AFTERALL - A Love Letter To The Boys In The Band

On The Road - London 1980's

Sometimes the last thing you expect comes. It comes out of nowhere or everywhere. It comes all at once. Sometimes it comes from the past lugging with it a firework of memories. If we're lucky, and just a little bit wiser when it arrives, only the good memories will spark.

I call this kind of event The Sneaky Buddha. The thing comes because it's meant to, because it has to. It comes because it's time to learn or to remember or to acknowledge. The Sneaky Buddha delivers on schedule...at the precise moment when we are ready.

Let's go back...

I always loved music, was in all the school plays and sang...a lot.  In 1963 when the first Beatles album was released, I was four. But I remember hearing Love Me Do on the radio and singing it out. The Beatles were on the soundtrack of my young life. I was in love with them. Fully and truly in love.

And I remember seeing them on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. I was Five and it was the first time I conceptualized the idea of a guitar. That's where my eyes went, that's where my ears went. I wanted one, badly.

First Guitar - Stayed With Me For Awhile

My parents handed me my first axe at the age of seven. It was a boxy, nylon string, acoustic affair of a guitar. They employed my first music teacher then and learned to play through the blisters and sore pads. I couldn't have known it then, but my life was beginning to take root.  My gypsy soul was being born in a house in Maplewood, NJ.

Just before my 13th birthday my older cousin sat me down and said "listen". He pulled an LP out of it's sleeve and placed it on the turntable. The second before the needle hit the vinyl, I was young and innocent. A second later my life changed forever. Pink Floyd pushed me further into a musical dream. I felt undone by what I was hearing. I read every single liner note on the album jacket, and once we had listened through the entire album, I looked at my cousin and said, "again". It was 1973 and Dark Side Of The Moon would be my coming-of-age anthem. I was transfixed and transformed. Roger Waters was a musical deity. I worshiped him. I was in awe of his amazing and powerful gifts. I started listening to everything Rock I could get my ears on. I listened to Spirit's Nature's Way over and over and over again. I found magic. It was in the music.

Thirteen - Never Without A Guitar

In 1977 I went off to College in Hiram, OH. I was sitting on the Quad the day I arrived playing my guitar and singing. I looked up and saw The Bearded One, John Scott Graybill, approach. He asked me about my music and I think we sang a song. He said he was putting a band together with some local musicians and that they were looking for a singer. Would I come to sing a couple of songs with them, you know, just to see.  Well, I did. Before I could really grasp what was happening...a band was born.

Ladies and Gentlemen...

AFTERALL

Herman

L to R - Scott on the double neck, me and Peter on bass. Tommy on Drums (not visible)

Herman Pitsinger
Keyboards & Vocals

John Scott Graybill
Guitar, Taurus Pedals & Vocals

Peter Fontanese
Bass

Tommy Knippenberg
Drums

Caro
Vocals & occasional Keyboards

With:

Frank Knill
Sound

Steve Berecek
Lighting

Scott

Tommy

Peter

We were a band in the late 1970's. We were a good band. We might have been a great band. Life had different plans for us. We lost touch. We went our separate ways. More than thirty years have inserted themselves between then and now. 

A few days ago Peter found me. He reached out and now we are reconnecting, all of us, exploring the possibility of meeting up in Ohio to play music again.

To The Boys In The Band,

What you don't know is that when I left Ohio to head back to NY, I took you all with me. You changed the trajectory of my life. Every experience, every show we played, every crazy, lunatic, beautiful thing we did together, learned together, created together came with me. I spent more than 20 years working with incredible bands because of your inspiration. My life in the music business was a dream conjured up in a rehearsal trailer in Garrettsville, OH and on stages playing music with the greatest band I've ever worked with, our band, AFTERALL.

My last gig before retiring was working with Roger Waters. A full circle moment if ever there was one. A moment that would never have happened if AFTERALL had never happened.

My gypsy soul is alive and well, and it remembers. It always has.

See you soon...

Nothing But Love,

Caro

©️ Caro Kalb-Marr