February 27, 1974

Detroit Free Press

Kingston Trio Thinks About a '74 Encore

By PAT MILTON
Associated Press Writer

UNIONDALE, N. Y. - Bob Dylan returned this winter; Frank Sinatra is going back on stage this spring, This Summer -- what about the Kingston Trio?

Lead singer Dave Guard thinks so. It is now 13 years since the Kingston Trio went their separate ways, and Guard would like to see the original Trio get back together.

"I think that perhaps we are in the beginning of a folk revival. People want the old group. Not just for the music or for the sake of old singers but just to go back in time. It's like old friends poppin' in," Guard says.

Guard, 40, averages only $15 a week teaching the guitar, but also has a steady income from royalties. "My job as far as money is concerned is a complete bomb," says Guard.

He and wife Gretchen and their three children earlier moved to Australia, where Dave worked on a new concept of tuning for three years. Now he has brought his theory and An instruction book back to the states.

"I try to be a good teacher," says Guard. "I find It emotionally satisfying". I think the whole environment presses you back eventually to what you are most useful at."

GUARD GOT TOGEHER briefly with former partners Bob Shane at a recent folk revival here.

The spokesman of the group since its birth, in 1959, Guard had felt that the trio should begin to use new material, authentic folk music and that Shane and the third member, Nick Reynolds, should perfect their guitar skills and learn to read music.

However they refused to change the success formula. This conflict and other Complications caused Guard to leave in 1961 and form a new group, "The whiskey Hill Singers." The group won the Academy Award for the sound track, "How the West Was Won."

Reynolds, who now grows Christmas trees in Oregon, said In a pone interview, "if conditions were tight, economically and emotionally, I'd get back with Guard and Shane. It would have to be sane."

Reynolds, now 41, lives with his wife, former comedienne Joan Harris, and their 10-year old son Josh on their 120-acre ranch. He also still owns the Trident Restaurant in Sausalito, Calif.

The Kingston Trio -- so named because it both sounded calypso, which was vogue, and had a vague collegiate flavor to it -- was discovered by fFrank Werber while playing at the "Cracked Pot," just south of San Francisco. Werber immediately signed them to a contract.

THE TRIO was launched a few Months later at the Purple Onion where the one-week booking turned into a seven-month stand.

After a nationwide tout the Trio came back San Francisco and the "Hungry i" Where the standing room only Sign, never came down.

They had turned the nation on. Hits such as "Tom Dooley," "Scotch and Soda," "M.T.A.," "Worried Man," and "Tijuana Jail" could be heard echoing from bars and nightclubs to college campuses.

But by 1967, Shane, Reynolds and John Stewart, who had replaced Guard in 1961, decided to go their separate ways.

"We got tired of doing the same old stuff," explains Shane. "The audiences that we had created eventually led to our own destruction. They wouldn't let us do anything else. All they wanted was to hear was nostalgia."

Shane tried it as a soloist for a spell. "I recorded a song called, 'Honey,' on my own in 1968, and it was the loser of the year. There was too much pressure doin' it alone," says Shane.

IN 1969 he formed the "New Kingston Trio" with Patrick Horine and James Conors but it didn't work out.

Shane, who still leases the name, "The Kingston Trio," has formed a third Kingston Trio this year. The other two besides himself are Roger Gamble, guitar picker on the TV show "Hee Haw," and Bill Zorn, a former banjo player with the New Christy Minstrels folk Group.

"The group is a middle niche between folk and country music," says Shane. "Music is more selective now, I think the cycle is coming where people are listening again."

Shane, who lives on a farm in Georgia with his wife, the former Louise Brandon, and their five children, says "for the first time ia a long while I'm having fun again. I enjoy entertaining for entertaining sake,"

"You can't live in the past," he continues. "I hope the trend in folk music does come around again."

-- THANK YOU to Tom Lamb for sharing a photo copy
of the foregoing article for our reading enjoyment.

Last revised: February 23, 2006.