I can't remember exactly how or when Zakk got together for the first time but I know that Alan had been jamming with a bass player named Bill Gemperline and I was invited to audition with the band through Alan. I had seen Bill play before in some clubs around town always as a solo accoustic act. One thing that caught my attention was that Bill had a harmonica holder and played a lot of Neil Young stuff complete with harmonica parts. I also remember him as once playing with Mike Bryan (see The Retros) in a band out of Rosemount called Canterfield Canoe (I think that's the name.)

The jam session went well and we started working up songs that Bill and the other guys were already familiar with. (e.g.Southern Man, Heart of Gold, Lay Lady Lay) I remember being a little like the odd man out in this band at first because Bill and the other two guys had already worked up a lot of songs and I was just sort of a rhythm player along the sidelines. Eventually we started working on songs Alan and I wanted to do with me singing the lead on most of them. As usual, I wanted to do Beatle and McCartney tunes and Back In The U.S.S.R immediately comes to mind as one of the first "non-Bill" songs we worked up in the group. Alan was an awesome lead guitarist so we also started working up some "guitar" top 40 songs as well such as Sweet Home Alabama. By the time we started playing gigs (many of them high school dances) we had 3 or 4 sets of an interesting hodgepodge of top 40 songs and Beatle classics.

An interesting note was that we eventually included an "accoustic" set in our show and Bill would switch off to accoustic guitar and I'd play his bass. Again, here I was being obligated to play bass even though I didn't own one and had never really practiced much on one. I can still remember looking forward to it though and my love for the instrument began to grow during Zakk. In all honesty, I didn't really like playing rhythm guitar because it was sort of boring and most of the time I was simply playing the same thing as Alan until a lead break came along. I was always trying to get a decent sound out of my amp (I still had the Deluxe Reverb) and I was rarely happy with the sound.

Zakk, in a nutshell, eventually came to be one of the hottest bands in P-town as time went by. We played quite a few night clubs as the main act, made some money, and won the annual Battle of the Bands at the PHS auditorium. Our greatest achievement was a concert as second bill to Poo Crau, a fairly huge band in the Midwest at the time. We got a great response and some think we blew the main act away. By that concert we had worked up a few originals that went over quite well with the fans. Living Too Fast will go down as the first song I've written that was ever played to an audience of over 2 people. It was a great feeling!

We were "auditioned" by a record label in Cincinnati one fateful night to determine if we were "marketable" and this experience was one I'm sure that none of us will ever forget. A producer from this record label came to hear us play Living Too Fast as a potential single and the guy was really impressed and said he would sign the band. As it turned out, we later discovered that we would have to pay a small fortune for the "privilege" of cutting this single and realized that the whole thing was a huge scam. We went immediately from excited kids to disillusioned cynics when we became aware of this and in fact broke up not long aftewards. (Dave Crisp in fact, flipped out entirely over the incident for quite awhile.) We had learned a valuable lesson as a result: don't trust anyone with a car phone wearing a suit!)

I also learned how to be professional in Zakk. We were all very comitted to putting on a smooth, cohesive show and that helped us get gigs. Things like good mike technique and dynamics during vocals became the rule and it really helped us sound like a good band and not a bunch of mindless drunks on stage. Bands were a dime a dozen back then and it was very competitive. Zakk cleaned up as one of the handful of employable bands.

I have recently learned that Bill Gemperline passed away after a three year battle with cancer. Bill was a an excellent musician, a great friend and a huge influence on my musical life. He will be sadly missed by the people fortunate enough to have known him.

1974-1975

Zakk 

(left to right) Dave Crisp, S.W, Bill Gemperline, Alan Huff