STEVE SWINEHART (as imagined by Gilbert)

Jan started our first blog more than a year ago and for some reason, our lead guitar player has not provided a bio.  Since I handle his insurance and investments, I know he doesn’t have a criminal past (deviant maybe, but nothing that would raise his rates).  So, here is Steve’s bio as I envision it.  Gilbert

I was never the best looking kid in my class and as for brains, my mother often said “He’s a happy child”.  But I was gifted in the ways of music – my third grade teacher called me an “Idiot Savant”.  Whether it was banging on trash cans or dressing in my mother’s blouse and heels while I strummed a ukelele and belted out “Tip Toe, through the Tulips”, I knew there would always be music in my soul.

Puberty hit me real hard and I came to realize that Star Trek and Comic Book Conventions would never help me meet the babes so I  sold my first issues of Spiderman (Amazing Stories of course) & The Fantastic Four to buy a starter guitar (It had “Made in Hurry” stamped on the back).  I joined up with a neighborhood band, “Paul & the Pimple Poppers”.  Our crowning achievement was a 20 minute version of “Colour My World”. 

I was wildly successful and played in a variety of bands.  I recall one stellar band that Bob (Diedrich, now of Mid Life) and I belonged to.  We worked for a year, got our songs together and finally made it to the top – we played a side stage at the Pima County Fair!  We were warmly received (whenever people could hear us over the apartment-sized speakers of Tower of Power playing on the main stage.  Ah the glory of the applause, ah the future so bright, ah we broke up a couple of weeks later.  I worked my way up the ranks again and was playing in a church band with Khang (Nguyen, also of Mid Life).  Gilbert (Castillo, of Mid Life and a god-like figure in my eyes) started singing with church band and kept asking me to join his band.  He had this strange notion of being “paid” and I resisted for awhile.  But I finally joined up and the rest is history.  I get to play and people don’t laugh, I get to sing and nobody throws anything at me.  Sometimes I remember all the words to the song I’m singing.

I’m an excellent driver.

Steve