In 1964, The Demons stopped rehearsal one night because The Beatles were appearing on Ed Sullivan. When I was 13, we were called the Sunbursts because we all had sunburst Fender guitars. And from Fairborn, Ohio, right near the renowned Wright Patterson Airforce base. The great thing was there was a lot of gigs to do. They’d have gigs over at barracks there, and we were the only rock and roll -- no, we were the ONLY -- band in town. The cool thing about that was, I was on the football team and Friday nights we had these teenage club dances after the football games in the basketball auditorium. So of course, there was a big stage and it sounded like some sort of cavern in there. So, I’d have to go to the locker room, take off all my gear,and the band would be already set up. I'd run up onstage and then I was the rock star.

I knew then, when I was 13, that this is what I’d be doing for the rest of my life. Stuck by my guns. “When you gonna get a real job?” I heard that about a billion times. I remember one time right around graduation of high school, when I knew I needed to buy some equipment -- I mean, you can’t have one tiny amp and a guitar from Sears, y’know? -- I actually went down to the Farmers and Merchants bank in town and had the president of the bank come out and see us play. Just cause he was trying to explain to me that being in a rock and roll band wasn’t a legitimate job so therefore, I wouldn’t be able to make payments on my equipment. He said this even though I showed him some receipts from some parties and stuff. So anyway, we were playing some Holiday Inn and he brought his wife. We knew he was coming out and we filled the place. It was like

After The Demons, we turned it into another group that only lasted about a year cause our drummer died. But that was when I got picked up by London Fog and the Continentals at an amateur night in a little club called the Sugar Shack - you might have heard of it?, after I turned 18. Went in and was with a bunch of my buddies getting drunk and there was a group that was really good. Was like a black seven piece horn band and they were doing all Motown type of stuff. I knew “Dock of the Bay” which was on the radio at the time, and I could always sing that stuff really well. And some Janis Joplin. I always had a knack of doing that nasally scream type of thing without blowing the glass out of the place. So I started mocking some artists, just for fun. My friends made me get up on stage and I’m on my knees, laying down singing, and I’m singing it really good. Ironically enough, the manager of this band comes over and she says “Hey, you’re pretty good. You ever think about doing this for a living?”

So, I said, “Well I have a band. I mean, our drummer’s dead but uh, I’m just taking some time off.”

“I’ll tell you what,” she said, “in two weeks we’re doing a 15 city tour in New England and if you’re interested we could use a singer. We need a white guy who can do that blue eyed soul type of thing. And you really express some soul up there.”

“No, I’m just drunk”

“No, no, no. You were good. Do you play a horn?”

I was confused, “What do you mean? What kind of horn?”

“Well, we got a horn band and what we’re looking for is a guy like you that can play horn.”

Having never touched a horn, I go, “Of course I play horn.”

“Is it sax.”

I go, “You know, I do play a little sax.”

She says, “I tell you what, if you’re interested in doing this, here’s my number call me in a couple days."

So I did.

I went down and rented a tenor sax and took two lessons. So I knew how to hold it and how to get a sound, even though it squealed and all. So I knew how to actually make notes, but I couldn’t play a song or anything. I figured this is what I was going to do: I’ll have the sax with me, and I’ll just tell ‘em I have sore on my lip or something and as soon as I get out there in front of an audience I’ll be singing some songs and I’ll get by. And that’s what happened. I went out with ‘em -- Boston

was our first show -- and every song that I sang was like Wilson Pickett, James Brown, Sam and Dave. All these black artists songs. I was screaming, and doing the spins and the flips and doing the James Brown microphone moves. I did all this stuff and I was this white guy in a black band wearing jumpsuits!

Was with those guys for about a year and ½ and the guitar player left and we got this guitarist, another white guy named Chris Sparks. He was a great guitar player and he actually played violin too, in the Dayton Philharmonic orchestra, so he was quite the accomplished musician. We really hit it off and he loved funk and black music too. We started writing some songs and about 6 months after he joined the band, we just looked at each other and said “Let’s start Moonsparks!”

Moonsparks

So we split the band and I went to Wright State University and took music appreciation classes and started learning jazz bass, improvisation and got into trying to hone my craft. I really loved bass playing although I’d never played it before. But I said to myself “Four strings is a lot less than six!” And I always wanted to be a drummer and I figured the next best thing for the beat was to play bass. And I could still sing too while doing it. I knew Paul McCartney did it so I figured I could do it too.

So we started Moonsparks and wrote an 11 song rock opera and acted it out onstage. It was called “The Window Washer’s Suite” It was about this window washer in New York doing the skyline windows and all the things he saw while doing it. And we did this big stage production, playing around colleges. They loved it cause they considered it “art.” So we figured we could only play colleges for so long and we said to each other, “We’ve got to go to California.” So we packed up everything and we came out to California with $100 in our pockets and our instruments.

We went to every record company and just walked in. We didn’t have a tape or anything. We just walked in and asked for an appointment. They’d say “Yes Mr. Moon. I’m going to send you back to my secretary and she’ll give you an address and you send photos and a recording and we’ll review it and get back to you.” We didn’t even have an address at that point! Two weeks after getting to California my car got stolen and we were sleeping in parks and we had one suitcase, a violin and an acoustic guitar. We were sneaking into backyards to steal fruit off trees. We were literally living on the streets. And I wasn’t about to call my parents to let ‘em know we were stranded and dying in LA.

So we finally walked in to A&M studios and we played for Paul Williams, who was a staff songwriter, writing for Bread and the Carpenters and so on. So they sent us to him and he liked us and our songs. We played him Just a Mystery -- which is the first song I ever wrote -- plus a couple other songs that Chris and I wrote. It was very melodic with two part harmony in fifths, kinda like an Arabic harmony. Really weird music. It was a violinist with an acoustic guitar player with weird harmonies. Weird stuff. They thought our music was so strange they thought the perfect people to send us to would be production company that produced Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. And they did.

The DeMartino brothers said, “We can’t sign you to A&M but what we wanna do is a spec deal. We’ll pay for the recording, 12 songs. And we’ll have the best musicians play on this record.” So we did it and Chrysalis records made an offer. We thought we had it made. Here we go from living on the streets to being dropped off at the airport by a limo to fly back home.

So we go back to Ohio. We were supposed to put a group together so we could go out and tour while they were finishing up the record and finalizing the deal with Chrysalis records. We needed a manager and we had a budget for rehearsing. So we put a band together and went to Alabama where this French manager who managed George Benson and Salvador Dali: who we'll just refer to as "JP." He said “We can make lots of money off this rock and roll band.” So JP found this guy who lived in Alabama who had some Texas money and had some vineyards. So we had to move down to