My Secret Career 4: The Mahoneys Play The Ocean Mist

I left for France in the fall of 1991 suffering from Lyme's Disease. While in France, I decided to buy the cheapest acoustic guitar I could find and learn how to play. By the spring of 1992, I am regularly strumming at French bonfires. I am terrible but determined.

I return from France in June.

That summer is eventful. I got asked to be in "South Pacific" at Theater By The Sea. This was a dream come true for me, since I'd grown up on musicals in Matunuck. To begin my professional acting career there seemed too good to be true.

The end of the summer brought another theatrical blast from the past, as I booked a job with Looking Glass Theater, a touring children's theater company who had entertained me at South Road Elementary School as a child. We drove the van, loaded and unloaded the sets and costumes, taught the kids their special parts, and put on a show two times a day, five times a week. I was also cast in a play at Alias Stage, an incredible work called "Kind Ness" by Ping Chong. I was doing two shows a day and rehearsing at night.

Parallel to this was my part time job. I worked for a company called Perspectives which ran a number of group homes in Rhode Island. The residents had various developmental challenges and our job was to facilitate their daily lives, both in the home and at whatever jobs they had. It was a very intense job.

I had started work there the previous summer in anticipation of going to France. I met a number of very cool people and enjoyed myself very much but then I got Lyme's Disease in the middle of the summer and I basically had to go on bed rest in order to get ready to go to France.

When I finished up "South Pacific" and got the Looking Glass Theater job, I knew I could pick up shifts here and there at Perspectives so I got back on the payroll. It was there that I reconnected with John Mahoney. We had gotten close enough the previous summer that when I gathered all my friends for a goodbye concert (Buffalo Tom at Club Baby Head) he and a number of his siblings came.

Somewhere in here I started writing songs. I don't remember most of them and didn't record any of them. But one day I was hanging out with another friend who worked at Perspectives and who was the leader of a very popular local band called Super Bug. He pulled out his guitar and I overcame massive shyness and sang one of my brand new compositions. I had only been playing guitar in earnest for about nine months at this point and I'm sure it sounded terrible but he encouraged me. He said I should start a band.

I can honestly say this thought hadn't occurred to me until that very moment. I guess I still thought that somehow Justin, Tom, Chris and I would make Fecund Youth happen and I would just get to go back to being a singer. But the thought stuck in my head.

Cut to later that summer. Word spreads through the Perspectives grapevine that three guys have been jamming and they are looking for a singer. I bring my electric guitar to a small garage space off of High Street. There I meet up with Pete and Rob, two Perspectives employees I have met a couple of times and Neal, a non-Perspectives person who just so happens to be good friends with John Mahoney.

That lineup lasted about nine months, we played one gig, at 3's in Newport. I couldn't believe I was in another band. We called ourselves One Man Out because someone was always missing from rehearsal. Then the drummer disappeared, we think to escape police action. We recruited another Perspectives employee, Steve Clary, who I had known for years via a URI theater woman he'd dated. I'd been to Steve's house to see his band Busful of Witches play in the basement for a theater party.

It was like Ringo joining The Beatles. All the overcompensation we'd been exerting to carry the drummer led to an explosion once we got someone who could play. Our sound was transformed overnight. 

We needed a new name. Nothing would stick. Then we got invited to play our first gig, a benefit concert being held at a Perspectives building, organized by John Mahoney and his family. As a gag we thought it would be funny if we called ourselves The Mahoneys for the gig. It stuck.

Then I got to step on ANOTHER legendary Matunuck stage that I had forever wanted to trod. The Ocean Mist. Again Perspectives was throwing a benefit to raise money. We were excited to be asked to play. There is no footage of this night. If anyone took pictures, I don't have them. 

So I have no proof when I say that we destroyed that stage. But I know it to be true. By this point we were a tightly coiled unit, and we could play our songs in whatever style we felt, depending on the moment. We would pull waaaaay back, rev waaaaaay back up, it was all instinct and feel but it came out of being very well rehearsed. I am very proud of that night.

As with Fecund Youth, I had dreams of The Mahoneys developing a local following and then going for the big time. I believe we could have done it. But life intervened. Pete moved to Alaska, I moved to New York, and The Mahoneys were no more.

The following recordings were recorded live in Steve's basement to a four-track. These are essentially what you would have heard had you been at the Mist that night. We hung a couple of mikes and let 'er rip. They make up an album I call simply, "The Mahoneys: Live From The 20th Century". 

Like I wrote in the imaginary liner notes to this album, in the summer of 1993, we were a great band.