June 3, 1972: A band called Okra

 

My companion on this excursion to one of the far corners of Erie County was Frank Maraschiello, who did the T-shirts for the Institute for Rock ‘N Roll Studies. Since I was ostensibly a single guy again at this point, it looks like I ran into him on a Saturday night when I was hanging out in a bar. 

June 3, 1972

Okra Rock Group Finds

Own Style and Harmony 

CALL IT a stroke of pure luck. Just as I’m ringing up all my after-midnight energies for the long run out Broadway – some 25 miles to Alden – up saunters Frank.

        “OK if I come along?” he wants to know.

        Having Frank along – in full beard and some esoteric T-shirt he silkscreened by the dozens for UB concerts – is like having an extra adrenal gland.

        The object of this mission is to hear a band named Okra. “What about them?” Frank asks. “Any good?”

        All my advance knowledge is inconclusive. Four guys who play rock, probably on the heavy side. They ran some funny ads in The News personal columns last year, looking for gigs. I’d talked to one of their old guitarists. He’d quit and he was kinda down on them.

        The Four Corners just west of Alden, where Okra’s been playing for better than three months, is a frame building, just big enough to hold a band and maybe 100 people.

        A couple of motorcycles in the parking lot. A few cars with Genesee County license plates, their drivers over for Erie County’s extra hour of night life. Okra’s resting up for their final set.

        Frank sizes up the pool table while I look for the band. Ah, here’s Roger Gilkey, singer and leader, a big strapping guy with a deep, smooth voice which shows few signs of his growing up in Louisville, Ky.

        “What do you want to hear?” Roger inquires. “You wanta hear originals?”

        “Just do whatever feels good to you.”

        That turns out to be about 10 originals – catchy, loud and a little raw, all with a grabbing beat that gets the dancers up even at this hour. Reminiscent of an up-and-coming British blues band.

* * *

FRANK STROLLS over after a couple close matches at the pool table and watches the group. “You know,” he grins, “they’re all right.”

        Actually, there have been two Okras. The first one, dead now for a year and a half, was a five-man group with two guitars and a personality clash.

        The contention was between the disgruntled guitarist, who was into lighter, more commercially-oriented music, and Roger’s longtime preference for blues and heavier pop stuff.

        For a while they did all right. Won a battle of the bands out at the lake in Angola and that kept them working all during the summer of 1970.

        They did benefits, stuff for publicity, but when the summer places closed, they couldn’t line up an agent and had trouble getting gigs.

        Part of the problem back then was equipment. They didn’t have quite enough power. And when the dissatisfied guitarist left that winter, the band dissolved.

        After a few months of working in basements with people who were trying unsuccessfully to put bands together, Roger decided to see if he could reorganize Okra.

* * *

FROM BASEMENT sessions, he knew drummer Bob Graczyk. And he called in two of his old Okra mates, bass guitarist Rich Mechlinski, who had been hung up by his job in Olean, and guitarist Mike Nowaczyk.

        “A year ago this month we were back together,” Roger says. “We’d done all the songs before, one way or another, and in just one practice it all came together.”

        “Before that,” Mike explains, “I’d played strictly rhythm guitar. I never thought I could handle lead, but Roger told me I could do it.”

        “He’s improved twice as much playing lead as he did playing rhythm,” Roger says. “He stopped using the fuzz tone. If we’d had another guitar player again, he might never have had the confidence to step out.”

        One thing that hadn’t changed was their luck at finding jobs. They got a few through the ads, but mostly they were still bouncing around the bottom of the club circuit, playing a few fraternity parties, getting nowhere with agents. By October, they gave up.

        “We just didn’t care any more about playing out,” Roger says.

        Instead, they started songwriting. And they bought a batch of new instruments and more potent amps.

* * *

ALL THIS renovated their style. The new equipment expanded the dimensions of their sound and the songs, mostly to or about girls, led them to their present straightforward approach to their music.

        “We were just as happy – more happy, writing stuff and playing for ourselves,” Rich says. “It boosted our morale.”

        “We developed a style as if we were recording,” Roger says. “Of course, some songs just come out the way they do because we’re working with three instruments.

        “It was mostly discovering the most effective way to use what we have. We really pushed each other into things we wouldn’t have gotten into if we had more than three instruments.”

        “No matter what it is,” Bob says, “if we like it and it’s good, we’ll do it. Not having an organ or brass doesn’t stop us. Before, it would.”

        So they do things like T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong,” Rhinocerous’ energetic “Let’s Party,” semi-folky things like John Sebastian’s “Red-Eye Express” and even slow quiet things like Nilsson’s “Waking Up Alone” as easily as their originals.

* * *

NOW THEY’RE working up touches of harmony and Roger’s picked up harmonica, which comes across with astringent intensity in things like their original “I Ain’t Gonna Dirty My Hands.”

        This weekend they’re laying down a tape at Buffalo’s Act-One Studios to take around to record companies. Later this month, when they go to Louisville for a four-night thing Roger’s sister lined up, they’ll go on to Nashville to check recording prospects there.

        While they’re waiting for the record companies, they figure they’ll keep doing Fridays and Saturdays at The Four Corners.

        “We’re looking for jobs on the off-nights – Wednesdays and Sundays,” Roger says. “The people at The Four Corners have been really nice to us. It’s been like job security. At least we’re our own bosses.”

 

The box/sidebar:

 

It’s ‘Like a Way of Life’

 

        “This is the amazing thing,” Okra leader Roger Gilkey remarks, “I don’t think we’d ever split up unless we die.”

        “This group is more like a brotherhood,” happy-go-lucky bass guitarist Rich Mechlinski puts in. “It’s like a way of life.”

        “This is the tightest group I’ve ever been in,” Roger continues. “That’s why we don’t even mention the other bands we’ve been in.”

* * *

PART OF the tightness came from an intense period of songwriting and working by themselves last winter, but they’d also played together previously in various groups.

        Modest guitarist Mike Nowaczyk had been in Embassy with Rich. Roger used to be with The Sobs. And drummer Bob Graczyk had played with Blue Avenue and before that, back around 1965, with the British Walkers, who were on Stan Roberts’ (former morning man on WKBW) old TV rock party. They cut a couple unsuccessful records.

        Mike started playing guitar after going to a dance, seeing The Rogues playing and wondering “what it would be like to be up there.”

* * *

RICH HAD been a guitarist until he despaired at ever coming close to Jimi Hendrix, then bought an old bass from a guy who was about to smash it on stage. “I guess when I offered him $10 it changed his mind,” Rich says.

        Roger, 24, came up here from Louisville, Ky., about eight years ago, is married and is an assistant manager in a local manufacturing company.

        Mike, 22, graduated from Hutch Tech, attended Bryant & Stratton Business Institute and is engaged.

        Rich, 22, is a Kensington High grad, attended Erie Community College and is finishing up two years of working in the Olean General Hospital laundry.

        Bob, also 22, just graduated from Buffalo State, qualified to teach high school English. He went to Bishop Turner High.

 

IN THE PHOTOS: Clockwise, from upper left, Roger Gilkey, Rich Mechlinski, Mike Nowaczyk and Bob Graczyk.

 

FOOTNOTE: The only guy turning up in my online searches is Rich Mechlinski, who is still playing bass around town. He was seen for many years with The Boomers and more recently with local groups like the John Bertini Band, Nix Vega and Memphis to Nashville.