Friends from Ohio

Steve was our bass man and if we had a lead singer in those days, it was him. He started off playing string bass in middle school and by the end of high school, he had added acoustic guitar, bassoon, sax and viola to his arsenal. In the late 70s, he studied mandolin in Providence RI, and he soon went on to study music and major in viola at Rhode Island College, graduating in 1982. He kept going and got an MA in music history from Ohio State before settling back in Rhode Island in 1984.  Since then he’s picked up the hurdy-gurdy and played a lot of early music as well as traditional music on the viola.  These days he’s primarily a composer, designing crazy instruments and currently working on his second opera,  The Legend of the Fairy Melusine. 

Check Steve’s website:  www.stevenjobe.com

Chuck was our rhythm guitarist. He also sang harmonies and an occasional lead. The son of a music teacher, he grew up surrounded by music and was plunking around on the piano at an early age. He played trombone with the school band and sang in the choirs. He took about a years worth of piano lessons which were put to use playing a chord organ in the band’s initial form. At age fourteen he began to play guitar – getting a classical guitar for Christmas and learning on Beatle’s tunes like All My Loving and Eleanor Rigby. It wasn’t long before he had his first electric, an Epiphone, and began playing rhythm with the band. He later added 5-string banjo, mountain dulcimer, bass, mandolin and flute. He has enjoyed playing a number of instruments for the variety of tones and colors they create.  In the process he has written songs using guitar, piano, banjo, dulcimer and even acappella.  He finds his church to be one inspiring outlet for his musical abilities and has written several pieces for that setting.  He continues to writes songs and poetry inspired by life.

The band came together when John moved to Medina, Ohio from Massachusetts when we were all in 7th grade.  We decided to form a band called “Ground Zero,” not anticipating how the meaning of that phrase would change thirty years later.  During the four years that John was with us in Ohio, he was the band’s drummer.  Although he could not keep a beat, John worshipped Keith Moon and Ginger Baker, and performed lengthy, powerful drum solos that seemed quite exciting in that era.  In 1971, John moved to Maine and slowly began shifting over to electric and acoustic guitar.  John honed his chops playing with a hard-gigging “classic rock” band from 1979 through 1991, while the rest of the band explored acoustic-oriented music.  The FFO’s reformation in  2004 offered an opportunity for the band to integrate John’s 50-Watt Marshall Stack into the far more serene and sophisticated songs the others had been writing while John was busting solos on “Gloria” and “Born to be Wild.”  When playing electric, he favors his ’62 SG Les Paul, ’61 Strat, and ’68 Rickenbacker 12-string, but also resorts to a gaggle of Les Pauls, Teles, Strats, and a Gibson Firebird.  Most recently John has been studying music recording and production techniques, and now mixes and masters the music that is available on this website.  As a result of listening ever harder to the band’s raw recordings,  John has abandoned the concept of improvised, riff-oriented guitar solos as being useless, and has refocused on composing melodic guitar parts that support his fellow band mates’ songs rather than distract from them.

George’s musical career, excluding an early abortive adventure at guitar lessons with a rented acoustic at ten, began in the Jr. High and High School orchestras playing cello, where he played next to his long-time friend Steve Jobe. At fifteen, he purchased his first guitar: a Strat knock-off he found at Woolworth’s. With the help of a chord chart, he learned to play, and was thereby beguiled into playing lead guitar, as were so many others in that era of great guitarists, the early seventies. It wasn’t long until the cheapo was replaced by a Telecaster and then a real Strat.

With the band’s first iteration as Ground Zero, it became clear for George and the rest of the band that despite playing some covers, the focus would be original material. That has carried through for George over the years, and with every project he has contributed as a song-writer. Writing songs meant singing, and he also played some fiddle in Windmill (which came after John had moved to Maine, and consisted of the remaining members of Ground Zero). His focus became increasingly on acoustic guitar at this time, and especially the 12-string, developing a finger-style .

After the band went to the four winds in the late seventies , as described elsewhere, George became involved with Don Young’s Production, a band playing all original music out of Athens, OH. Later, he would team with local musicians in an acoustic-electric folk-rock duo format, known as Justus, playing local restaurants and taverns, where he and his band-mates still mixed in the original songs to go with a wide variety of cover material. He played at various times with Ken Schneditz, Chuck Coleman, and Ray Smeltzer, who now plays around the Dayton and Columbus area, sometimes known as Tanner to the Renaissance Faire goers there.

An early project was a country-rock band put together for a fundraising event for a local alternative school, which allowed George to air two of his few country tunes and play some fiddle as well as guitar in the large Community Center. This was echoed much more recently around 2003-4, when he played fiddle with a band playing Irish and American roots music in the Akron area, Case of Culler. He has also sat-in with various other local bands, such as Pilgrim and The House Popes.

Family life and two children took George out of the professional ranks in music for much of the eighties and nineties until a medical emergency and twenty-seven days in the hospital and several more weeks of recovery in 2001 caused him to consider that if he had something to say musically, it was time to get it done.

With his son Ian, who plays the drums, and Tom Bell and Jerry Osborn, he formed a band in 2001 which eventually became TimeZarrow (and would come to include Jim Dewey, Ian Witt, and Dave Vargo). This band allowed George to get back to his roots in electric guitar and play more of his rock-oriented material, though the band also used acoustic guitars and George played some violin. His daughter, Erin, was just starting to get interested in performance, and provided back-ground vocals on some early recordings of the band. That band has played many spots in the Akron-Cleveland area, including some local festivals, notably at Nelson Ledges Quarry Park (where playing just prior to the amazing Keller Williams was challenging but fun), and has recorded several cds. That band has continued to play in various forms, featuring George’s songs as well as those of some of the other members. A reunion band of former members has played an annual party in Medina, OH the last few years, which has grown in attendance each year and now includes professional stage lighting and effects, a fireworks display, and is captured on DVD.

George is the only member of FFO still living in Ohio, but makes the trek east at least annually since 2004 to help resurrect and expand the unique sound and spirit of Friends From Ohio.