History of the Tymetravelers

The Tymetravelers was a group of guys who enjoyed getting together, making music and having a good time for a nine-year period from 1998 to 2007. (I wanted to document the band's existence from my vantage point while I still had some memory left.) Four guys started getting together and jamming in 1998. They were Richard Johnson on guitar, Lem Yow on bass, Ron Grubb on the mandolin and Bob Burkhead manning the bongos. Richard was sort of the unofficial leader and would often say the band played an eclectic mix of acoustic songs both old and new...some country, folk, soft rock....a little bit of everything.

One day in 1999 I was invited to sit in with the guys. Not having any of my instruments with me, Rich handed me his 12-string Ovation acoustic guitar and I tuned up and joined in. We knew we weren't headed for fame and fortune necessarily, but we sure had a lot of fun and we saw right from the start that a lot of good harmony singing was going to be a major part of our "sound". I don't know how many gigs, if any, these guys had played before I joined, but before I had a chance to settle in and get comfortable, Richard announced one day we would be playing at "Southern Randolph Country Days" (a local annual street festival) in Seagrove, NC in September of that year. To say I was nervous was an understatement. Playing in public was not exactly my idea of "having fun" and my only previous experience with "performing" was singing in church choirs and playing with a gospel group in small area churches and rest homes. We began practicing once or twice a week in earnest to prepare for the event. We would meet in an unoccupied house next to Richard's house which belonged to his wife. This house would become our "studio" for the next eight years. I believe it was around this time the group came up with the name"Tymetravelers". We all had an interest in science fiction in general and time travel in particular and we were fans of the Byrds and even performed some of their music, thus the "Y" in the name. One thing unique about us was the fact we used sheet music and did not memorize our songs. We were not your typical musical group or band, that was for sure. Anyway, the five-member Tymetravelers debuted that September in Seagrove with about an hour set and it seemed to go quite well.

Someone must have thought we weren't too bad as we started getting requests to perform at private parties, wedding receptions, other outdoor festivals and the like. Maybe I was being overly modest, but I thought we were more a novelty than anything else, considering there were plenty of bands around that were much better than we were. We actually got paid money at some of the gigs....others were a "trade off" in one way or another....and others were just freebies for friends. One interesting gig was a private party where a retired local radio personality actually "emceed" our performance in a two room club house. That was a strange evening indeed as one of our troupe was being pursued all night long by an inebriated, elderly lady. That was quite hilarious. During this period I traded Rich's Ovation for my 5-string banjo which gave us an even more unique sound (as the years went by I would trade off and play both my banjo and Martin 6-string guitar, depending on the song). It was also around the year 2000 we began a semi-regular stint at Bailey's Coffee and News....a coffee house in downtown Asheboro. There was a lot of good local acoustic music talent that took turns playing Saturday nights at Bailey's. The Tymetravelers worked their way into the rotation and called Bailey's home for the next few years.

As in most cases, the fun did not last long as problems began to creep into our little musical world. I don't want to go into too much detail here as personal problems and interpersonal relationships played a large part in the break up of the original five-member Tymetravelers. Some people had a problem with making it to gigs on time. Substance abuse and lack of serious interest in the music led to the formation of a new Tymetravelers in early 2001. The trio of Rich, Lem and Tim mostly jammed in the studio and played the occasional Saturday night at Bailey's. That is, until September 11, 2001. The attacks on our country that year had a profound effect on us and some members did not feel like making music for a few
months. Once we got back into the studio, the next couple of years was a "golden" period of growing as we expanded our repertoire, and improved our harmonies.

The year 2003 brought more change as the band lost Bailey's Coffee and News as a venue when the coffee shop was forced out of business by their landlord. That was about the only public performing we were involved in at the time, if I remember correctly. The studio jamming continued. Then in late 2003 or early 2004 enter John Ferree. John (a former radio DJ like myself) was a solo act who was a prolific song writer and was already a friend of Richard's. He began sitting in with us and brought with him a new excitement for music with his songs. With the addition of John we went almost immediately from being a cover band to playing mostly original material. John also had the drive and ambition that the rest of us apparently did not. After six months of practice and hard work John had us headlining a concert at the Sunset Theatre under the name "Purgatory Mountain". The first half of the evening featured local singer-songwriters and the second half was John, Rich, Lem and Tim as Purgatory Mountain performing original songs written by all four members (but mostly John). I look back at that evening as a musical "high point" for the Tymetravelers and me personally.

Shortly thereafter, all three original Tymetravelers voiced to each other a concern that we had become John's "back up band" and wanted to return to the way things were before, with the three-part harmony and no immediate pressure to prepare for public performances. John was (is) a wonderful songwriter, but most of his songs tended to be about motorcycles and the road, which eventually wore on the rest of us. The relationship with John just kind of fizzled and the Tymetravelers returned to their studio jamming and, in retrospect, that was probably the beginning of the end. Except for the occasional private party gig, there was nothing or no one to push us to do more.

Rich had always been involved with other musical endeavors through the years and he began adding on more at this time even though he claimed Tymetravelers' music was most important to him. There also had always been friction between Rich and his wife about the use of her house as the studio through the years. As the year 2006 dawned, Rich began spending more time with a new endeavor known as the "Goodtimers" and less with the Tymetravelers. For one year, Rich convinced Lem and me to join the Goodtimers (an eight-member group when you included Lem and myself) and he promised we would continue the Tymetravelers as well. That was ok for what it was, but Lem and I missed the old times and camaraderie of the Tymetravelers. One quick side note: There was a Tymetravelers reunion of sorts in June 2006 when our old friend Bob Burkhead joined us onstage at an outdoor event which also saw the first and last time I ever played my Rickenbacker 12-string electric guitar in public. After the Christmas 2006 concert of the Goodtimers, Lem and I said our goodbyes to that group. The Tymetravelers struggled along until we performed our final paying gig at a wedding reception in June 2007. There have been a few musical "get-togethers" of the original three since then, but they have been few and far between.

I now spend my musical days playing bass guitar and singing harmony in the praise and worship band at my church. Richard still has his many music projects including the Goodtimers and a duet he's had many years with Norman Grey and I even hear he still plays with John Ferree occasionally. I don't think Lem is doing much musically these days although he did have a short stint in a southern rock band a couple of years ago. We talk about getting together and jamming in some form or another, but nothing is happening. When I want to relive old memories, I have cassettes, CDS, VHS tapes and DVDS to enjoy. Whether we ever make music together again or not, I will always look back at the Tymetravelers with great fondness.

Good tymes indeed.

PS: This is only a brief overview of the Tymetravelers' story. Many episodes and details have been excluded. There were the parties at Scott and Corie's, John's homemade Mexican food, the all-night star gazing sessions, the unfinished Purgatory Mountain CD, the Tymetraveler Studio South in Candor, NC and, of course, the many personal stories which probably cannot be told without retaining a staff of high-powered lawyers! Maybe I will write a book someday.

A Real Cuban Hero

Read about the cuban journalist who has been persecuted by the Castro regime:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/11/07/cuba.blogger.detained/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn

Despite what the liberal, Hollywood pinheads (ie: Sean Penn) would have you believe, Fidel Castro is no hero or anyone who should be "looked up to".