From Bands, Medway Forest, Tom Dotzler, and Salvation

Warren’s band the Blue House Basement broke up in February 1967.  He met and started playing with Tom Dotzler and Mike Bolan, from Coeur d’Alene Idaho. They needed a drummer and bass player to form a band. Warren somehow found me at the Medway Forest commune and invited me to join them. There was a bass player living there too so I brought him along.

In 1967 as Mount Rushmore, we lived in the Haight Ashbury and played a lot at the Fillmore, Avalon, Straight Theatre, and other ballrooms and clubs around the Bay Area, often in the major venues as the third bill or warmup band.

We played shows with the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin (Big Brother and the Holding Company), The Doors, Santana, Procol Harum, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Steve Miller, Country Joe and the Fish, Canned Heat and many more. Eric, the British announcer on the flat bed truck in Golden Gate Park, called Mount Rushmore the “House Band for the Summer of Love”.

For a piece about when we were just getting started, see Warren and I on the Sidewalk in Front of the Blue House.

 A few Mount Rushmore posters.

Flowchart of personnel changes

For the time I tried to play a major gig while tripping on LSD, see A Night at the Fillmore.

A shorter summary of that evening is #3.3 of SA3. Bands and Farm

Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival, June 10-11, 1967, Mount Tamalpais.

For psychedelics while in Mount Rushmore, see Addendum – 31 Trips (Trips #15-20)