Album Notes

The Nomads&Friends EVOLUTION cd is a collection of songs done by The Nomads and some members of The Nomads done with other artists. All the songs are original as opposed to some being cover songs. The Nomads started out in Mount Airy,N.C. practicing in the basement of one of the members parents. We played some high school "gigs" but most of our playing was at local dance places and some places in Hillsville and Galax,Va. We did play some outdoor concerts,night clubs,fraternity parties and skating rinks at night. Most of our audiences numbered from 250 to 3000 people. We played almost every week-end and made from $250.00 to $500.00 for each performance. We specialized in "hard rock" at a time when nearly all the other local bands were still doing Motown songs. Musically we were pretty crude at the beginning but got better as we became more experienced. We did some original recordings at a time when you could get 500 45rpm records pressed for $300.00. Our first recording was done in a local radio station. That record was "How Many Times" b/w "Not For Me". It was not exactly the best quality but we placed it in record stores in Mount Airy as well as Hillsville and Galax and got airplay on all the local radio stations. We probably could have sold even more if we had the forethought to order more and sell them at the places we played. "Thoughts Of A Madman" b/w "From Zero Down" was recorded at a real recording studio outside of Winston-Salem,N.C. The quality of that recording was a big improvement from the first recording that we had done. All of those records were sold out also. "Thoughts---" was the #1 played song on the jukebox at the place we uaually played at in Hillsville for a solid year. Our next recording was done at Reflection Sound Studios in Greensboro,N.C. and resulted in the release of "Willowgreen" b/w "Plastic Year" and again the quality was an improvement over our second foray into recording. Again these copies all sold out and "Willowgreen" was even covered by some other local bands. Eventually that record was heard by some recording executives at Double Shot Records located in Los Angeles,Ca. and they asked us to go back into the recording studio and re-do "Willowgreen" in more of an up-beat tempo. We did so and they released the new version of the song with a new title-"Fields Of Peppermint" with the band name being changed to "Willowgreen". This recording was released nationally and made it as high as the 120's on the Billboard record charts and got favorable write-ups in both Billboard and Cashbox record magazines. It made it into the top five most requested airplay songs on a number of radio stations across the U.S. The band continued to improve musically and I wish we had recorded some of the other original songs that we wrote but alas we didn't. The band broke up sometime in the early seventies and Bruce Evans and Mike Beason went on to form a band called ShotGun and recorded another version of "Willowgreen" b/w "Play On Country Music". I recorded some songs with Don Dixon and one also with the group he was with at the time that was called Arrogance and located in Chapel Hill,N.C. While playing as "The Nomads" we played a couple of weeks at a night club in a military town. The club owner also owned a motel and in addition to paying us to play he also provided us with three motel rooms to stay in free of charge. The night club had a fog maker,strobe lights and projected scenes playing on one of the walls of the club. The patrons consisted of many military people and there was quite a lot of drug use going on. We were offered free drugs so many times that we began putting our drinks away from the front of the stage to avoid having drugs put in them without our knowledge. A couple of band members ended up playing musical beds with a couple of girls we met at the club and we were threatened by a man with a shotgun that insisted we "quiet down". One of the band members got drunk and kept jumping into the swimming pool even though it was almost 3 o'clock in the morning. One of our band members was underage and we had to lie in order to play at some of the places we did. I guess we did many crazy things during our playing days but we had a lot of fun and did end up writing and recording some original songs that have been heard nationally and internationally. A lot of that we owe to our manager and also to Crypt Records and Double Shot Records. We hope you enjoy the compilation!!!