Feb. 12, 1977: In the wake of the Blizzard of '77, a band called Freeze

 

Everybody in Buffalo in 1977 had a Blizzard story.

Feb. 12, 1977

Crowds Love Freeze’s Music –

Catchy Rock Standards, Originals

THE BAND’S NAME IS FREEZE, but they’ve been having just as much trouble with this freezing season as anyone else. Even getting together for an interview is full of complications.

          “Think you can make it to Delaware and Kenmore?” booking agent Fred Casserta asks this carless reporter. “I’d come down and get you, but I’m afraid I’ll get caught in the traffic ban.”

          The idea behind meeting in the suburbs is that everybody can drive there. Everybody, that is, except Freeze front man Howie Bartolo. Howie lives in North Buffalo.

          “They towed my car away, man,” he exclaims as he arrives late. “I had it parked on a side street while we were workin’ out of town. The car’s gone, Fred. Should I laugh?”

          Freeze was bound for Findlay, Ohio, when the Blizzard of ’77 hit, en route to a concert after a basketball game at Findlay College.

          When they finally got there, they found the college had canceled the show and their motel reservations as well.

          They eventually got rooms, which were shivery because of Ohio’s fuel shortage, and they got to play the following night. But they didn’t get to leave for five days.

          “It was worse than Hazelton, Pa., and I thought that was the worst,” keyboard man Mike Davis grimaces.

          “It’s a good thing ‘Roots’ was on TV,” bassist Ellard J. “Moose” Boles suggests. “We would have gone nuts.”

          “The worst thing was that we thought we’d only be there overnight,” drummer Eric Cappotto says, “so nobody brought extra clothes. Or razors. Everybody started growin’ beards.”

* * *

IT WAS SMALL consolation that they didn’t miss any Buffalo dates during those five days. All their gigs were called off because of the storm.

          Cancellations due to the weather have cost the band upwards to $5,000 over the past month. Fred Casserta says he’ll see if they’re eligible for disaster relief.

          Before the snow got deep, nothing was stopping Freeze from establishing itself as the hottest and most controversial new band in town.

          Crowds either loved them or hated them.

* * *

WHAT THEY love is Freeze’s catchy, well-executed rock standards – things like Z Z Top’s “Jesus Just Left Chicago” and the Tubes’ “White Punks on Dope.”

          And then there are their original numbers, which are just as catchy.

          The part that can be hard to take is the way they present the music. Freeze’s heavy machismo and off-the-wall stage antics are not mood food for the sentimental.

          Much of their foolery revolves around sports, partly because Howie had a short-lived basketball scholarship to Hobart College and partly because it’s less expensive and more reliable than flash powder and smoke bombs.

          You can count on seeing Howie in basketball briefs, a big scarf and a stocking cap pulled down to the frames of his monogrammed glasses.

          Guitarist Gary Zamory, who has a philosophy degree from LeMoyne College in Syracuse, lately favors boxing shorts. That’s all, just the shorts. Well, maybe sneakers.

          “No, I wasn’t cold,” he says when asked about the chilly night they opened for Daryl Hall and John Oates in the Century Theater. “The stage lights heat you up. And the adrenalin.”

          At one time he sported a full beard and a shaved head. For the Fourth of July, he was dressed in aluminum foil and studded with blazing sparklers.

          “It’s fun,” Howie remarks. “We have Halloween 365 days a year. Besides, when you’re playing in a club situation, if you’ve got it visually, you’ve got the edge over everybody else.”

          “But we’re not into the tight pants and boots thing,” Eric puts in. “We’re into the lighter side of life. We’re funny people, actually.”

          “If we can laugh at ourselves, then other people can laugh too,” Howie says. “It breaks down the barriers between the band and the people.

* * *

“THE CROWD wants to be shown what the band can do. And the band wants to be shown what the crowd can do. We’re the ones who come in and say you’re not supposed to care.

          “If you don’t take chances,” he continues, “then you don’t develop an original style. One of the problems is that you can get sucked in at this level. You can make money, so you don’t challenge yourself.

          “We have a general skeleton of a show we work around,” he adds, “but we try to keep it loose. Like there’s no set piece each night where I stand on my head.”

          Freeze finds club owners, like audiences, hesitant at first about asking them back. But that’s not always the case.

          Mickey Rat’s in Angola heard them once and kept them all summer.

          Gregg Allman sat in with them for one set at the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra Superstar Night and stayed for two sets. Then he had them back him up for his free Canisius High School concert.

          “He definitely gave us credibility,” says Mike.

          Freeze had good credentials to begin with, though. Except Moose, who’s from Utica, all have long-term experience with various Syracuse bands. All are in their mid 20s.

          What brought them to Buffalo right after they formed last February was weariness with Central New York’s far-flung music circuit and an offer from Casserta, who’d seen Howie in a previous band.

          Two months later, they moved here. Buffalo has changed their music, they say.

* * *

THEY’D BEGUN with a big stock of disco tunes and have yielded to local preference for hard rock.

          But now their concern is original tunes. Howie wrote a couple snowbound numbers in Ohio and they want to get those and others into their sets.

          Meanwhile, they’ve begun submitting demo takes to record companies.

          “Hopefully,” Howie says, “over the next six months things will open up.”

          Freeze will be at Patrick Henry’s in Clarence on Mondays; at the Poorhouse West in Hamburg Feb. 19, 22 and 27; at the Barrel Head in West Seneca Thursday, Friday and Feb. 24 and at the Fat Cat on Hertel Avenue Feb. 25 and 26.

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Zaniness and hard rock help Freeze beat winter, but occasionally the snow gets in the way. From left, Moose Boles, Mike Davis, Howie Bartolo, Eric Cappetto and Gary Zamory.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Like the snows of 1977, Freeze didn’t last long and they didn’t stick around in Buffalo. But the guys in the band are still fondly remembered.

Guitarist Gary Zamory wound up back in Syracuse, played in a ZZ Top cover band and worked at Onondaga Music. In an appreciation that appeared in the Syracuse Post-Standard after he died in 2007 at the age of 56, Mark Bialczak wrote:

“Mike Davis, the keyboardist for Freeze, remembers the big smile on Zamory's face when Gregg Allman walked into the joint in Buffalo to get ready for the three gigs in which Freeze served as his backup band. Zamory had lived for a spell in The Allman Brothers' Band hometown of Macon, Ga.

"When Gregg walked in, he said, ‘Hi, Gary,’ and Gary was just thrilled that Gregg remembered him, Davis recalled.

          "Drummer Rick Cappotto said Zamory's devotion to ‘a look’ went past his shaved head. ‘He came out for a show where we opened for Hall and Oates wearing nothing but Everlast boxing shorts and sneakers,’ Cappotto said.”

My Buffalo News colleague, Sean Kirst, who has spent many years newspapering in Syracuse, added a recollection of that Canisius High School show to one of his columns in 2017:

“How did Freeze become Allman's band at Canisius? Keyboard player Michael Davis and drummer Eric Cappotto said most of the band lived in an apartment complex on Slate Creek Drive, in Cheektowaga. Freeze, with origins in Syracuse, had achieved enough local prominence that it had a gig almost every night at Patrick Henry's or some other Western New York nightclub.

“Out of nowhere, Gregg Allman called. ‘He said these kids from a local high school requested a show, and he wanted to know if we would play with him,’ said Cappotto, now retired from the heating and air conditioning business – although he's never stopped drumming.

“Allman and Freeze met at Canisius for an evening sound check, the night before the event.

“Michael Davis, a keyboardist with Freeze, is now a photographer with The New Times, a weekly paper in Syracuse. He said the late Gary Zamory, a Freeze guitarist, knew Allman for many years, which helped cement the connection in Buffalo.

“Myron Sharvan, a photographer who captured many backstage images at Canisius, remembers Allman putting his hand on Zamory's shoulder and saying: ‘You remind me of playing with Duane,’ a reference to Allman's brilliant brother, killed a few years earlier in a motorcycle crash.

“Allman was still weighed down by grief, and Davis said the band understood why he was putting on the show:

“To be well, he needed to perform.”

Front man Howie Bartolo? He still needs to perform. He can be found doing dates in the Syracuse area.

And then there’s bassist Ellard-James “Moose” Boles. He hooked up with none other than Lou Reed, beginning with the “Take No Prisoners” album in 1978. Moose now fronts his own Bullet Proof Blues Band and can be seen on YouTube in various configurations.

Sue Chiappone, a Chautauqua County correspondent for The News before she moved to Florida, ran into Boles in Key West after Reed died in 2013 and filled us in on his story:

“After several months with Allman and a good taste of Buffalo winters, Boles got an offer to go to California with Allman. ‘I turned it down because I was thinking that Freeze was going to get their own contract. We were finally going to get the break,’ he said.

“But Freeze melted. Boles took jobs as a bouncer and a stagehand working through producers Harvey & Corky Productions. Boles was setting up a concert for the band Triumph when he got a call from a producer about playing bass for Lou Reed.

“‘He said, “Are you ready to show him you can play?” Boles said. ‘I went to New Jersey and listened to 100 Lou Reed songs on cassette tapes.’

“After three days, Boles said he was ready to go to meet Reed in person. He remembers Reed’s Lower East Side apartment in New York and how his first experience wasn’t even playing a Reed tune. ‘He asked me to play something by Marvin Gaye,’ Boles said. ‘Then Lou asked me to go to a local bar and hang out.’

“After their return, he finally had the courage to ask if he had the job. He did.

“The trip to New York City from Buffalo was the first time he flew in a plane. Five days after his tryout with Reed, Boles was on the West Coast where he toured for about 70 concerts. He remembers being thrilled to have a roadie to himself. ‘First time I didn’t have to carry my own instruments,’ Boles said.

“His tour with Reed took him to Europe as well as around North and South America. He recorded with the band and is credited for playing bass, 12-string guitar and singing back-ups.

“He and Reed became close friends. ‘I taught him to drive a standard (transmission) while we were in Germany working on a recording,’ Boles said. The album was ‘The Bells.’ He said Reed spoke to him before marrying his wife, Sylvia Morales. ‘And I looked at the house he bought in Jersey with him. We were pretty close.’

“They had been talking again recently and kept in touch on Facebook. Both have had liver transplants and talked about the complications of the surgery.”