Secrets History Chapter 7
From 10,000 Islands to The Delta
It is now March 1997, and our engagement with Alan's Hideaway having ended, we looked around Marco Island. Our hope to find a situation to finish out the last few weeks of season. We ended up working with a German couple that had purchased the Windjammer restaurant on Bald Eagle Drive calling it Jammer's (now Porky's) They were into their second year. They booked us to play various schedules alternating with a girl named Heather. Heather had built up a nice trade of Karaoke followers. So we made the best of the opportunity. There was not a hard dance floor, just carpet, and the bar was in a separate room. We had many good evenings but it was difficult to keep the dancing crowds around. Like Alan's Hideaway, Jammer's was also feeling the impact of the Main Sail's popularity that winter. The bar crowds were basically in the other room and would occasionally applaud but most times were engaged in conversation and/or sports on the TV. But it was still good at times, we did manage to make a few connections from there. The entertainment writer for the Marco Island newspaper came in one evening and took pictures and featured a great article in the Eagle. I continued my usual marketing around the area.
In the meantime I was offered a day job with Blue Eyed Bear Inc. A company in Naples that creates hand painted fashion wear. Julie had been working with them for a while as a fashion artist and I hired on as the block sculptor. It was fun work. We both enjoyed the artistic thing. We also decided it was a good time for us to start looking to purchase a house in the Naples area. We knew we wanted to stay in Southwest Florida even though earning a living seemed to require an ever-changing plan. So we got busy with looking at homes on our days off. Our engagement with Jammer's lasted into June, which is about all we could hope for. Marco Island is very quiet during the summer. We managed to get some of our weekends booked that summer. Through ABA Entertainment we booked several weekends with "Hemingway's" Bar at the old Key Wester Restaurant in Naples. A nice restaurant and night club located at the city docks in Naples. A rather quiet summer with the music but we were busily trying to find and purchase a home. We found a home and closed on September 1, 1997.
Heading into the fall we had a handful of bookings. A few interesting developments were taking place for us. The entertainment director for American Legion 303, Debbie, called. She learned of us through a friend of ours. She wanted to give us try. The Legion has Friday and Saturday dances during season. It seems like a small thing but that little veterans club was the first of these type of clubs to try us out in the area. Another opportunity that proved to be of importance was an engagement with Citrus Park RV Resort. Barbara the activities director at Citrus Park called, also after being referred by a couple of good friends of ours. These two situations were a starting point for what we really wanted to do with our music, dinner dances.
We felt a growing frustration with working in public bars and restaurants. Mostly due to the fact that we felt our duo was best suited to a dinner/dance environment. The problem, many places lacked a commitment, not only to us or musical duos like us, but towards anything. Desperately trying one thing after another to make a profit. And we have seen so many places be successful and bankrupt within the same year. It is also confusing at times when you realize the big screen TV might be getting more attention than our music. Or all of the karaoke singers would show up and wonder what this duo here is doing on their stage. It was not unusual for the crowd to break into applause and we would realize that it was a touchdown that they were excited about. The lack of consistency seemed to be most damaging to these places and it didn't do much for us either. We knew we could do better. There were a few local night clubs that cater to a dinner and dancing clientele. Kaki's in Naples was one of them. We ended up playing a few nights with Kaki's in September. Mainly we were filling in for their two house duos that have been with them for a lot of years. Not much chance of us getting any steady work with that. The same type of situation seemed to be in place at the other local dinner dance night clubs. We felt like we would be better served doing something besides hanging around the door at these clubs waiting to be tossed occasional scraps of work. It was shortly after moving into our home that we created Secrets Musical Entertainment. Nothing really new here but a re-direction of our marketing efforts. We devoted quite an effort toward finding out which organizations routinely featured dinner/dances. The emphasis became country clubs, veterans and fraternal clubs, and mobile/RV parks. We developed new marketing tools and composed our own contract. We knew what we wanted to do, so we started cranking out the junk mail.
Throughout that fall we bounced back and forth between public and private venues, and any new opportunities we could round up. One of these public venues was a new place called Plantation Panama in Bonita Springs. A nice concept restaurant that featured various bands from the area. We stopped in one evening to check out the club after having agreed to perform a couple of nights the following week. The room was about half full. It appeared to have some potential. We sat down and ordered a drink and a fellow by the name of Chuck Mangione took the stage. He was fabulous and was backed up by a great band The Linguine Brothers Band. Okay what's up with this? A world renowned recording artist performing to a half empty room. Sounding great! No advertising?! Not a good omen. After a few nights of work with this club we avoided any future bookings. They were bankrupt and closed within a few months. Reinforcing our growing desire to retreat from these type of venues.
Visit the official Chuck Mangione website!
The music playing on this page is a midi file rendition of Chuck's big hit "Feel so Good"
Thru ABA entertainment we picked up an a few more nights that fall. One of these was Highland Woods Country Club in Bonita Springs. We also booked with Naples Bath & Tennis Club and Glades Country Club as a result of our own mail marketing efforts. In early December we received a call from our agent friend Chuck of Panco Entertainment Agency in Omaha. He had a few weekends to fill in Stuart, Florida. We accepted the work at the Marriott Indian River Plantation in Hutchinson Island, Florida, just North of Palm Beach. A big nice resort on the Atlantic Coast. It went well and we returned to Naples in time for our New Year's Engagement.
Click On the logo to Visit the Marriott Indian River Plantation
That New Year's Eve we had signed with the Port of The Islands Hotel via ABA Agency. This big old hotel sits in the 10,000 islands area midway between Naples and Everglades City. An interesting place that has an equally interesting history to it. We heard rumors of drug lords having built the place. If so, they must have done very well for themselves. This place was amazing. Who knows! We were given a room for the evening with our deal. We arrived early in the afternoon of New Year's Eve and walked into the lobby of this hotel. A Spanish style architecture with marble and tile everywhere and a ceiling that appeared to be about 50 feet high. We inquired as to where to setup and we were instructed to set up in front of a large marble fireplace in this huge lobby. Looking at the ceiling and the marble and tile we both went "Ok, well we are going to sound bad this night!". An acoustic nightmare. While setting up, the food and beverage manager Debra Kramer came by and introduced herself, and followed with "Don't worry about the sound, everyone sounds bad here" Now we felt better!
Well we got busy and decided to "not" abandon all hope. It was obvious from looking around that this hotel had plans for a big evening. If anyone could make this room work, I guess it would be us. Our sound system is much more adjustable than that which many entertainers use. Over the years we had evolved into a self-designed audio setup which incorporates a combination of active and passive frequency crossovers on our speakers and a system of signal mixing that allows a lot of versatility in directing our mix output via sub-mixing assignment. We also utilize a great deal of equalization. The real problem is being able to get a sound check, to find out what adjustments to make. The hotel guests were arriving while we worked. There is nothing surrounding this huge complex but everglades and desolate islands, so most of the arrivals were there for the New Year's Eve party. We got setup and managed a brief sound check with a couple of hours to spare. We used every trick we could muster up to minimize the echo problems. We then headed to our room to get ready.
We showed up to a full house with a few hundred guests seated off to the side of the lobby in the restaurant. The dancing progressed and by the middle of the evening the entire lobby was filled with beautifully dressed dancing couples. We conversed with a number of the folks throughout the night and it seems they came in from everywhere. Many from Europe. By the stroke of midnight we had them whipped up to a pretty good frenzy. We celebrated the turning of 1998 and finished out the night with the crowd screaming. We played two encores and called it a night. Yeah, we made that acoustic nightmare workout all right. We are not sure to this day whether it was our efforts to re-engineer our audio or just enough alcohol flowing that the guests did not notice the terrible sound. The large crowd definitely helped create better acoustics. Wonder if anyone has ever done a study of the acoustic properties of the human anatomy? To date, this room remains one of the top worst places acoustically that we have ever performed. The next morning we came in for the complimentary breakfast buffet. Many people stopped by and complimented us for the great evening. Manager Debbie Kramer thanked us and told us how great it all went and that this was the most successful event that they had ever hosted to date. We discussed doing more in the future and we left with a tentative plan for a Valentines Dance in the main Ballroom. What Ballroom?
Our winter season that year was coming together somewhat but we had a mix of different things with some openings in our calendar. Panco Agency called and asked if we would be willing to travel to Mississippi for a couple of weeks in January. Things were slow at Blue Eyed Bear and we did not have any reason to not go. So we accepted a two week 10-night engagement in Greenville, Mississippi. I remember asking Chuck what the weather is like in Mississippi in January. His response was " it is not South Florida, but it also is not Omaha. We signed on to perform at the Lighthouse Point Casino in Greenville Mississippi. The pay was pretty good and they gave us a room for the duration at the Marriott Fairfield Inn. Well needless to say that was a long arduous drive to make but was also a great adventure. We did not realize how bad Interstate 10 thru the Florida panhandle was though, a long bumpy road. We drove that trip in two days. The first night we stayed just outside Mobile, Alabama. The second day we finished the trip through the rolling terrain of Alabama and into Mississippi. From Jackson, Miss we cut over to Vicksburg and followed old Highway 61 to Greenville. Our first experience with driving in the delta. The cotton fields were mostly frozen or semi frozen mud and the winding road had little or no shoulder to it. It was like driving on a levee. I had a constant picture in my mind of sliding off the road and making that terrible drop into the delta mud. But we made it. That stretch through the delta seemed to take forever.
Lighthouse Point Casino in Greenville, Mississippi
The town of Greenville is located about midway between Memphis and Vicksburg on the Mississippi River. We were performing on one of the main gaming floors on this rather large riverboat. We played while the gaming was going and the sound of the slot machines was ever present. The clientele was tourists and locals from the region. A lot of bus tours from Arkansas came in to enjoy this and the other two casinos in Greenville. It was quite a little setup. Our hotel ran limo service to and from the casino 24hrs a day. Yes, the gaming was non-stop. Our music was often times background for the gaming but once in a while we would get a great reaction from the mostly black audiences. It was very meaningful in a way. To see their crazy-leg dancing and get that slap on the back meant a lot. Greenville and that strip of delta is where so many of the blues legends like B.B. King, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters came from. Indeed this is the birthplace of rock and roll music.
We were both born and raised in a river town and I often wondered what became of the flood waters after they passed Memphis. Now I understood. The levee system built many years ago by the corps of engineers was huge and held back some pretty monumental waters at times. This levee system is longer and taller than the Great Wall of China. Through my reading it was evident that none of these towns would be here today if not for the Army Corps of Engineers project. Greenville was all but destroyed in a flood of devastating proportions in 1927. Much poverty is visible in the area today and these casinos provide jobs for many of the locals. It was really interesting to visit, but we still wonder what summer would look like. It was cold a good part of the time we were there. Little evidence of snow though. Surely it must be quite different in the summer with the heat and the cotton growing.
This is a view of the levee at Friars Point. Please click on the picture to read a great article about the history of the lower Mississippi geography, the floods and then subsequent solutions to controlling this huge flood plain.
We finished on a Saturday night and loaded out on a cold windy evening. It was brutal getting the equipment off pushing our loads up a long inclined walkway thru the restaurant lobby and to the entry way. We fell into bed at the Marriott about 3am, facing the return trip to Florida in the morning. We checked out and got on the road as early as possible but it was going on noon. Rain. We didn't know if there was a better way out of the delta than old Highway 61. But we elected to return the way we had come. South to Vicksburg and then east. Navigating the old van down thru the delta was again a bit nerve racking but now the added feature of freezing rain. The thought of sliding off these narrow roads into the muddy cotton fields was ever present. We made it out of the delta into Southeastern Mississippi by nightfall and then took a room just east of Mobile, Alabama for the night. Whoa what a day. Glad that part of the drive is over.
We got up early, our plan was to be into central Florida by evening and get in an overnight visit with my brother, who was vacationing on Clearwater Beach. We turned on the weather channel and saw this huge weather system coming off the Gulf of Mexico. We thought long and hard about it and decided that hanging around the motel room another day would not be appropriate. We contacted my brother and let him know we were going for it. Mobile to Clearwater Beach is a long drive on a good day. We left with maybe we will see you?! So off we went with forecasts of heavy storms throughout the panhandle and most of Florida. All day we pounded our way thru that weather, at times the visibility was practically zero. A heavy sigh of relief when we finally made I-75 heading south. A much better road that I-10. But the weather was actually getting worse as we headed South. We kept our radio on and picked up local stations along the way, tornadoes and heavy thunderstorms were all we heard. Several times we were forced to stop because of the heavy rain flooding the interstate. We thought about getting a room but we were getting close to Tampa Bay. It was nightfall again. Finally we see the lights of Tampa and proceed thru wondering if we should try to get to Clearwater Beach or stay on the I-75 to Naples.
Having lived in the Tampa Bay area for eight years, we knew all to well what the heavy rains could do to all the streets in Hillsborough and Pinellas County. We were so worn out our thought was, if we could just make it to the beach we would be done for the day. We got on Highway 60 to take the Courtney Campbell causeway into Clearwater. We both had a real feeling of uncertainty about crossing the bay. The causeway is about 10 miles across and is one of 3 ways to cross Tampa Bay from Hillsborough Co. It always seemed like the safest way because the other two are long bridges. Much flooding was evident in Tampa and as we approached the causeway we noticed traffic was still flowing but the street lights going across were out and it was windy. We headed forth across the dark causeway, knowing that this would be perhaps the last hurdle of the day. About midway I noticed the bay was now out of its banks and converging on the eastbound lanes happy that we were in the westbound lanes. No sooner did we both look and comment, somewhat shocked by it, then all of sudden, all we could see is a wall of water. We hit the brakes hard and tried not to lose control of the van. We came to a complete stop or near stop, hardly able to tell if we were stopped or moving. The wind was so intense that we knew we had to get across the bay or possibly end up at the bottom of it. Not even sure where the road was.
This is a view of the Courtney Campbell Causeway on a rather wicked day in September 2000. Picture on the right is Clearwater side of the bay looking across toward Tampa. Visible on the horizon is the tall buildings of Tampa on the opposite side of the bay.
We could then make out a set of tail lights in front of us and we used this as our guide to continue. Slowly we crawled the last few miles off the bay following the tail lights that we could barely see. Our first stop on the Pinellas side was a gas station where we just sat for a few minutes to re-gather ourselves. The first tidbit of news we picked up was the tornado sightings near the Courtney Campbell Causeway. Yeah they call them water spouts here in Florida. "Tornado over water". How close were we? Who knows but that would be as close as I ever hope to be to one of these. Obviously, had it been daylight we would have seen this thing hovering in the bay. And would not have ventured out there. In fact, the causeway likely would have been closed by the highway patrol. We made it through the flooded streets of Clearwater to the beach which was also flooding. We arrived late in the evening at the Holiday Inn to meet my brother. We ended up in the lounge and ordered a strong drink. We did not have a room yet so we brought our little traveling companion Chia into the lounge with us. Chia is our cockatiel. She was popular with all the tourists in the lounge that evening. She really did handle the road and the nightlife very well.
