Homecoming for '70s Valley rockers
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"When you put all our good things together, we're good ... and we're different." That's band member Helen Hooke talking in 1975 about the success of the Deadly Nightshade's first album. Never heard of the Deadly Nightshade?
You would have if you had been living in the Pioneer Valley some 34 years ago, when the three-woman band, composed of Hooke, Anne Bowen and Pamela Robin Brandt, was making waves in the music scene here and elsewhere.
Those who'd like to hear the band again - or catch them for the first time - will get a chance on Sunday at 7 p.m. at the Iron Horse in Northampton, when they'll take the stage for only the second time in 20 years. (They played a sold-out reunion concert at the Institute for the Musical Arts in Goshen last June.)
Brandt, the band's bass player, said the decision to get together again evolved over the last few years.
"We had kept in touch," said Brandt, speaking recently from her home in Miami. "After a while, all of the reasons that had kept us apart seemed to fall to pieces and the reasons to get together seemed really strong. We felt we had something to say again."
While woman bands were still somewhat of a novelty when the Deadly Nightshade were popular, what made them different was their no-holds-barred rock 'n' roll music, which got the crowd up and dancing at local - and long-defunct - hot spots like the Rusty Scupper in Amherst, Slattery's in Florence and the Dial Tone Lounge in Hatfield.
As Brandt puts it, "The Deadly Nightshade played loud electric music back when it was supposed to be a man's game."
Along with their unique rendition of classics like "Keep on the Sunnyside," the band earned a reputation for their feminist lyrics in songs like "High Flying Woman," "I Sent My Soul to the Laundromat" and "Dance, Mr. Big, Dance." At performances, the latter song usually included Bowen wielding the "Mr. Big dancing doll" whose wooden feet tapped out the clickety-clack beat.
Bowen, who now lives in Tucson, Ariz., said the Mr. Big doll will be back in action for the band's performance at the Iron Horse. Bowen spoke on the phone Monday while driving through western Virginia on her way across the country to Northampton.
Bowen, who hung up her rhythm guitar after the band disbanded in the late '70s, said she started practicing about a year ago after the idea to get together again was hatched.
"I'm loving playing again," she said.
The band formed in 1972, a few years after Bowen, who also plays percussion, and Hooke, the band's lead guitarist and fiddler, graduated from Smith College in Northampton, and Brandt got her degree from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley.
Living together in Ashfield, the three women initially supplemented their income as house painters and at other odd jobs. After they signed on as the entertainment at an International Women's Day Event sponsored by the fledgling Valley Women's Center in Northampton, which Bowen helped found, the band's popularity took off.
Playing to packed venues in the Valley, in Boston and at New York City's The Bitter End and Max's Kansas City, as well as in smaller venues throughout New England and beyond, the band recorded two albums ("The Deadly Nightshade" and "F & W") and two singles, one of which went to No. 67 on national charts.
The trio toured with Billy Joel and opened shows for Sister Sledge, Commander Cody, Lily Tomlin and Peter Frampton, among others. They played on some half-dozen segments of the children's television show "Sesame Street" - as the Moppets - and at conferences for NOW (National Organization for Women) and other women's organizations.
"It was a very heady time," said Bowen.
After the group disbanded, the three went their separate ways, although Brandt and Hooke continued to play professionally, on and off, in their own and other bands.
Brandt, 62, is now a Miami-based freelance journalist; Hooke works for a New York City environmental organization; and Bowen, after stints with the former New York City-based Women's Action Alliance and as a restaurant owner, runs a middle school lunch program in Tucson and lends a hand with the local AIDS organizations.
Because they hadn't played together for decades, the trio didn't know what to expect when they got together again for the Goshen performance last year.
"We decided at the beginning of the first rehearsal to start with "Keep on the Sunnyside," said Brandt, "and it sounded just like it always did."
"I have to say it kind of surprised me," said Hooke, who lives on Long Island, of the band's ability to connect musically. "There's something magical - there was something that always happened with the music, this chemistry thing."
In the '70s, the three pushed the boundaries as a woman's band. The group has a different mission in mind these days.
"Women were not meant to be playing then. Now, we're old, and old people are not supposed to be doing that [playing rock music]," said Brandt. "It's very much a youth culture - that's who's supposed to be playing, that's who's supposed to get the record contracts. As baby boomers we have always had a creative approach, seen those things as challenges."
Hooke said she's "really psyched" about playing together again. They've been working on writing songs together, she said, something that for now is taking place at long distance.
Brandt said the Pioneer Valley was a great place for the band to get its start and she is looking forward to playing here again (they have another gig the following week at The Bitter End).
The Valley, she said, is "a wonderful incubator," recalling the Nightshades' performances at local clubs where straight couples in fancy Western wear, older couples, lesbians and gay men enjoyed the music together.
"All of those people would be coexisting on the dance floor ... in this little club listening to our music," said Brandt. "I don't think it could have happened most anywhere else."
The three are keeping an open mind about their future, which could include a second chapter rattling a different set of cages on the concert stage.
As Brandt puts it: "We've aged, naturally, but we have not mellowed ... And we definitely have the amplifiers to do it. When a woman gets older, she needs more watts."