00:00:10.000 - 00:00:26.920

My name is Nori Guthrie from the Woodson Research Center, Fonder Library Rice University. I am interviewing Linda Herrera. One of the original co-owner of Liberty Hall today is June 13th 2016. This is part of the Liberty Hall Oral History Project. Could you tell me a little

00:00:26.930 - 00:00:57.400

bit about your early life? My early life, I am a baby boomer but I just barely made it. I was born September 3rd, 1945 in Boca Raton, Florida because my daddy was in the Air Force and he had a, uh, another year or so, uh, to

00:00:57.409 - 00:01:25.660

go, but they were from Pennsylvania. So we moved back to Pennsylvania and, uh, he worked for the Light Company there. It was called Electrolux. No, that's a vacuum cleaner electro Pack or something like that. But he came, um, part of his air force training was in

00:01:25.669 - 00:01:47.279

Texas and he liked the weather and he was really tired of the snow. So he came down here, got a job and we moved here in 57 and we moved to Pasadena, Texas mainly because they researched and found it had the best school system which is

00:01:47.290 - 00:02:15.320

debatable because it has a lot of rednecks too. So we lived in Pasadena until I graduated from high school. And then I went to Sanja Junior College for a little while and U of H for a little while. And then I met a man and moved

00:02:15.330 - 00:02:43.679

into his apartment, which was a little controversial even in those days because it was just the beginning of the hippie era. And uh that was about 1965 and it was right in the Montrose. It was a beautiful place, a three story old, tiny uh beautiful apartment

00:02:43.690 - 00:03:05.509

building with windows that opened onto the street. It was right at the end of the Southwest Freeway. It was in Alabama and Travis and my husband had gone to Saint Thomas High School and some college, but he was from the inner city and he knew all

00:03:05.520 - 00:03:25.809

these people and he knew a lot of people in the art world. And at Saint Thomas, uh he, I guess he went to Mary in high school and he got drafted and had to go to Vietnam and I just felt lost. I went with him to

00:03:25.820 - 00:03:45.449

um San Antonio where he trained. But when I got back to, I had a good job uh working for Harris County. But when I got back to Houston, I, I just felt lost and that's when the hippie thing really hit. And there were these love ends.

00:03:45.460 - 00:04:04.399

And so I went to this one at Herman Park and I met this guy named Mike Condray who was from Beaumont and he had a motorcycle and he had several friends that had motorcycles. And that was very exciting for me. And uh I let them stay

00:04:04.410 - 00:04:30.140

at the house because then you didn't really have to have a bed. All you had needed was a mattress on the floor that, you know, that's how the hippies lived. And um he was from Beaumont, but he had uh this entrepreneurial spirit. And I did too.

00:04:31.160 - 00:04:54.600

And so we talked about starting a little store right there in the apartment. But um and then we decided that wasn't big enough, it wasn't set up, right? And he found this old church at Bagby and mcgowan and we named it Jubilee Hall. And uh uh

00:04:54.609 - 00:05:14.440

we did our business on the second floor and on the first floor, they opened the first head shop and they called it the headdress. And we got to know those people very well because uh we were all hippies and everybody uh for money's sake, live together.

00:05:14.519 - 00:05:45.230

Besides the rent, rents were really cheap. And uh we became friends and we gave quite a, well, we gave maybe 1020 shows at Jubilee Hall who, who were some of the bands that played there or, or performers. Um uh what's his name? ZZ Top, Billy Gibbons,

00:05:45.820 - 00:06:08.309

Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill and Frank Beard. And, but at that time, they called their band, the Moving Sidewalk. Plus I think they had a couple of other names and they didn't have their beards. They were just little skinny kids out of high school. But uh

00:06:08.320 - 00:06:29.880

ZZ Top played there and John Lee Hooker, uh we got a call, the guy that manages ZZ Top called and said, John Mayall's in town. Uh And why don't we get it? Why don't we uh surprise everyone in the community. We'll announce it on the radio

00:06:29.890 - 00:06:52.010

and we'll get him to play at Jubilee Hall. And we said, great, you know, and there were more people outside than inside. Do you know who John Mayo is? He's from England and he had the Blues Breakers and uh he was pretty famous then and he

00:06:52.019 - 00:07:14.480

was a wonderful bluesman. And uh we ran some films, we had a series of films from the Janice Film company and uh we would try to simulate a light show with these concave disks with oil and colors. And I have a couple of pictures of us

00:07:14.489 - 00:07:37.200

up upstairs of Jubilee Hall just looking so serious, looking up and down, you know, to see if we're getting any kind of psychedelic look for the stage. But um I guess John Lee Hooker and John, well, they were all pretty famous. John Lee wasn't in very

00:07:37.209 - 00:07:54.640

good health then and he couldn't even stand up to play. He had to sit down, but we had a big old house uh on Stratford, which was in the Montrose and John Lee stayed with us. A lot of the artists stayed with us. But um the

00:07:54.649 - 00:08:14.019

first thing John did when he came in the house, my girlfriend had a big pot of beans going and he went directly to the stove and lifted the lid off the beans and went. Sure smells good. And I still have the bed and I sleep in

00:08:14.029 - 00:08:38.348

the bed that he slept in and a bunch of the old blue guys slept in that bed. Um Mississippi, Fred mcdowell, he's the one that wrote, I don't play No rock and roll. Um Man's lips gum. I cook breakfast for man. And uh he took out

00:08:38.359 - 00:09:02.650

his false teeth and showed me he had a gold uh guitar inlaid in his denture. Oh, wow. And he was such a nice man. You know, he was a field uh hand and John Lomax discovered him. He was from Navasota and a very humble, beautiful spiritual

00:09:02.659 - 00:09:27.099

man, real simple, but we had quite a few people stay with us. And so then uh right or kind of around the corner from uh Jubilee Hall was a, a restaurant called the Maverick Camel. And there was this theater group that was running it called The

00:09:27.109 - 00:09:56.229

Theater of All Possibilities. They took their philosophy from um a famous philosopher uh from Russia. Uh I forget his name right now. But um and they were ready to get out of the restaurant business because the restaurant business is really hard work. So we bought it.

00:09:57.250 - 00:10:21.210

And the first thing we did was find a cook and we found this wonderful black woman named Vera Newman. And Mike would go and pick her up every morning at 630. And we fed the community, we always had beans and rice. And uh my job was

00:10:21.219 - 00:10:41.809

to cook the and of course it was brown rice. We never served white rice, but we had vegetable rice. And that was my job to cook the rice every day. And you know, those pots were big. They were like this. And uh we had hamburgers, grilled

00:10:41.820 - 00:10:59.390

cheese, but we had a steam table and we use fresh vegetables. We would go to the farmers market at 530 in the morning, buy the stuff we needed. And um, and she was a wonderful cook and we, I like to think that we kept the community

00:10:59.400 - 00:11:16.520

alive but people from all over would come there to eat. I don't know if you've ever eaten at Harry's. No, I haven't, but Harry's is on the same principle. Those were a couple of Greek guys. Oh, yeah. No, I, I have eaten there. Yeah. But in

00:11:16.530 - 00:11:39.820

the old days Harry's was real crude. I mean, uh it, they've got it fixed gentrified now. But um everybody ate at Harry's because it was so healthful. You know, they use fresh vegetables and they had the steam table uh concept. And uh one of the guys

00:11:39.830 - 00:12:00.010

was real loud. And then they would, if someone ordered a hamburger or something, they'd have to holler it back and he would joke with the customers and he was a great personality. And, uh, there was another Greek restaurant in the area called Zorba's, that's now called

00:12:00.140 - 00:12:24.340

Club F. And there's a lot of trouble that goes on there, but it used to be called Zorba's and we knew the artist that, uh, designed the front. He used pilings from the docks uh in Galveston and a lot of rope and um lifesavers, you know

00:12:24.349 - 00:12:43.299

that go on boats. And oh, it was a great place to eat. And all the waiters were Greek and there's one named John who is still in town who works at a restaurant on Gray West, West Gray and their shish kebab was to die for. I've

00:12:43.309 - 00:13:01.260

never been able to duplicate it and it all had to do with the marinade that they put the meat in. They used a lot of lime. But um there were a lot of good places to eat in the area, healthful places, you know, that it just

00:13:01.270 - 00:13:23.070

didn't cost much at all to eat there, which was a good thing. So, at this time, were you, you had both jubilee hall and the family hand at the same time or um, we were phasing out of jubilee hall. Uh Oh, we would have uh I

00:13:23.210 - 00:13:45.489

think we gave jubilee hall up and the people that had the headdress. They were kind of a tight crowd that had known each other somewhere else and they moved on a, into a commune out to New Mexico. It was called free, uh, tree Frog. But we

00:13:45.500 - 00:14:08.140

had a lot of adventures with them. We have a, a real crude movie on the new website, the Montrose Houston hippie tribe website. The ears are kind to help me set up. But, uh, there's a real crude picture of, uh, a trip we took to Austin.

00:14:08.150 - 00:14:25.109

We got an old school bus, a short school bus, but it's real fun to watch because they put music to it now. But we took half the seats out, put motorcycles in the back, drove up there and they had a love in and, um, it was

00:14:25.119 - 00:14:46.090

fun to see people when they were really young, you know. But no, we had given uh jubilee hall up because, uh, it takes a lot of people to run a restaurant the way we were doing it because we were baking our own bread. And besides regular

00:14:46.099 - 00:15:08.250

bread, we would have like zucchini bread and carrot bread. And we had one girl that was just the baker and, but thera is the one who kept everything going really. And Miss Newman is the one who went on to Liberty who the yes she did, she

00:15:08.260 - 00:15:36.940

did for a while. Um, and we kept the restaurant. Well, we ended up moving upstairs in the restaurant because there were a lot of apartments up there and the front porch or up above the front doors, the architecture of the building went out like that and

00:15:36.950 - 00:15:59.039

it was aluminum or some sort of metal. And the KKK bombed KPFT. Well, they bombed us at the same time and I, and we were sleeping upstairs and the only thing that saved us was the way that architecture was it protected our US from the bomb.

00:15:59.340 - 00:16:16.809

And I had gone to high school with that guy that did it. They uh tried him and found him not guilty. And uh see, I went to South Houston High School and there's a lot of rednecks over there and, you know, hippies were a real threat

00:16:16.820 - 00:16:34.989

to people back then the long hair and people thought they smell bad and, you know, did a lot of dope and we didn't do a lot of dope. I mean, we were always smoking weed but it's not like we'd get up and take acid in the

00:16:35.000 - 00:16:53.390

morning or anything. You know, acid was kind of like a sacred, like the Indians would do their um sacred rituals and acid is not too much fun to take in the city. You kind of have to go outside. So we went down to the Brazas River

00:16:53.400 - 00:17:16.670

a lot and camped out. There's, there's, there's pictures on that website of um tail of the brasses is what we call it. But we kept the restaurant for a while. And then Mike would go, well, sometimes there would ride the bus to work and her bus

00:17:16.680 - 00:17:40.709

went right by this old American Legion Hall that was on Shaver Street, Shaver and Peas, one of the one, the main streets that went directly downtown. And, uh, she came running in one morning at 630 said, I found it, I found the place because we'd been

00:17:40.719 - 00:18:00.209

talking how we needed a bigger place because we would have music at night after, uh, you know, working all day during the restaurant. But lightning played all the time. And then there were a lot of people that worked at the restaurant that were aspiring musicians. And

00:18:00.219 - 00:18:19.569

Mike really uh took them under his wing even though he wasn't a musician, but he could look at it from a promoter's point of view and also an aesthetic point of view and give them pointers and so many and so many of them will tell you

00:18:19.640 - 00:18:40.109

he really helped us in our career. But, um, it just got to be too big. And so Mike and the work at the restaurant was just too taxing. And so Mike decided that we needed to get, go get this hall Liberty Hall which held about 400

00:18:40.119 - 00:19:02.300

or 500 people and it was all made out of wood. And so the sound was fantastic, but we did a few alterations. I was kind of like, uh I did some of the cooking, but I was like the designer. Uh I had a couple of second

00:19:02.319 - 00:19:25.670

hand stores and so cool big things that I thought I could make a good stage set out of. I would decorate the stage and uh I painted a lot of the walls and uh I painted one of the, do you know who Escher is? I painted

00:19:25.680 - 00:19:47.699

an Escher painting on the top of the restroom, wall ceiling in the office and it was silver basically, but it was really, really trippy. I was proud of that. And then I, I painted another one that, uh, we call the underwater room. It was where the

00:19:47.709 - 00:20:13.010

big air conditioning equipment was. And it was a shortcut from the kitchen to the entertainer's room. And it was, uh like a dressing room. It, it was all on the wall though. I did it with an overhead projector. I projected this picture on there and it

00:20:13.020 - 00:20:29.439

showed mirrors and then we put real lights all around the mirrors and then it had, you know, the, uh, the thing that looked like a shelf and then it had a couple of chairs down there. But, uh, I thought that was the coolest thing. There were

00:20:29.449 - 00:20:54.900

about six of them, the underwater room. And so we started giving shows and Mike met this guy from Louisiana named CC Courtney. And that was our very first show and it was a theater show and it was called The Earl of Ruston. And it was a

00:20:54.910 - 00:21:18.020

real story about their uncle who was a little off and he lived in Shreveport. Well, Ruston, Louisiana. And it's up near Shreveport and CC was a real ambitious, talented guy. He had taken some acting classes and right now he still teaches acting in New York, but

00:21:18.030 - 00:21:42.650

he also had, has done a few classes in, uh, Europe too. But, uh, we ran the Earl of Ruston for a month and they all stayed at our house and even C C's father was in on it. And, uh, that was so much fun to interact

00:21:42.660 - 00:22:03.750

with them and have them, you know, just hang around theater people and see what that was like. And so when that show was over, they took it to Broadway, there's a guy in town that's a casting director named, uh, Gary Chason and he kind of helped,

00:22:03.760 - 00:22:22.510

um, he knew some people in New York and he was able to pull some strings. And so Earl of Ruston ran for a while on Broadway. They tried it a little bit later with some other shows. Like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. And this other

00:22:22.520 - 00:22:48.680

one that cece wrote called Ripped and Wrinkled, but it didn't, it wasn't as successful as Earl Rustin. But then after the, uh, one month of having, um, Earl Ruston, which took the town by Storm and the writers at the Chronicle were so good to us. They,

00:22:48.689 - 00:23:08.319

uh, of course, it was a good show, but Ann Hodges and Bob Claypool were the two main writers and uh they gave us great reviews and it was in an odd part of town that straight people were kind of reluctant to go to because it was

00:23:08.329 - 00:23:35.920

right next to the Fifth Ward. And uh you know how white people are scared to go and areas they're not familiar with. And uh yeah, I think it educated a lot of people and we were, we, we, we served hamburgers. We always had the beans and

00:23:35.930 - 00:24:02.979

rice. We had 75 cent long neck beers. I'll never forget that. And one reason we served food was because you could have underage people there if you served food. And I have read online fathers talking about bringing their kids to see that show and that it

00:24:02.989 - 00:24:22.869

meant so much to them. And the reason was because we sold food that they could come in. But of course, a lot of underage kids were in there drinking anyway. But anyway, uh, and then after the Earl of Rust and we had a six weeks blues

00:24:22.880 - 00:24:48.180

review and we had, uh, the first one was Freddie King and we had John Lee Hooker and probably man. And oh, we had Muddy Waters. I'll never forget when they drove up. They drove a station wagon from Chicago and he played upright bass and he had

00:24:48.189 - 00:25:13.160

his bass strapped to the top of that station wagon. And, you know, the old time black guys didn't wear blue jeans or weird shirts or anything. They were, they wore white shirts and ties and suspenders and, you know, suit pants and here they were all in

00:25:13.170 - 00:25:36.109

the station wagon and, uh, they drove down from Chicago and you've heard the stories about there was hardly any place for them to stay and people wouldn't serve them food. But I couldn't believe this upright base on top of the station wagon. And Chicago is a

00:25:36.119 - 00:25:58.479

long way away. Anyway, Willie was fabulous and we had Big Moma Thornton and, uh, you know, there's a whole list of people and then it sort of went into the, uh, cos and cowboy phase will. He was getting real popular. And, uh, there were a lot

00:25:58.489 - 00:26:27.349

of guys in Houston, I mean, Austin, uh, musicians that played in the cos cowboys, Michael Martin Murphy, um, Jerry J Walker. You, I think, you know who they are. And then, uh, and we would always our second group, uh, we subscribe to Rolling Stone and I,

00:26:27.359 - 00:26:43.910

I, Mike always would confer with me, who should we get for the second act? Who would go good with this? And so then I'd read Rolling Stone and see if, if anyone was coming up or was gonna be in the area or whatever. You know, we

00:26:43.920 - 00:27:05.160

worked in conjunction with Armadillo World Headquarters a lot because it just makes sense for the manager to book them as they're all coming through. And so we had a lot of the same acts. But, um, we tried to promote local ax as much as we could,

00:27:05.170 - 00:27:23.969

or at least Texas a, just to give young kids a taste of what, what it was like to be on stage and we needed them as much as they needed us. So, if you had to think about a day, your day at Liberty Hall, what was

00:27:23.979 - 00:28:03.800

that? Like? Just one day? Well, I didn't sleep very late and most of it was ordering and cleaning and making sure, you know, we had enough waitresses and I organized, um, dance classes up in the entertainer's room. And so about three days a week, we would

00:28:03.810 - 00:28:27.750

have those classes. They, they were mainly at night because we were in Thursday through Sunday. But, uh I had a ballet teacher come in named Angela Franks who was really good. And then we studied a little bit of jazz and they even let us put on

00:28:27.760 - 00:28:59.250

a performance in between acts. One night, we played, uh, we dressed up like Las Vegas women and we, uh, did this number to a Brazilian jazz artist named Diodato. I'll never forget that, but Liberty Hall was just work, work, work. So, would you kind of sit

00:28:59.260 - 00:29:18.640

together at a table and kind of make the plans of who you were going to book? And no, Mike and the guys would be in the office doing that. I was usually out in the main room making sure everything was all set and that we, you

00:29:18.650 - 00:29:52.459

know, we had enough food and, um, then about 530 I'd go home. Well, I think we always went and ate supper. Usually it's a robbers and I'd take about an hour and get ready, change our clothes. And, uh, I like to wear, uh, crazy vintage clothes

00:29:52.469 - 00:30:20.949

and, um, dress up. And so I had that hour to myself every day and that was kind of a treat. How late were you usually up with the ax? Well, it depended on a lot of things depended on whether the band did a lot of cocaine

00:30:20.959 - 00:30:52.130

or, uh, usually two or three or four get up about eight or nine. That must have been really hard. Yeah, of a grind, I guess I was young. Yeah. And, um, and I loved it. Yeah. No, I mean, that helps. Yeah. Helps. So, since in, in

00:30:52.140 - 00:31:08.099

a sense, you know, there was thera that was working there also. But you were co-owner with, um, Mike and Ryan. What was that like being the, a woman who was in charge at that time and having to deal with them to deal with the talent, et

00:31:08.109 - 00:31:30.709

cetera. Well, I didn't really deal with the talent that much. Um, you know, I, I would say hello to them and everything but I was too busy to go up in the entertainer's room and just sit down and talk to him for a while and that

00:31:30.719 - 00:31:56.780

really wasn't my place anyway. You know, there were tons of groupies around and, uh, they were always there enter entertaining the, the bands. And so that worked out good. Yeah. Did you kind of as a woman working in the field? Did you ever encounter any challenges?

00:31:58.650 - 00:32:25.550

Um, well, I really, in a way I was the, I was the only woman but our waitresses and, uh, there were a lot of other women involved that, uh, we would have never made it without them and they garnered a lot of respect from all the

00:32:25.560 - 00:32:58.969

guys and there was never any, um, you know, prejudice or that was right when the women's movement was happening too. And, uh, I don't think we ever had Gloria Steinem or Bella Abzug or any of those ladies. I think they were always in bigger venues. But,

00:32:58.979 - 00:33:24.550

um, that definitely was, uh, all over the newspapers, you know, and, and, uh, the, everyone in the States knew it was going on. You know, the only thing I can say is if the guys were gonna go look for, look at a show like at Broadway

00:33:24.560 - 00:33:43.380

or somewhere. One time, Mike went to San Francisco and I was just dying to go to San Francisco and he wouldn't let me go. And when I think back about it, you know, probably if I would have thrown a fit or something, I could have gone,

00:33:43.510 - 00:34:09.669

but somebody had to be here to hold the Fort and I could remember being at the house by myself and getting up real early and it was just me and the, at the restaurant getting everything ready, getting through another day. Right. But there wasn't too much,

00:34:09.679 - 00:34:42.199

um, prejudiced or, um, you know, talking bad to us or anything like that. That's good. That's good. What are some of your most favorite moments? Um, or stories? One time we had the San Francisco Mime troupe and they stayed at our house and there were about

00:34:43.250 - 00:35:09.330

12 or 14 of them and they'd be out in the front yard juggling, practicing their juggling. And the name of their show at the time was the Dragon Lady Revenge. And it was about American soldiers getting addicted to heroin because of the Vietnam war because it

00:35:09.340 - 00:35:39.979

was such a horrible war. And it was right there and it made them, you know, forget about where they were or be able to take it. And, you know, I think Apocalypse now shows it like it was. And, uh, anyway, the Mime troop had brought with

00:35:39.989 - 00:36:10.129

them, Linda Lovelace's Porn movie. The, the first one. Can you remember the name of it? Yeah, they brought that and when we started putting the hall together, we had a really good carpenter that helped us named Philip Bows. Of course, he stayed at our house too,

00:36:10.489 - 00:36:31.560

but he built the stage. It had a proscenium stage, which is your classic Greek uh theater. And it's good for sound. And like I mentioned before, the, the place was wood and so the musicians love to play there because the sound was so good. And I

00:36:31.570 - 00:36:50.840

just wish we would have been a, uh, you know, savvy enough or had enough money to, uh, have a video, uh, sound set up so we could have recorded all those shows. But we didn't, we only got a couple of them. Like we have Bruce Springsteen,

00:36:50.850 - 00:37:14.449

which was a real coot coup d'etat. And, um, do you mean just the audio or just having it, the video of the performance? Because I, I know that we have, oh, of the one and Bruce. No, we have, um, someone recorded off the radio, the KPFT,

00:37:14.459 - 00:37:38.350

um KPFT. And it, it's, um, is it July June or July 1977 Towns Van Zant performance? And, um, it was handed off, it was someone recorded it onto a reel and just handed it off to, uh Craig Calvert from uh Wheatfield. And, um, he, when he

00:37:38.360 - 00:38:02.659

donated his materials to us, he gave us that reel. Cool. But that's, yeah. So I have, I have a CD that is bruised at the same period and it's somebody probably just reported the music on the CD or, I don't know, maybe Craig's was just music.

00:38:02.669 - 00:38:23.780

But yeah, it was just that I think someone recorded the, just recorded the performance by KPFT. But the cool thing was we worked in, uh, conjunction with KPFT and every Thursday night they were there and we record, we, we, uh, it was live on the radio

00:38:23.830 - 00:38:43.830

and I can remember driving to the hall after I'd been gone home and gotten dressed and everything and I got a little preview of the show on. And, uh, that was so cool to have them record every Thursday night. It was so cool. Yeah, this have

00:38:43.840 - 00:39:10.149

been very special but let's say funny things that happened one night we were so crowded that, um, there were a lot of bikers there that night for some reason. And the stage was like, right here and the entertainer's room ran across the top of the stage.

00:39:10.159 - 00:39:27.379

It was quite a big room if you can imagine that. We, because we danced up there, you know, and I'd put mirrors. It was probably as big as that wall. No, twice as big as that put mirrors in a bar. But, uh, it had quite a

00:39:27.389 - 00:39:48.379

few steps to get down and that whole stairway was, the bikers decided they were gonna stand there that night, I guess. So they could see the entertainers come in and out. Well, some girl was in the entertainer room and she wanted to come downstairs and so

00:39:48.389 - 00:40:13.479

that they took her, the bikers and they just handed her one over the other over their head all the way down to the bottom. I thought that was just the coolest thing. And then one of the funniest things lately is that um American Legion Post was

00:40:13.489 - 00:40:37.850

called the Theodore Theodore F Roosevelt American Legion Post. So and so and so, and so and on the wall was a huge framed picture of Teddy Roosevelt. And so this girl wrote in the other day and said, I don't remember much about Liberty Hall, but uh

00:40:37.860 - 00:41:07.770

I remember on the wall they had this big huge picture of Ted Nugent. I thought I was gonna die because Ted Nugent played there, you know, and he has become such a winner. He could be Trump's brother now, you know, and we had a little local

00:41:07.780 - 00:41:33.350

band playing first and they said on online the other day on our new website or on our new Facebook thing. Um, oh, yeah, we knew we were playing, the Ted Nugent was playing right after us and it was just like we were being thrown to the

00:41:33.360 - 00:41:53.939

lions because you know what kind of music Ted Nugent played. I, I don't know if they were the Amboy Dukes then or whatever, but, uh, I did go get to go to one pop festival in Miami and saw him there that, that time and Jimi Hendrix

00:41:53.949 - 00:42:20.149

was there that time too, but I never went to Woodstock or any of the big ones. I have been to burning man though about five times. So, looking back at all of it, um, what do, what have you taken away from the experience? Um, that art

00:42:20.159 - 00:42:47.209

is where it's at in this life for me. And a lot of times I think that did, I waste my life and because I didn't go to college, finish college and I was interested a lot really interested in science. And I, the hippies have got me

00:42:47.219 - 00:43:15.729

is the way I put it and, but then I look at it the other way and go, man, I experienced this thing that not many people get to experience in their life to work for yourself, to be the entrepreneur, to be, you know, just as creative

00:43:15.739 - 00:43:43.330

as you wanna be. I mean, we were always just poor as church mouse. Have you seen some of the posters where it says $2 a ticket? But we seem to make it. Well, you did something really great. So, and since then I um Mike and I

00:43:43.340 - 00:44:09.379

quit the hall and Roberto and Ryan and a couple of other people took it over and they had a whole different concept. They played more jazz and um I decided to move, I got a straight job. These people were from Boston. They offered to move me

00:44:09.389 - 00:44:27.189

to Boston. So I went, I lived there 15 years. I got a great job in a hospital. I moved uh the guy was just finishing his residency, the doctor and he was deciding where to move. And one of them was San Francisco and, and then I

00:44:27.199 - 00:44:47.550

kept saying Glenn San Francisco, OK? And he did and he moved, me and I lived there for 15 years. So I did get to travel around a bit. I've been to Europe once to Scandinavia, but I never traveled as much as I wanted to and I

00:44:47.560 - 00:45:07.449

never was as creative as I wanted to be. And I'm hoping at the end of my life here now that I'm going to be able to do more of that. Not necessarily the traveling but the art or whatever it turns out to be. So in a

00:45:07.459 - 00:45:23.860

sense of connection to what you did. Yeah. Earlier. Yeah, full circle it. Sense. Well, I thank you so much for doing this oral history. You're welcome. It's been really great. I really appreciate it. Thanks. You're welcome.