"It's funny," says Don Barnes, the possessor of the golden vocal chords responsible for such timeless rock hits as "Caught Up In You" and "If I'd Be The One," "But we used to practice out in the outskirts of town because we couldn't turn up too loud in the city limits and one time, we were locked up in what used to be an auto parts warehouse, jamming away, really loud while twelve police cars with lights and sirens were all trying to come into the place which was bolted down."
Needless to say they had lost the key so they had to climb into the makeshift rehearsal hall from the top. When they finished their song they noticed the ruckus outside and explained the situation to them to which a police officer replied, "Well it's nothing my .38 Special can't handle," inferring that he was going to shoot the lock off like something out of a western.
"This is actually how we got our name," added Barnes, "We showed up at a gig one night without a name and we said why don't we call ourselves 38 Special and the rest is history."
Arena rock history indeed as the Jacksonville area is well known for spawning some of the biggest names in Southern Rock such as the Outlaws, Dave Hlubek, Danny Joe Brown and the magnificent Molly Hatchet, Ricky Medlocke and the fabulous Blackfoot and even Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
"Greg and Duane Allman were also from the area, so The Allman Brothers were there too."
"The reason we all thrived was that we learned the songwriting process at a very young age picking up elements of what works in a great song; verse A, verse B, the ramp to the chorus and the bridge by playing covers in these sailor bars making $100 a night each, which at the time was a lot of money until we said 'We can do this and write our own songs'."
At the time, the most important band to ever come out of the South, the three guitar army that was Lynyrd Skynyrd were experiencing a great amount of success and the late-great Ronnie Van Zandt gave the boys in 38 Special the best piece of advice they could've gotten, "He was four years older than us at the time when he told us, 'Don't try to be someone else, quit trying to copy what we've done or what anyone else is doing. Put yourself into your music,' " Ronnie of course was the lead singer for Skynyrd and the brother of Donnie Van Zandt, Barnes' childhood friend and still a member of the band, but Van Zandt has not toured with the band since 2012.
This is when 38 Special turned their music into what Barnes terms 'Muscle & melody' with the guitars providing the muscle and a good story providing the melody of such smash hits as "Fantasy Girl," "Back Where You Belong" and the brilliant "Hold On Loosely."
"I wrote that song with my good friend Jim Peterik of Survivor and it's about couples who are having trouble and who are always trying to dominate one another. We should celebrate each other's differences as couples to co-exist and not step on each other's toes and you just dont' know when a song idea is good or not unless you bounce your idea off of someone else, so I had this guitar line and I asked Jim, 'What do you think about the title Hold On Loosely? He immediately said, 'Oh yeah but don't let go.' which is a perfect couplet." A couplet which would go on to become a Top 10 hit which received heavy airplay on MTV when MTV was Music Television, reaching #3 on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks in 1981.
He also told us that another of their biggest hits was about, "A girlfriend (He) once had who I told ‘I can't get anything done during the day because I'm so ‘Caught Up In You’” which became the band's first number-one single on the Billboard Top Tracks rock chart.
Music fans can remember the music video for "If I'd Be The One" with a beautiful young model leaning on the red pickup with the horses galloping off into the distance then subsequently between the fire and the flames, "That was actually Julianne Phillips who would later become Bruce Springsteen's wife," Barnes recounted about the video which launched her modeling and acting career.
"We grew up listening to The Beatles, Leslie West and Mountain, Clapton and Hendrix, we always wanted to have that big sound and stacks of Marshalls to make our music more forceful in order to get our point across, if you know what I mean," and Barnes promised this reporter that they will be playing loud after I asked him to please do so. Without spoiling the show for our readers, Don and the boys, guitarist/vocalist Danny Chauncey, bassist, Larry "L.J." Junstrom, drummer Gary Moffatt and keyboardist/vocalist Bobby Capps will be delivering their greatest hits including music from the movies "Teachers" and "Revenge of the Nerds" ("Second Chance" was a #1 Billboard hit on the Adult Contemporary Chart) with all their soundstage and visual effects.
After 38 years the Wild-Eyed Southern Boys of 38 Special will be rolling into Eagle Pass on Monday evening, St. Patrick's Day no less and Barnes informed The News Gram that they still take on the task of performing 100 nights a year.
"When we formed the band, one of our goals was longeivity and I think we've accomplished that."
KC & The Sunshine Band perform tonight.
