of a Sheri Lane belting out “Blue Moon of Kentucky” in 2013 in front of a rockabilly combo at the Prescott Opry in Prescott, Ariz. She seems the right age. She’s still looking good. And she’s playing bass. It just has to be her. 

Aug. 8, 1970

Lenny and Sheri

Country Music

With a Difference

 It’s Thursday night, Lenny Nast and the band are playing “I’m Walkin’ the Floor Over You” and Reg Tucci kind of slumps down in the chair next to his drink, just letting the old Ernest Tubb song sink in behind his tired eyes.

Reg is a good guy. A Kiwanis Club plaque of appreciation on the wall tells you so, and so will Lenny. Reg took Lenny in, became his manager, three years ago.

“I sorta took a liking to Lenny,” Reg will say. “I’ve been pushin’ him and helpin’ him and introducin’ him to people. And there hasn’t been a week I’ve lost money on him. He never gets stale.”

* * *

THE STEEL guitarist – a DuBois, Pa., factory worker named Hal Wallace, who’s sitting in because he’s in town because his company has a case in Federal Court – he plays an instrumental break sweet and smooth as molasses running down a pile of buckwheat pancakes.

“That was beautiful,” a guest says to Reg.

Reg thinks it’s pretty normal. He’s heard a lot of good country music. In the 15 years he’s owned Club Utica, in fact, he’s made it a country mecca.

The likes of Webb Pierce, David Houston and Tommy Cash, the musicians in all the country music shows in Kleinhans Music Hall, they all just naturally come on over to West Utica and Rhode Island streets. And of course they’ll step up and play a few.

* * *

NOW LENNY is introducing Miss Sheri Lane. She plays electric bass and looks like a cute city girl – short, dark hair, high heels and all.

Then she does “You Just Keep Me Hangin’ Ahawn.” No, not Supremes. Waylon Jennings.

“The words ‘country music’ always struck me as kind of a limit,” Reg says. “It’s American, really. It doesn’t derive from something else. Country music is American music."

Lenny and Sheri do a bluegrass number. “We call it crabgrass up here,” Sheri announces.

Lenny trades comments with some girls near the stage and one of them passes him a blonde wig. He puts it on.

The whole band cracks up and Sheri honks that bicycle horn on her mike stand. “We’re gonna have fun tonight,” Lenny roars.

* * *

FRIDAY afternoon we talk with the two of them in a dark corner of the club. Lenny’s meeting guitarist Ray London and they’re going to rent a boat and go fish the Niagara River. Sheri’s en route to the laundry.

“Sheri missed a beautiful coho salmon last week,” Lenny says. “I pulled too hard bringing it in for her and it got away. People next to us said it was the biggest they’d seen.”

* * *

SOMEBODY hits F-4 on the jukebox and the bar fills with Lenny singing “The Lady Who Let Her Hair Down,” a local country hit last spring. He wrote that and the other side, “Outstretched Hands.”

He’s backed by Nashville studio musicians, as he will be on his next record – “Wilson’s Valley” and Carl and Pearl Butler’s “Lost, Strayed or Stolen.” Both records are on the Cherry Lane label.

A money problem with the guy who wrote “Wilson’s Valley” is delaying the release. Reg is sorting it out. Next is an album, mostly Lenny’s songs, with Sheri singing.

* * *

LENNY’S first break came when Reg heard him at one of Ramblin’ Lou’s March of Dimes shows and offered him a five-night-a-week job. Like all breaks, it meant a lot of work.

First, Lenny was still working at the Chevrolet plant. Plus the crowd was downright unfriendly. This guy with the silk suits and the newfangled sound wasn’t country at all. And he had a pickup band. Sidemen came and went.

“Me play hillbilly music?” Lenny says. “No way. Even those deep country songs we’ve changed. You can’t make a livin’ playin’ country six nights a week.”

“A lot of people got the idea that country is a fiddle and a banjo going wah-wah-wah,” Sheri says. “But there’s a lot of rock people in it now. The Byrds. Freddy Weller used to be with Paul Revere. Everybody’s into country now.”

* * *

“LENNY’S been through all the best country musicians in Buffalo,” she adds. “He’s had quite a few headaches keeping his sound, but this is a serious thing. When you go into it full-time, you’ve got to have a different attitude.”

“The difference is sincerity,” Lenny puts in. “When you’re makin’ a livin’ at it, you’ve got to make it a job.

“I’m not sorry I left Chevy to do this. I’ve got an idea I’m gonna make it. But it’s like everything else. You don’t walk into a plant and overnight they make you superintendent.”

* * *

LENNY TALKS about touring. Before, he’d travel with Sheri, picking up sidemen. But when they go to The Flame in Minneapolis Sept. 8, they’re taking Ray and drummer Danny Young.

“I’ve been lookin’ for stable musicians,” Lenny says. “Now these guys are stable. These flighty cats – you get a few songs together and then somebody cuts out.”

“I still think no matter who we have working with us,” Sheri says, “it’d be the same because we hear things the same. We could hold a strange band together if we had to.”

“Sheri and I still go over songs every day,” Lenny says. “It’s hard to get guys together and you’ve never got things down good enough.”

* * *

THE FOUR of them also are going to the annual Country Music Association convention in Nashville in October.

“The idea,” Lenny says, “is to get my name around. After the convention, I’m working on getting into Printer’s Alley. That’s one of the biggest clubs down there.”

The jukebox is playing “Outstretched Hands” and Ray’s here now, up on stage experimenting with Hal Wallace’s fancy steel guitar.

“I’m gonna have to get me one of these,” he says.

“Hey, Ray, you ready?” Lenny calls. “Let’s go out and get some of those cohos.” 

The box/sidebar: 

Likes to Sing 

“I was gonna bring a picture of me in a cowboy suit,” Lenny Nast says, “from when I first picked up the guitar.”

That was over in Corfu. He left there for Buffalo when he was 14, left here for the Army when he was 17 and came back to work the Chevrolet plant until three years ago.

“I did some singin’ in the Army and at Chevy and one day some guy says: ‘Don’t you like to sing?’

“‘Sure, I like to sing,’ I said.

“‘Well, why don’t you get a band,’ he says. After that I think I was one of the first guys in Buffalo to play seven nights a week.”

* * *

SHERI LANE (“That’s a stage name, but even my own mother calls me that now”) was born here, grew up in Cambridge Springs, Pa., and came back because “there weren’t many opportunities to play music down there.”

“I learned to play bass mainly out of necessity,” she says. “I wanted to play music rather than work at a conventional job. And most bands need a bass player more than a guitarist.”

Sheri was playing with a bluegrass band in a Niagara Street tavern when she heard Lenny needed a bass player for two of his seven nights. Not long after, she gained equal billing.

Lenny and Sheri are both 30 now.

* * *

LEAD GUITARIST Ray London, 23, from Canisteo, joined four months ago, thanks to lucky timing. He appeared just as Lenny’s other guitar player was leaving.

Drummer Danny Young, 27, a Pennsylvanian, came last year after Mickey Vechtel quit to join Dale Thomas and the Pioneers, all three of whom have played with Lenny.

“These guys are stable,” Lenny says. “They’re never late. I tell them I want you to look good on stage and I want you to be on time and you won’t have to worry about me.”