L to R: Billy, Felix, Gary, Tommy, and Joe
photo taken in Moore Haven, Florida March 2003 Chalo Nitka Festival
Above - On stage opening for Charlie Daniels
Below - the concert backstage
The Real Story – The History of The Easy People Band
Who can remember exactly when the band took on the name The Easy People? Felix Moss or Jimmy Smith might, but I don’t think so. What they do remember is where it came from. Gary Stewart and Billy Eldridge wrote the song for a long time friend named Riley Watkins to record in 1972. The song tells of the virtues of the laid-back kind of country life that Gary could remember as a child growing up in Kentucky. When Gary’s second album for RCA was released in 1975, it included his version…”were just easy people, rednecks all the way.” This song as well as everything else that Gary had written or had sung became the music of choice for most people around Fort Pierce, Florida. Felix Moss and Jimmy Smith were no exceptions. Soon they were playing teen dances around town with Gary Abercrombie at the American Legion as well as many other nearly forgotten venues. Of course the music of Gary Stewart was the mainstay of their song list as it remains today.
Somewhere around 1981, Robert Michael Greene entered the band. The first night he played, the guys thought he was stuck up and kind of didn’t like him. That soon changed and next thing you know, he was a brother. Most will remember him as the morning DJ on WFTP 1330 Fort Pierce Country. His radio antics and his patented “Gooooood mornin’”, made him a household name in town. With the changing of radio jobs, RMG left Fort Pierce and the Easy People Band in 1985. He is credited with founding both The Easy People Band Spam Ranch and Easy People Band Brand Famous Catfish Head Pizza. We were saddened in the fall of 2000 to learn of the passing of Robert Michael Greene as the result of an automobile accident.
Shortly after Robert Michael Greene joined the band, Bruce Hunter began playing rhythm guitar and singing some of the lead vocals. Seemed like you couldn’t tell him from Merle Haggard or John Conley. Bruce hung around until about 1988 when he moved to Nashville to pursue his fortune. He shows up occasionally and does a show here and there with the band to this day. Actually he did most of 2001 with us playing in the Vero Beach area.
About a year before Bruce left, Gary Abercrombie decided that he needed to leave the band to devote his time to his trucking business. He drops by every once in a while and sits in. Usually terrifying our present drummer with his Keith Moon like attack on the drum kit. Most of the time, the drums survive.
Gary was replaced for a short time by Ed Lewis and then Howard Folcareli. Howard had lived in Fort Pierce since the 1960’s and had been in a road band touring the western United States and on the road with Gary Stewart’s road band Train Robbery. He had also been working with a local band named Quarter Moon that included today’s present guitarist Billy Smith (original guitarist Jimmy Smith’s cousin). Howard hung around until he started taking drum lessons and decided that he wanted to play music that sounded “just like the record”. He was lured away by the Bottom Dollar Band and moved on into the world of “learn your licks like the record so we can conform to the likes of a bunch of stinking-ass line dancers.” Howard stops by and sets in sometimes and when Joe (our present drummer) is out of town or something, plays jobs with us. Howard is a brother and anything I alluded to that sounds like I am trying to get his goat should be taken just like that.
Donnie Coleman joined the band in place of Robert Michael Greene in 1985. He sings harmony that will make you cry and could phrase himself with Felix like no one else. He also played a good straight rhythm guitar and played steel guitar with the band. Donnie also has a claim to fame as singing harmony on the Gary Stewart version of “Easy People” from the Steppin’ Out album. At the time he was playing in Gary’s road band Aberdeen Rockfish Railroad. He also wrote the song “Seeing’s Believing” from Gary’s album Battleground. He left the band in 1993 for personal reasons.
When Howard left, we actually swapped him for the former drummer of the Bottom Dollar Band, Larry Money. What can I say about Larry except what a great drummer, what a great guy and as soon as he joined the band—those women that are always on the dance floor giving the bands the eye made the rest of us feel like week-old fish. It always made us envious to hear him tell all these women that approached him that he was “very happily married”. Larry left us after a couple years to move to another state and run a horse ranch with his wife. If you ever see this web page Larry…we miss you. How about that, a drummer that didn’t have a big mouth, an attitude, rode horses but wasn’t on a high horse, and could play the drums. Now that is hard to find.
After Larry, we went through a couple of off-the-wall hit and miss loud-mouthed-run of the mill drummers. Then we got Joe Falco. Well, at least he’s not guilty of all the afore mentioned sins. Joe had been around for years playing with a variety of bands after moving here as a kid from Connecticut (or some Yankee stronghold like that). Joe is the only guy in the band that ever had his own roadie (poor Peggy, you would think Joe wouldn’t make her get out of bed at 2 a.m. on Saturday night to help tear his drums down and haul them out of a stinking bar). Joe is with us still. Like 99% of the better drummers in the world I have to insult him and make him mad every once in a while just to keep him on his toes.
Let’s talk about Jimmy Smith. Jimmy is one of the most exciting guitarists most people will ever hear. He is also one well-liked guy. Jimmy was there from the start and except for a small disagreement that lasted about a year (circa 1987) and played with the EPB until about 1994. He is still a brother and will always be. Jimmy still shows up and sits in with us and we always have a ball playing songs from years past in the same old driving style that has always been a trademark of the Easy People Band. I think we all will probably always consider Jimmy an inactive member of the Band no matter where he is or whom he is playing with.
Merle Brewer was the first guitar player to try and fill Jimmy’s shoes. His style was a bit different than Jimmy’s but a great guitar player, singer, and a prolific songwriter. The band was really tight with Merle. When Howard quit to join the Bottom Dollar Band, he went with him and never even told us that he quit. He wasn’t with them long and moved back to Indiana. As long as he and I were friends, I figured that if he quit the band he would at least tell someone. I have never talked to him again after the last night he showed up and we all said, “see you next week”.
Billy Smith took over the week after Merle left. How about this—a guitar player that is responsible, owns equipment, and is reliable about being where he is supposed to be when he is supposed to be there. Billy is also a great guitar player and a great guy. As I mentioned earlier, he is Jimmy’s first cousin. I remember him from back about 1968 when we were kids in rival bands in high school. Billy was the bass player for Tradition’s Children, a band composed of the kids of some of the more affluent Fort Pierce families. You know what I mean, I mean they got all the dances at school because they were all dating cheer leaders and stuff like that. Billy claims that he was the black sheep of the band. He has made the rounds of Fort Pierce music also, playing with Quarter Moon, Moon Shadow, the Flounders (aka Volcano), and the Symptoms. Billy is also the mystery saxophone player with the band.
I guess I chose to speak of myself last because I can make it shorter by talking about the rest of these guys first and then tying it all together. My name is Tommy Schwartz and I joined the band when Bruce Hunter left in 1988. Actually I had been going and sitting in with the EPB for years before being hired. Bruce Hunter and Gary Abercrombie came to my house when Robert Michael Greene left in 1985 and asked me to come play a job with them and see how it goes. I didn’t get the job because Donnie Coleman was Felix’s wife’s (now X-wife) cousin and because in those days Felix thought I was an asshole. It just took him a while to get to know where I was coming from. I had played in Fort Pierce bands since 1967 and have been through it with just about everyone. My first night playing in a bar was with Gary Stewart at a place in Vero Beach called “Good Time Charlie’s”. It was owned by another Fort Pierce legend, Wesley Davis. At the time I was playing with Gary’s brother Greg in a teen band called the NuBrume. Gary needed a bass player for the night and gave me a chance. From that night on I never went back to teen dances. When I got out of the Air Force, I went to hear Greg’s band play. The band was called Fly Hornsby and the UFOs. The bass player was a young kid named Felix Moss. Greg and I started playing with a band called the Funky Little Country Band and soon ended up playing in West Palm Beach with a band called Swamp Fever. Swamp Fever was to West Palm like the Easy People were to Fort Pierce, I mean the bad boys of loud, driving, and sometimes crude country music fueled by whatever someone took us into the parking lot and stuck up our noses (aren’t we all glad that those days are gone and we all lived to laugh about them and shake our heads in wonder). After Swamp Fever, I played with a few other local bands including Hostage, The Last Band, and Okeechobee Homegrown. Mostly I concentrated on my home recording studio. It was through it that I became acquainted to Merle Brewer. He and I produced 7 songs that he had written that we called the Rank Amateurs project--great songs by Merle. At the same time I was also recording demos for Gary Stewart, which I consider to have been a great honor. I had always been good friends with Jimmy Smith and Robert Michael Greene and had used them in my recordings a lot. I think it was through Jimmy that Felix and I got to know each other better and he decided that he wanted me in his band (1988). Felix and I have been through a lot of years together, longer than anybody else that has ever been in the EPB. Anyway we will probably play together ‘til we’re just too old. …one of you kids get a stick… run the dogs off from the porch….
Tommy Schwartz
October 2002
©Copyright 2002 by The Easy People Band