JTMH Volume 23 | Bevis Griffin

He is among the most seasoned of Austin veterans, eyewitness to every relevant musical pivot in the “Live Music Capital of the World” for a half century, and a consistent musical provocateur and instigator in a town that thrives on such notions.

He laughs when he tells a story. A big, wide grin and eyes like slits. He speaks with his hands. He still marvels, as if he can’t believe these remarkable things actually happened to him. He will liberally recite lyrics from famed rock and roll standards to prove a point. But just as frequently he spins very quotable, improvisational statements. When prompted about something from the deep past, something he has not pondered in years, something that was costly emotionally, he looks to the side, summoning memories, things, and people that only he can see. His mind’s eye peers into that place only he can touch. Once in a very great while, recollections turn to an instance when he felt slighted by trusted associates or was provoked. His demeanor hardens. The dark cloud descends. He says, “People forget I’m from South Central LA. There’s not a soft bone in my body. I’ve had to do soul searching to wrestle that demon that would make me volatile or threatening.” But like Texas weather, the cloud rapidly dissipates and the sunshine returns in force. It is most often sunny. And fun.  

The life story of Bevis Griffin could be told from any number of worthwhile, historical angles: the story of the Second Great Migration when African American families journeyed to the West Coast from the Deep South to seek a new life and opportunities; the story of Los Angeles before and during the Watts Riots in 1965; or the family life of Black Texans on the eve of desegregation in Texas, specifically in Wichita Falls. But the most common theme that runs through the life of Bevis Griffin is music. The allure of song furnished his life’s work and constant muse. In rapid succession Griffin went from fan, to working musician, to artist, to demoralized problem child, and then redeemed leader and educator, all to the march of his own drum. And to the beckoning of his own voice. Bevis has learned to reinvent himself in the face of challenge and despair, and sometimes, just because prevailing social winds had changed, the page had turned. Resilience is a hammer he swings mightily. From the onset, Bevis Griffin raged in the audience. He’s been seated at the drum throne onstage and then migrated center stage, behind the mic. He’s gone from drummer man to glam rocker, singer and soul shouter, herald of the Austin music scene, ground-floor participant in the Black Rock Coalition, and an intimate to Living Colour. He is among the most seasoned of Austin veterans, eyewitness to every relevant musical pivot in the “Live Music Capital of the World” for a half century, and a consistent musical provocateur and instigator in a town that thrives on such notions.

Born on April 26th, 1953, in Los Angeles, California, Bevis Melvin Griffin was the first child of Melvin Mitchell Griffin and his wife Navaline (née Tunsil). Both parents were transplants from southern states, his father following older siblings to California, his mother the oldest child in her family. Father Melvin was the youngest of eleven and had left Natchez, Mississippi, as the United States was swept into World War II. His mother’s roots were in Texas. “Contrary to popular belief, South Central was a kind of serene, beautiful community before the Watts Riots,” he declares. “Especially from a childhood perspective.” He recalls happy memories of playing on tree-lined streets with neighborhood children chasing street vendors that offered fresh produce from nearby farms and locally baked donuts from a mobile van that snaked the residential blocks. Melvin had initially hoped to become a mechanic but found that acquiring a barber license took only half the time required for mechanical certification. He opened a barbershop at 54th Street and Broadway. This location was advantageously located around the corner from a famed musical destination, the 5-4 Ballroom. “The 5-4 Ballroom is to South-Central Los Angeles what the Apollo Theater is to Harlem,” said one time owner Margie Evans. Constructed in 1922, the building initially catered to white Angelenos attending big band performances.  

But as local demographics began shifting, Black performers were booked to play for a burgeoning Black middle class. The stars who appeared for Black Angelenos is a who’s who list of American song: Nat King Cole, Muddy Waters, James Brown, Duke Ellington, B.B. King, Dinah Washington, Ray Charles, and Otis Redding, to name just a few. The barbershop flourished and clientele regularly included touring luminaries needing a haircut and shave to be performance ready. As Bevis recounts, “The barbershop was a huge success, not just because [my father] was a great barber . . . but he was a hustler with an afterhours gambling enterprise that attracted the musicians after completing their sets. They would enter through a back door and shoot dice and play cards.” Some of Bevis’s earliest memories occurred in this setting. Before entering school, his days would be spent at his father’s workplace. “The barbershop was my day care! Which was awesome. He had a jukebox, a television, and this rolling cast of characters that would be floating in and out of the shop all day like a sitcom!” He laughs. “That’s where Ike Turner gave me the nickname of Jitterbug! Kids always like having nicknames. But my dad instilled in me the idea of presenting yourself well. Not just matters of hygiene, but being aware of how people see you. He did not curse or swear liberally. He said to me, ‘If you present yourself as a gentleman, then everybody else is kind of forced to follow suit.’”

At home, his mother Navaline played records much more than the television, with Sundays geared towards gospel singers such as Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward. She enjoyed jazz stylists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington. He describes his mother as sophisticated and very pretty. “My mother had this very beautiful presence and poise. My grandmother Roxy (Roxanne Clark) was a very beautiful woman too, with a degree of Native American influence in her DNA. She had a sculptured and beautiful face . . . the cheekbones, the structures. All my aunties were beautiful.” Navaline had traveled to Southern California to study criminology at Los Angeles City College when she met Melvin. His mother’s sister Baby Frances was a lifelong teacher and taught Bevis how to read before he went to school, and thus he skipped first grade. “I never had anxiety instilled in me by my parents about playing with Asian children or Mexican children, and our neighborhood was very diverse. They never told me I couldn’t trust white people. I didn’t become aware of the conflagration that was the Civil Rights Movement until 1962 or ‘63 [when] you started seeing things flaring up in Birmingham on TV. You’ve never seen people sic dogs or turning hoses on people in your neighborhood! That’s like another planet!  You’re only young but you know that’s not right.” He stares off in thought.

Soon thereafter, the Watts Riots flared in 1965. “I was coming home from middle school when the riots erupted. I remember because I was crossing this really broad street called Central Avenue that ran as a major artery through South Central. I remember looking farther south and there was this huge cloud of black smoke. Our instinct was to go see what’s on fire, but it was more than the ten blocks we initially guessed. I went home to turn on the afternoon cartoons and it was all [coverage] about the riots. We couldn’t believe it. It was like a Godzilla movie. It was thrilling for a kid. But as the thing progressed . . . it was getting closer to our neighborhood like a wildfire. An urban wildfire. An aura of chaos. That’s when the looting started, when the sun set. Total anarchy went into overdrive. It rolled all the way up to 51st Street where my dad’s barbershop was. He had to spray paint ‘soul brother’ on his windows as if that was going to be an invisible forcefield. And in some cases, it might have spared a broken window and in some cases, it made no difference whatsoever. It was roiling out of control! After the second or third day, the reality started to settle in. There’s no grocery store to go to, no drug store to go to, no laundromat. A week after the riot was quelled, it literally was like a horror show, because everything was scorched earth, at least in the business district. It wasn’t the houses, thank God. And that’s what was so bizarre. You had all these nice little neighborhoods, and you go three blocks and it’s like a warzone.” He continues, “The riot definitely affected my dad’s business and there was a degree of PTSD and anxiety that beset everybody in the neighborhood. Shortly thereafter my dad’s mental health started to suffer. One thing led to another, exacerbating bad energy in the marriage. When he and my mother decided to separate, that was in 1966 going into ’67. My mother filed for divorce and decided to [return] to Wichita Falls to reset her life plan. I was going to stay behind with my dad, but he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He was remanded by court order to a sanitorium for quarantine treatment. My mother said she would really need my help [with] sisters Stephanie (a.k.a. Boo) and Roslyn Jill, and baby brother Bob. [She said,] ‘I’ll help you get a drum set.’ That was like a magic lure,” he beams.  

Navaline’s extended family members were paragons of the Black community in Wichita Falls. His grandmother’s brother Uncle Henry Clark and his wife Big Frances were intrinsically involved with wealthy white families as trusted and long-serving domestic workers. Uncle H. C. was a deacon in the church and an executive at the Masonic Lodge. Bevis’s parents had represented the mid-century esthetic in Los Angeles. “When you see the Dick Van Dyke Show, that’s what my house looked like in California. But these [family members] were on another level completely. Their house was a showcase! Impeccably tasteful with Italian and French furniture. When you were in the house, you had to keep your hands to yourself. There was no gambling money flowing through their economy.” His grandmother Roxy’s family had immigrated from the Hempstead, Texas, area. “She was a pistol! Not soft spoken, she had her opinions. She was literate, had been a teacher, and was adamant about education. All her girls had gone to school. And that is part of my DNA, too.” Living with his mother, grandmother, and two little sisters greatly enlightened him as a young man and offered him “a deep dive into the female esthetic. You’re listening to women talk to women,” and they did not mince words about men. H. C. filled the role of the father figure. “He was sober, he didn’t drink, he didn’t gamble, he went to church, you understand what I’m saying? He never raised his voice to his wife. He was completely respected in that community. My aunt and uncle were property owners. They took care of business and cared for those in the community. Church was a prerequisite in the Black community. I [did go] to church in LA.” But the liturgical schedule in Texas was a tad more intense. “I loved going to church because of the singing, because of the spectacle of the whole thing. The main thing was if you were at church you were getting in alignment with your ability to basically get to heaven, some sort of way. At least you got a ticket.” 

Wichita Falls was segregated, indeed separated by a cliché railroad track. Bevis initially prospered at an all-Black high school, participating in track and field and some gymnastics. “But I found my niche in the art room. The art kids were an elite little clique. I really started getting into the artwork on the album covers of records. I was into this secret world of discovery of the rock and pop music of the day. I was the only kid in my class that was into [Cream’s] Disraeli Gears and Steppenwolf. Wichita Falls finally got an FM station, and I heard [Frank Zappa’s] Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart. I eventually started working there. I had a little graveyard shift on the weekends. I started playing Funkadelic records. Sometimes I just played stuff because I liked the album cover,” he laughs. Griffin also collaborated with Billy Jones, a local music enthusiast and facilitator. “I cut my teeth with Billy Jones. He turned me onto [Miles Davis’s] Bitches Brew. He had a very sophisticated palette and got you listening to things you never would have heard about otherwise.” Jones, a Vietnam veteran, recorded everything on reel to reel, documenting sessions with in-town players he handpicked. These opportunities provided Griffin with his first taste of recording, albeit in a most primitive fashion.  

Then-area superintendents closed the Black high school in 1969. Black students were bussed to area schools in the name of desegregation. “I was still sixteen and did summer school. I was banging around Wichita Falls jam sessions. I was proficient enough to play with Jimmy Saurage and his band Franklin’s Mast. We had art classes together.” Guitarist Jimmy Saurage arrived in Wichita Falls courtesy of his parents’ Air Force careers. “There were only five bands maybe in the town. Jimmy had a graphic skill set and was always postering, making posters. Hanging them around town.” Bevis and Jimmy would see touring bands at the local teen club, the Kickapoo Kantico, particularly Krackerjack, a five-piece Texas powerhouse with a rotating roster of esteemed guitarists and the recently dismissed rhythm section for Johnny Winter’s band, bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer "Uncle" John Turner. Of particular note was a new regional power trio called ZZ Top. They were still pulling a trailer but were sonically overwhelming. “That’s like a whale in your front yard!” Bevis and Jimmy were invited to an afterhours jam where ZZ Top played an additional set for a select audience.  

“One of my classmates was Steve Nunn, whose older brother was Gary P. Nunn, who I didn’t know then. Steve and I were friendly. He said, ‘I’m going down to Austin to see my brother this weekend. You wanna come along?’ Any opportunity to get out of town, I’m not gonna pass up on it! So we drive down to Austin in his VW Van. We were just on Gary P’s coattails for 48 hours. We were up for two days straight! I took acid for the first time. I was in a recording studio for the first time. It was literally like the analogy of The Wizard of Oz, going from sepia tone to Technicolor, it was that drastic. The local color of Austin in 1970 was so vibrant. All these people with long hair everywhere and girls in tank tops. Everyone was free. Especially compared to Wichita Falls! Austin had cultivated this movement and it was in full swing. I got to dip my toe in the Vulcan Gas Company. I saw Chequered Flag, New Orleans Club, the Black Queen. I went to all these spots. I had a big Afro and scarves on my arms like Jimi and jewelry hanging off my neck like Sly. My hair was my pass, you know what I mean!?”

“After I graduated high school, I go back to LA ostensibly to begin college. My parents were divorced and my dad was out of the sanitorium. I was going to pursue in earnest an education towards architecture. I was a good student, I had good grades, I liked school. But the genie was already out of the bottle. Then I discovered Rolling Stone magazine, Creem magazine, and in LA all this stuff is wide open. It made Austin look like Waco,” he chuckles. “Before I finished my first semester, my dad got a phone call from a friend that had a blues group, and they were going to go out on tour to support O.V. Wright. I told dad, ‘I’d like to take that gig just to see how it goes. Just to see what it’s really like.’ And I did. I auditioned at the 5-4 Ballroom and played my first gig there. The band leader was this cat called Alabama Slim, who I ultimately found out was an inveterate gambler and pimp and had all sorts of salacious sidebar activities. This cat was about 6’ 3”, sharp dresser, fast talker. Had a Fleetwood El Dorado that we traveled in pulling a trailer. We supported Rudy Ray Moore and Jimmy Lynch the Funky Tramp. We were out for maybe four months until the tail end of fall. Then we stay put, here and there for a few weeks. No contracts, no formalities. I’m seventeen, I’m on the road, I’m traveling, learning my trade, watching other performers, the seminal experience of being a touring musician. It wasn’t glamorous. In late November, Slim disappears in Akron, Ohio. Stranded . . . indefinitely. I was antsy. I called my mom. I asked her what I should do. She says, ‘What you can do is call your friend Jimmy Saurage, because he’s been calling here for you almost every other day!’ I thought, ‘Really?’ ‘Here’s his number. Call him and then call me back.’ He was living in Austin and needed another drummer for Franklin’s Mast. I said, ‘If you got fifty bucks for a bus ticket, send it Western Union. I can put my drums on the freight and be there in three or four days, because I’m in freakin’ Akron.’ The decision was made and back to Texas I go.”

After arriving in Austin, Jimmy and Bevis started woodshedding at a storage facility off Riverside Drive. They lived in the storage room for weeks at a time, scavenging at a gas station, and utilizing the “facilities” at a nearby Dairy Queen. The upstarts set their aspirations on a pending battle of the bands including some of the premiere local rock acts in Austin of the day, and featuring the absolute top of the food chain at that time: Krackerjack. “At the time I first got here as a teenager, Krackerjack was in full bloom. They were the kings of the scene. And Krackerjack looked like a big rock band, they just had the aura. They were packing every venue that they played at. Even weeknights!” Griffin and Saurage had encountered Krackerjack previously in Wichita Falls, even hanging out backstage to meet the band members. Refreshing the memory of bassist Tommy Shannon of his existence, Griffin still glorifies the connection decades later. “Tommy Shannon I always credit as one of my first mentors, as far as the local scene.” Another challenging band on the bill at that cherished gig included Cottonmouth with Van Wilks.  

Franklin’s Mast impressed the assembled audience, doing a set heavy on original material in the style of Grand Funk Railroad. “Our performance energy was what generated attention for us, because the others were like shoegazers, kinda like the Allman Bros. Well, Jimmy looked like Jimmy Page, played a Les Paul down around his knees. He had so much charisma with his theater background. Jimmy was the animated spectacle. That’s the kind of thing that put us on the map. I looked like a little hybrid of Jimi and Sly with my big hair. I wasn’t tippy-toeing around on those drums. Our bass player was this guy Barry Minnick. He was good looking and competent. We were just bangers! All this caught the attention of Charley Hatchett, the vanguard booking agent in Central Texas. He was there and gave us his card. That following Monday we said, ‘We’re in!’ He had us going out and about southeast Texas and west Texas. All these weird shows, sorority dances, sock hops, high school things. Then we got invitations to play real clubs in Houston, San Antonio, and San Angelo. San Angelo became a real hub for us. For some reason we caught fire in west Texas.  Midland, Odessa. They just couldn’t get enough of Franklin’s Mast in west Texas. Almost every time we went out there, we had some kind of controversy of police harassing us, dismantling our trailer. Our saving grace was Charlie Hatchett, an attorney with a private plane. He would come out and spring us. The only experiences of racism exerted on us were as a band in traveling scenarios. And because we had such an androgynous appearance, we got charged with all kinds of crazy things. Lewd and lascivious behavior, impersonating a woman. I didn’t even know that was a thing. In towns like Kingsville and Beeville, we were the weekend attraction. All the Austin bands would do this kind of thing. We lived in that van.”

“By the spring of ’71, we had moved into a motel around 58th and Lamar. Mother Earth on Lamar was our hang. That was where a lot of the hard rock was happening. It had an artistic aura about it, lighted dance floor. That was our ecosystem. Then I was rolling with the Krackerjack posse. I just went wherever they went. I cannot overstate how influential they were on the city, on the scene. That’s when I was developing my sensibility about what is hip, what is cool. In the process getting deep, firsthand knowledge from seasoned vets. These guys were doing this when I was still in junior high school. Me hanging out with Krackerjack was no different than hanging with the Hell’s Angels. They were on the other side of the social fence. We were like vampires, up for days. Zero ‘fucks’ given about conformity.”  

“Krackerjack invited me to sit in. They were giving me a leg up, ya know? When that did happen, it opened the flood gates for me, it put a patina on my skill set. I had invitations to do [studio] sessions. As a drummer, I tried to stay as versatile as possible.”

Bevis waxes nostalgic over the scene in those years. “Everyone was so self-expressive. Everyone was shining in their own way. It was not just jeans, t-shirt, and flip-flops. This was not a costume; it was a uniform. Then as the British glam explosion is making its way state side, Slade finally comes to the Armadillo World Headquarters. And everyone who is on that team, the UK glam tip, is there and there’s maybe twelve of us. How’s that different than the nascent punk scene? Not at all, it’s the same!” The eye-catching garb was deeply, personally relevant, but not obviously revelatory to outsiders. “I will go so far to say there is a certain degree of homoeroticism in the zeitgeist of that [musical movement]. But not in an overt way, we weren’t kissing each other, but it was something fraternal about it. Like we were a certain type of dude that other dudes couldn’t relate to. We weren’t raising eyebrows if someone put eyeliner on. We were more like, ‘How much should we put on? Should we put more?’ There were other counterparts in Dallas like the Werewolves, or a band called Bees Make Honey in San Antonio.”  

“I was never ostracized by racism from the [local] players. I never had an anxiety about being a Black glam rocker. I was challenging as much homophobia as racism, maybe more so. I had to fight for my right to self-expression. When the glam thing took off, just certain individuals said, ‘That’s for me!’” Of a trip to Dallas to see bosom compatriots the Werewolves open for the New York Dolls, Bevis explains, “I can’t say that I was infatuated with the [Dolls] musically, as much as I was aesthetically. Because they had everyone’s hair on end. I thought, ‘That shit looks cool to me!’ It was like playing with Barbie dolls, and I’m the doll! I had a twenty-seven-inch waist, so I could wear any girl clothes. I was tall, thin, with snake hips, ya know? And girls loved to dress me! I’d come to their crib, and they’d say, ‘Try this on. Try that!’ And I could sew! (pauses, smiling) In a rudimentary way.”

But as the years turned, Franklin’s Mast began to stagnate. “We had an agent but never a manager. I regret that now. We lapsed into this complacency of codependency. We should have been managing our own expectations and opportunities. We should have packed up and moved to New York like the Werewolves. . . . But even if we’re stuck on the hamster wheel here, it’s a hamster wheel we made. I was younger than most of the local [talent]. When I came on the scene, I was barely eighteen. As I came up the ranks, between ’72 and ’75, I’m only like twenty-one. Now I’m four years deep in the game.” Austin had no built-in record label presence then (and still does not). But the eyes of a particular scene did garnish international excitement. “Then came the culmination of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and the whole cosmic cowboy thing.” This is one of the few monumental musical movements of the period in which Bevis had no direct participation, although he saw some performances.    

Bevis returned to Wichita Falls to regroup his faculties. “My mom and dad remarried. I got to be part of the family again. Between ’75 and ’77, I did a lot of soul searching and needed to elevate my drumming. I took a lot of sideman gigs. Go out on the road for a few weeks at a time. Around ’78, It became clear to me there was a new musical movement. Before I heard the Sex Pistols, I heard the Stranglers. I started looking at all these British trade papers. That’s where I read about the Ramones in ’76. I went one summer to see the Werewolves in NYC. They were signed to RCA and were managed by (former Rolling Stones manager) Andrew Loog Oldham. Kicking around New York before the punk scene really came into vogue, I thought, ‘There’s nothing going on here that I can’t do.’ I almost thought they were kind of lazy. And while I was there, I met Phil Lynott (the Black Irish singer-bassist of Thin Lizzy) at the Chelsea Hotel, and we had a conversation. He said something to the effect that, ‘In England, everything is predicated on the church of what’s happening right now. Like, if you’re not early, you’re late. You really want to fixate on becoming something that is unique. That way you’ll never date yourself. Don’t get into a headspace where you’re trying to be hip.’ You’d think that I would’ve thought of this myself. So, was I going to become a drummer that was amorphous, playing with any old opportunity that came up? Or do I take the next step and become an artist that will be self-determined? That happened between ’78 and ’79. I’m looking at the clock, man, because now I’m 27. That’s the age when Jimi and Brian Jones died. So, I’ve got nothing to lose. I figure I’m going into the Bevis Griffin business.”

Franklin’s Mast gained a new bass player with Jimmy Fleming from Blackbird, a band that featured a teenaged Stevie Ray Vaughan. Fleming brought “another level of high energy to the live performance. Now Jimmy had a great foil onstage. We really started to get popular in Oklahoma and Kansas. I guess an extension of Hatchett’s circuit. We had a big following in Oklahoma City at a huge strip club called the Red Dog Saloon. Whatever those Mötley Crüe songs are talking about? That’s the way we were living. Full bacchanalia! We almost moved to Oklahoma City.” As one of the two lead singers in Franklin’s Mast, Bevis was singing Trapeze songs, Free songs, and even “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin.  

In the summer of 1978 Bevis went to famed Austin venue Raul’s to attend a Bodysnatchers show and met guitarist Chris Bailey, with whom he would collaborate for years. “We had an interesting amalgam of guilty pleasures. We both liked Black Sabbath, we both liked Parliament/Funkadelic, Motorhead. He turned me onto Devo. He was a really consistent songwriter. That’s when the lightbulb came on! Jimmy Saurage said, ‘We should start this new band.’ I had met Chris Bailey. Chris knew [bassist] Byron ‘Bucky’ Davies. The whole thing was built on magnetic attraction. You read these cues and check the boxes. We started rehearsing. Bucky knew Kathy Valentine and Carla Olson from the Violators, who had just started up.” The inaugural punk rock scene at Raul’s was initiating tremendous attention. “Once I fell in with Chris and Jimmy, we formed the band Skyscrapers. Chris was writing songs and singing some, I was singing some, but Jimmy was the predominant front man. It was like the Cars, but no keyboards. It was a fresh sound, sonically progressive, very hooky. That’s what was going on where new wave and punk diverged. New wave gained a stronger presence, not just in the marketplace but in the zeitgeist at large. Because that whole LA new wave scene was where the Go-Gos and the Motels evolved out of. That’s where Gary Myrick and the Figures evolved out of. We were cognizant of all that. Chris had sophisticated, chordal structure, and a great sense of melodic counterpoint. An A-class composer. He was like our Swiss army knife. When you pair that with someone with great fundamentals like Jimmy Saurage, who was a front man like Chris wasn’t, you’ve got a great combo. Bucky Davies was a chick magnet, he looked like a celebrity. Had a great, funny personality, a lot of fun! So, Skyscrapers were born, and we started making the rounds. First show at Raul’s (he believes). But we had much more stability at the Continental Club, which was just coming out of mothballs. It had been dormant for almost a decade. Roger ‘One Knite’ Collins and Wayne Nagel were joint partners. Wayne always had his finger on the pulse of what’s going on. Wayne had his stable of acts he liked. He just kept [booking] us in repeat cycles. Before long, the folks at the Armadillo caught wind of us. First time we played there we opened for Jools and the Polar Bears. We went over because we were a lot more exciting than Jools,” he laughs. “The next time we played there we opened for the Ramones! That was awesome! Then Jimmy felt conflicted when Chris and I started writing songs together. We were on the same wavelength. It was nothing contrived about it. Chris and I got into a groove.” Saurage felt left out and after almost a decade of working together, broke off from performing with Griffin and the other Skyscrapers. “He appreciated [my] ambition at first. . . . But I owe him for breaking the ice on my career for as naïve and difficult as I was and forceful about how I wanted to contribute. I had a sensibility early on that presaged my actual abilities. I knew what I liked.” Bevis and Bailey served a stint with the Shades, but a change was afoot and an opportunity from out of state arose.

In 1979, after networking with some Oklahoma musicians, Bevis accepted an invitation from band leader Bob Avila of Altus, Oklahoma. He had a lucrative schedule touring Air Force bases around the west. “I went up to Altus and had Jimmy Fleming come along, rehearsing with this outfit, cutting my teeth as lead singer without blowing my cover. On the downlow. These guys were playing southern rock, but I couldn’t do just that. So, I had to show ‘em these records. ‘This is Aerosmith, this is Bad Company, this is Nazareth, we’re gonna play this and this.’ Now we had twelve songs of scorching hard rock for this cover band. ‘This is Mountain, this is Cactus.’ Going all the way back to the early 70s. I cherry-picked this set and instructed, ‘This is the way we’re gonna dress.’ I was the stylist. Some of these guys were roofers and laborers. I took ‘em way out of their comfort zones. And my hair, it looked like Steve Stevens’s hair. We were called Dirty Tricks.” After a successful run of shows, Bevis returned to Wichita Falls for Christmas, and then to Austin, having recreated himself as a front man. “I was copping this from James Brown, copping that from Freddie Mercury or Rod Stewart. I was providing a show! And this was all before I saw Van Halen. After that, I knew I was on the right track!”

With the new-found capacity to sing and front a band, Griffin and Bailey formed the Bats. This was long before tourists would gather nightly to see the current local phenomenon of Mexican freetail bats that were then establishing a colony beneath the Congress Street Bridge. “Chris was very prolific. He was churning [songs] out week after week. I was more pragmatic. I sing my ideas and beat on the table like a beatbox. Work out the verses and make demos on cassette. It would rarely take more than an hour and you got a brand-new nugget. We had bass guitarist Courtney Audain fresh from Trinidad and drummer Billy Blackmon from the Skunks. Then drummer Johnny Medina. He had a basement rehearsal space in Travis Heights. When we became the Bats, we liked the punchy short name everyone could spell and remember. We shot a video right outside the Natural Bridge tourist stop outside San Antonio. We had a manager called Ron Backer. Chris was a great graphic artist, and this was the zenith of the Austin poster scene. And we had the support of the Continental [and performed with] Standing Waves and the Big Boys, the Next, Billy Pringle and the Boy Troubles, [who all] erupted out of Raul’s. Most with some stability or staying power. M.D.C. and the Dicks. I was empathetic to the new groups, some of who were kinda rickety. Punk was not a huge revelation, but what I found most appealing was the DIY aspect. You don’t have to wait around for Mr. Big to get things going. And I liked the political messaging. I liked Black Flag for that reason. I liked Jello Biafra, Circle Jerks, Minor Threat. I liked that whole revolutionary posture. This is all pre hip-hop. We were conscious of all these things. But at the same time, I’m trying to figure out how to get into the big leagues. All that [scene] is going on but I’m already hanging out with the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Joe Ely and Double Trouble. Because tick, tock, the clock is ticking. I’m only twenty-five, twenty-six, and I’m psychologically shifting gears, pushing further into songwriting and song presentation. A local band D-Day got signed to A&M Records. Their manager was Elise O’Leary and she got us in the recording studio at Third Coast Studio right on I-35. It was significant because it was a full-fledged soundstage. A big expensive space (owned by Michael Block). We cut six tracks inside two weeks and we come out with a strong demo. She gave us a release of the recording and Ron Backer started shopping it. Billy Gibbons somehow got a copy and invited me to a party at Pecan Street Recording Studio. He said he liked it. But months passed and nothing was happening. At the Continental I met an English engineer John Rollo fresh from Konk Studios (owned by the Kinks). He was trying to expatriate and had a Green Card or status to be in the United States to marry a Texan. He saw us at the Continental, and I gave him a tape. He said, ‘This is outstanding. How would you like to come out to a studio I’m building in Uvalde?’ It was called Indian Creek.”

 Manager Ron Backer made sure the resulting tapes would be free of surprise clauses and that the band would retain all rights to the resulting material. “We recorded another six songs series with Rollo. It was a much higher caliber result. He had such sage experience working with Ray Davies. Then he moved to New York. His manager Betty Heusinger made some overtures towards the project. I had met her as the road manager for the Pretenders who we opened for in Houston on their first US tour. Then I found out there was a band called Bats out of New Zealand and they were getting press. I found out by reading Melody Maker or New Music Express magazine. So, we made a preemptive decision and changed the band name to avoid confusion in the marketplace. Chris came up with Banzai Kik. I liked that! It was strong and fresh. And there was a resurgence in heavy metal. Not just the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Girlschool, Saxon), but in LA all the stuff that came on the back end of the Van Halen success, you know Mötley Crüe and all that. This was all anathema to the lion’s share of the Austin scene. That was polarizing! All these Austin bands here were getting comfortable in their new wave/punk rock niche. We decided to turn the corner and go back to the arena sound. Hard rock! With immense authority! And joyful impunity! It alienated us from Raul’s and Continental Club. Our new base camp was Club Foot run by Brad First. A new scene would culminate there with more road shows. That’s where the Plasmatics, R.E.M., and Grace Jones came to play. The Stranglers, the Bus Boys. U2 played in Austin for the first time at Club Foot.”  

In the vacuum of the closing of the Armadillo, Club Foot and Austin Opera House took off. “That’s where a lot of energy migrated after the Armadillo. When AC/DC played the Opera House, it was shoulder to shoulder. Judas Priest, Gary Numan, Lou Reed, Roger Troutman and Zapp, the Tubes. Ike and Tina Tuner were some of the first to play the Opera House. Once I spent the whole day with Ian Hunter and Mick Ronson in July ’79. They were playing at the Austin Opera House. They were doing an in-store at Zebra Records. I had all my shit on. Me and Ian Hunter really hit it off! Ian said, ‘I like this kid, Bevis!’ The film Roadie was shot at the Opera House. They paid us $50 each day to be extras for the film for days at a time. I hung out with Don Cornelius! Banzai Kik started getting bursts of press. Texas Monthly made some comments. The Austin Chronicle had yet to develop any cache. We were nominated for best hard rock band in the local press. Margaret Moser was a good friend of mine. I met her backstage at the Armadillo at an Iggy Pop show. In fact, Iggy was walking by and then turned around and stopped and licked the side of my face. We had a big laugh about that. But I wasn’t really focused on the scene here. And I never really pandered to the Chronicle.”  

About this time, the Werewolves had returned to Texas after their New York residency, bereft of their contract with RCA and minus guitarist Seab Meador who had succumbed to a brain tumor. At a show featuring Banzai Kik and the Werewolves at Club Foot, Little Steven Van Zant showed up, escorted by local blues shouter and Banzai Kik fan Lou Ann Barton. Van Zant was impressed and offered Griffin an open invitation to collaborate if he found himself in New York. “He told me, ‘What you’re doing would be a great thing in New York. People would really dig it!’ He then invited us to open his next show in Houston the following Saturday and in Shreveport. We exchanged phone numbers and that lit the fuse in me to make the next step. It’s 1983. If this thing is gonna move forward, then I need to get to New York, LA, or London!”  

“So, I moved [to New York City] with a girlfriend and took up a lease from our friends in Standing Waves. They had moved to New York and were facing an imminent eviction from a location that we took over. It was in Hell’s Kitchen, at 46th Street. That’s Midtown. I stopped off in Wichita Falls and moved up to New York City in November of ’83. The following year in ’84, I found a couple jobs in telemarketing. Then I got an opportunity to enroll at NYU on a first-level recording engineer program that gave me access to technical instruction that could lead to an interim certificate to pursue an internship at a major studio. I discovered that Little Steven and John Rollo were working together. That sounded very promising! But before we could get a session together, Little Steven was summoned by Bruce Springsteen in May 1984 to help complete Born in the USA. A case of right key, wrong keyhole. But I was already there and acclimating. Trying to make some progress, by hook or crook.”  

The immersion into the Big Apple was invigorating and exhausting. “New York has such a high social energy! Once you were in the slipstream of it, if you kept spinning the wheel, and you went out enough, you’d eventually come across all these people because it was like being in a blender. You lose the awkwardness during celebrity encounters because you’re just in a neutral space. I’m in a gallery with Christopher Reeve. I’m walking down the street, here comes Isaac Hayes. It was getting ridiculous. I’d see Andy Warhol at the fruit stand. Ed Bradley, Debbi Allen, Carly Simon, there’s Bill Graham and Carlos Santana. I had a job at a call center by Sherman Park in proximity to the Beacon Theater. One day the marquee says ‘Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble.’ I go over on my lunch break and see if the soundcheck is going. I asked the doorman if Stevie or Chris was right there. Sure enough, Chris Layton comes out and says, ‘Come on in, man!’ The rest is history. I came back later that night and hung out in the green room. Mick Jagger had just left! All these people were waiting to get in, [MTV VJ] Mark Goodman, and all these other people. They were like, ‘Who’s this guy getting in before us?’

“I started hanging out at the little bistro on West Eighth Street called Be-Bop Café. It was directly across from Electric Lady Studios. It was a high-caliber musicians’ hangout. And a lot of actors and theater people. It had some exclusive rooms in the back, you know, red velvet rope stuff. I knew the DJ and he started playing my demo with a song called “Noisy Music.” A few people started asking about it. Then I met this Texan, Tim Hatfield, the lead technician of Mediasound Studios on 57th Street. That’s like a cathedral, heavy traffic for high profile recording artists. I hit it off with Tim. He listened to my demo and asked, ‘You did this? I’d like to form a production company with you to take these songs to another level.’” Hatfield began introducing Bevis to movers and shakers in the industry. Especially, top-level hard rock manager and agents from then-Aerosmith reps Leber-Krebs and attorney Judy Glover, former wife of Roger Glover of Deep Purple and Rainbow. “She was currently representing Jon Waite, who is working with my friend Gary Myrick and she’s offering me a management contract! She took me to all these exclusive New York clubs like Nell’s and Aria and Palladium, even soirees for Jimmy Page and Paul Rogers when they formed the Firm or a party for David Bowie. She gets me a line of credit for $25,000 so I can draft money for ancillary expenses. I used that mostly to fly Chris Bailey every weekend to New York to do recording. Judy is confident that we’re gonna get a [record] deal. Then as ’85 turns to ’86, Judy comes back with a cancer diagnosis. That removed her from the equation. But because our relationship is congenial, she gave me a waiver to continue. I would honor a measure of entitlement and if I should hit it, I would reimburse her for her expenditures. But this was the ’80s, the era of Bon Jovi and the Crüe. The budgets are enormous, six figures. We wouldn’t feel like we got a deal unless it’s for a quarter of a million. Maybe a $500,000 advance. Everyone knows this could be a big money venture. Why? Because Michael Jackson and Prince are already at the top of the food chain. But there is no alternative to that in the hard rock medium. And that’s because my image and my sound would prevent me from being perceived as a Prince tagalong. There were already Black superstars so it’s not difficult to postulate how that could be impactful. Because I’m right in the vein of where Bon Jovi was coming from.  I would sign the band as Chris Bailey and myself. We could make the record playing all the instruments ourselves. This is when we come into talks with Jack Douglas to produce.”

Demos were recorded between ’85 and ’86, comprised of ever-emerging new material. Bevis was hitting the town with his girlfriend who was working at Ford Modeling Agency. The nightlife was ceaseless, the options for networking relentless. When reading the Village Voice, Bevis began noting regular contributor Greg Tate. One article in particular piqued his interest: “The Two Best Guitarists You Never Heard” detailing the stories, skills, and aspirations of Black guitarists Ronny Drayton and Vernon Reid. This was a fateful discovery for Bevis. Ronny Drayton was a seminal influence on much of the progressive Black music community in New York. He had a long association with avant-garde guitarist James Blood Ulmer. Vernon Reid at that time was most renowned for working with Ronald Shannon Jackson and the No Wave musical community in New York (and had yet to make connections with Mick Jagger that would result in his band Living Colour’s multiplatinum debut Vivid). In the article Tate mentioned the Black Rock Coalition, a grassroots movement meant to showcase Black artists in a wide array of musical idioms of NYC and beyond, but with an emphasis on rock. Excited by the notions posited in the article, Bevis impulsively phoned the Village Voice offices and asked to speak to Tate. Remarkably, he was patched through directly to the writer and immediately established a rapport. “I gave him my elevator pitch, started in Texas, been playing the hard rock since ’72, etc. And he said, ‘Man, Vernon is here right now. Would you like to talk to him?’ I talk to Vernon and he says, ‘Yeah. You sound like the kind of brother we need. We’re meeting down in Chinatown Saturday at 3:00.’ I make it to the meeting, it was small, maybe a dozen participants. But the speaker was Lester Bowie from the Art Ensemble of Chicago! And I think ‘Damn, that’s deep! These cats is deep!’ Lester spoke to ‘stepping outside the box,’ not having to fall into compliance with peer expectations. He suggested that ‘genre is not an important factor in any of your musical choices.’ So, I realized that this was an intellectual think tank, not just a social gathering. These cats were operating on a premise that was really well formulated and they had a manifesto that Black artists have been driving the culture since . . . emancipation, so to speak! Analytically speaking, the whole [music industry] has been mechanized to distort the rock and roll bloodline, primarily for commercial purposes.”

At the close of the meeting, Vernon Reid asked Griffin, “Do you have any of your music with you?” Griffin confirmed and played a cassette sample of “Noisy Music.” “Everyone’s mouth just dropped open. I’ll never forget that! Everyone was aghast. We were going for the throat!” A crucial impression and valuable connection had been established. The BRC was in its infancy, having only met in person a handful of times. Griffin suggested taking the message to the stage in the form of a live musical presentation. Admission revenue could be folded back into the organization. Tate provided a platform via the Village Voice and like-minded area journalists in solidarity. “Publicity wasn’t a problem,” Bevis stresses. It was perceived as another musical movement: “Oh, that’s Black Rock?” In the fall of 1987, a run of BRC events took place around New York under the banner of the Black Rock Coalition Orchestra. “We put out a casting call. We needed more drummers, more guitarists. Everyone had to go out a bring a candidate back.”  

By the next meeting the crowd had doubled, expanding exponentially by the time of the first performance at Prospect Park. “At one point I was going to play drums, but then we met Will Calhoun, who hadn’t joined Living Colour yet.” Players started falling into place. Some singers had bands, some did not. But a backline was provided with additional musicians on stand-by. “I was scheduled to do a couple of songs. My presentation caught a lot of buzz because I just did the Bevis Griffin type thing. We would play outdoors and then at a club like SOB’s or Peppermint Lounge, alternating between outside shows and clubs. We’d get a press blurb here and there. Then in February of 1987, we announced a two-night festival at CBGB called ‘The Stalking Heads of ’87.’  It was blistering cold, in the 20s. We sold that thing out two nights in a row. We had such a large contingent of international press at these shows that within weeks we had a two-page article in Rolling Stone magazine.” Indeed, Rolling Stone columnist David Fricke recognized “the unabashed arena-style rockers Banzai Kik.” “Then Billboard and Musician magazine. This guy at Creem magazine was really dialed in on Bonsai Kik! So, he wrote a little sidebar on us.” At the end was an all-star jam with luminaries from around the Black Rock scene: Nona Hendryx, Dr. Know, Michael Hampton, Bernard Fowler. “We were all smushed up there. I can’t even remember what we were singing because by then I was lit! I just remember it being a love fest. I felt like I had found my family. After all this time being a solo maverick, I felt a part of a musical family. I had felt that to a smaller extent in Austin, but this was all Black musicians. All great Black musicians.”  

“All sorts of things were percolating. Living Colour got the call from Epic Records. I got a cold call from this cat called Stan Schneider, says he’s an attorney and represents an executive at EMI Records, Ian Ralfini. He was trying to relaunch Shelter Records. He’d acquired the funding to bid on the Shelter roster to reissue on the new format of compact discs. Along with that he hoped to sign three new acts. Stan says he saw me at CBGB and was intrigued. He wanted to take a meeting. Ian signed Black Sabbath to Warner Brothers. He signed the Faces. Name-brand, heavyweight British bands. He listened to four songs including a song I wrote called “I Ain’t Keith Richards.” It was satirical, suggesting that you’ll kill yourself emulating Keith’s lifestyle. It wasn’t a joke song; it wasn’t like Weird Al [Yankovic].” Ralfini liked the song so much, he thought they should preview the number for his upstairs neighbor, Keith Richards. “He called and we went up in a private elevator to see Keith. He listened and said, ‘That’s pretty clever mate.’” He implied he would make a cameo in a video. “Just three years earlier, I came to town and didn’t know anybody, and then I was just hanging out at Keith Richard’s house. A real pinch-me moment! . . . So Ralfini offered me a retainer, wrote me a check to wait until he could close the deal on Shelter. The biggest check of my life then. I just gotta sit on my hands for these months.” Griffin was permitted to perform shows but was to not tender any other offers during the allotted time. “I took that check and went crazy at Trash & Vaudeville. I bought everything. I got my million-dollar look on! Every leather jacket. Every kind of boot in every color. When I was walking down the street, it was game time, even in New York! I was feeling my persona!”  

But tragedy struck that Fourth of July of 1987, when in a heated argument Navaline fatally shot Melvin through the front door of their home with a shotgun. “There were instances of domestic violence in my house. Sporadic, but traumatic, nonetheless. But it wasn’t like my father was a monster. And my mother wasn’t a hyena. But there had been all these things underpinning with my dad’s gambling and his late nights. That brought a lot of stress to my mom. By the time they separated she had had it by ’66.” But Griffin’s parents had reunited, even remarrying in the 1970s, with Melvin moving to Wichita Falls while the three youngest children were still at home.  “[In July 1987] I get this phone call, and it’s surreal. A neighbor had called my younger sister and she called me. It was a close-knit community. My mom would facilitate aid and assistance to the elderly neighbors. An argument had escalated from some minor disagreement. We all convened in Wichita Falls just to deal with the trauma as a family. I had an emotional ambivalence because I could have imagined so many other [scenarios.] ‘How could that have been the best recourse? He was locked outside already. Why not wait for the cops to show up?’ The trauma was so intense because it was the last thing anybody expected to happen.” At the end of the summer, Griffin returned to New York, without having confessed the awful developments in Wichita Falls to any confidants in Austin, let alone in the Big Apple. “I kept that on complete lockdown!” Upon returning to New York, “Ian came back and said that the deal didn’t go through, for whatever reason, and I was free to go hunting for a deal.”

In autumn of 1987, Vernon Reid invited Griffin to see Bad Brains at the Ritz. Griffin had not yet seen the formidable all-Black punk unit from Washington DC. “The show went off and it was nuclear!” Bad Brains manager Anthony Countey was forming a production company and approached Griffin about a contract. “He took my tapes. He was really impressed with the material. Because of his clout with Bad Brains, I felt very confident in his ability to represent a Black alternative artist.” Countey’s partner was to be Andy Griggs who was already handling Michael Monroe fresh from the defunct Finnish hard rock band Hanoi Rocks. This proposed union would include publicist Lynn Robinson with additional outside help to negotiate any record label offers. Day-to-day management would fall to Griggs. Robinson had a long career as a publicist and regional radio music programmer for influential industry insider Lee Abrahms. The combined management team would go under the banner “Shake the Earth.” Robinson provided a four-song demo of Banzai Kik to her childhood friend and Late Night with David Letterman drummer Anton Fig who in turn passed the tape to noted record producer Jack Douglas. Douglas had made his name in the business producing Aerosmith and the New York Dolls and engineering sessions for John Lennon, the Who, and Cheap Trick. Douglas was impressed enough to ask to meet Griffin. The two hit it off with plans to meet at Studio Instrument Rentals (SIR) where “A-listers rehearse for auditorium shows. We set up as if we were playing a gig. Fortunately, I had been playing with these guys for over a year. We mapped out a six-song set together and let it blast. Jack Douglas told me, ‘This is it! You have the whole enchilada right here. Let’s cut the first sessions down at Chung King House of Metal.’”  

Located in New York’s Chinatown, Chung King’s one-room studio had been popular with area punk bands, but it garnered an international profile hosting crucial early sessions for Run-D.M.C., Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, and L.L. Cool J. “I was intrigued because of the Run-D.M.C. connection. But when I get to the joint, it’s kind of a dump. I’m just being real. But there had to be something about it because otherwise Jack Douglas wouldn’t want to set foot inside. Once we got into the mix I understood because the atmosphere was so unpretentious, and they had the gear! Topflight gear-wise. We cut the track “In My Dreams (I Fly).” We cut it in two takes. Then I layered the vocals and Jack got real excited. He saw the influence of the Beatles and Todd Rundgren or David Bowie and Peter Gabriel. He said, ‘This is really interesting. Now we’re going to the Record Plant!’” Douglas was intimately familiar with the Record Plant, having started his career there as a custodian and working his way in the control room as an engineer and ultimately producing hit albums at the studio. “A couple weeks later, we convene in Studio B, which is significant because that is the same room where Jimi Hendrix cut most of Electric Ladyland. I thought, ‘All I need to do is be buried here!’ It was a lot to take in, man! That was one of the most thrilling days of my life, that first day. Our relationship was very congenial. Jack gave me a tour of the whole studio, showed me where they recorded in stairwells, etc. Warren Benbow became our de facto drummer; he had been playing with James Blood Ulmer.” David Gross handled bass duties. “We could add keyboards or backing vocals after laying a rhythm bedrock. We had six sings in the can, three were already mixed, I had the submixes.

“Then we broke for the holidays. I went back to Texas for Christmas. When I came back to New York [after February], I received a memo in the mail that said our sessions were suspended. I couldn’t get hold of Anthony Countey because he was abroad with Bad Brains. Lynn Robinson explained that she was still on holiday hiatus. That’s where everything starts to get blurry. I’m asking Andy Griggs, ‘What’s the hold up?’ He says that a check never cleared, a substantial check, maybe $17,000. This check became a bone of contention. Within a couple of weeks it becomes a full blown accusation. Jack’s production company Waterfront accuses Shake the Earth of financial fraud. It then came to my attention that Andy had acquired a financial backer from his camp. Anthony wasn’t privy to this information. I don’t like to get too deep in the weeds with the specifics of these things because none of these things have been proven in court.” But this mysterious backer/investor had contributed cash with the intention of reaping a windfall as the project came to fruition. “I couldn’t get a sit-down with any of my principal management [team members] to tell me what the hell was going on. I’m stuck like Chuck. I was in a quandary because the management team had paper on me, the production company had paper on me. I wasn’t even a free agent. I was bound until I could acquire a legal release.  My whole career was stalled and that drove me into a deep depression. I was having suicidal thoughts. It had taken me twelve years from inception to get to that point. Just months before everyone was telling me I was going to be the next big thing. I had every reason to believe it, it wasn’t just pipe dreams. It was heart crushing. As March moves into April, I’m talking to my sister Stephanie and I told her, ‘If I don’t figure this out, I’m gonna kill myself.’ I needed to take a break before I took another step forward. My managers couldn’t tell what was going to happen next. In fact, they were becoming evasive. My sister said, ‘I need you step away from all that. First of all, I’m grieving as you are about the loss of Dad. And the last thing I want is to have to be grieving the loss of my brother. So I need you to come out here and see me! Even if for a few weeks. You don’t have to work or think about the music business.’ We were struggling with this horrific patricide. When she couched it like that, it broke through. All this other stuff should be secondary. We had to heal our internal wounds. So, I left for LA by the early summer.” The only perceivable blessing that emerged at this daunting time was mother Navaline’s case did not result in prison time, due to the strength of her otherwise incorrupt social standing within Wichita Falls.  

When Griffin arrived in California, he contacted an old friend from Austin, Kim Banks. “She was just about to marry Joe Dallesandro. He was one of the stars from the Andy Warhol Factory camp. Joe was the star of Trash and Flesh and all those [films]. Tragic comedies are the way I look at them. Kim had visited me in New York six months previously when things were rosy. She picked me up at the airport. She was all cheerful because she was about to be married. I met Joe and we hit it off. I spent much of my social time with Joe and Kim. Joe was heavily involved in drug counseling at that time. Now I wasn’t even citing the fact that I had a drug problem, didn’t think I had a drug problem. I had a financial problem. I had a career crisis. In retrospect, it probably wouldn’t have hurt to get sober. But I was too busy licking wounds. And meanwhile, Living Colour is starting to pop up on MTV. And I’m looking at it like, ‘My boys have got my spot!’ I’m happy for them, they’re certainly my friends and I’m cheering for them. But every time I see them, it’s like it pops a stitch on me. I’m like, ‘Bro, you’re in my space. Or at least I should be right there next to you!’ You know what I mean? You know how your head plays on you, especially if you’ve got an ego. I certainly did at that time!” Living Colour’s debut Vivid for Epic Records would sell double platinum before the 1980s ended.

“A whole litany of events transpired over those next months in Los Angeles. I was only there seeking a way to get extricated from this binding agreement that was keeping me out of the music business. I had cold feet about taking any initiative, being afraid of false starts.” And in Los Angeles “the irony is that the whole hair metal scene is in full bloom.” Eventually Griffin was drawn into the night life via friends he had accumulated from various scenes. Invited to parties at the famed Rainbow Bar, film premieres, even a staged after-hours circus, Griffin found himself straying away from the healing he was purportedly pursuing. “It was completely Hollywood, lurid, rock and roll bacchanalia. You go through one door, and you end up a hundred miles from what you had intended to do tomorrow. So, I made my social circle very compact, just my sister, Joe, and Kim. Then Joe’s son Mikey came from Brooklyn and Joe entrusted me to act as a chaperone to take Mikey to parties that Joe was invited to. Joe never pressured me about [sobriety]. He never said, ‘You need to make a testimony or earn these chips’ or whatever. What was fascinating to me was the number of celebrities that were [seeking] him in these private settings [as a counselor]. These were people I knew and recognized—you would too—and this illuminated me to the fact that maybe fame and fortune wasn’t all that it is cracked up to be. It really started to seep into my little dense perspective that you have to look at this thing like a double-edged sword. In this particular timeframe I spent more time around actors than musicians. I got to rub shoulders with some really interesting people. One night we were invited to see a performance by Whoopi Goldberg at the Universal Amphitheater. She was gracious, thanked us for coming out.” Goldberg invited Griffin to the Peter Strauss Ranch for a pre-taping of pending comedy special Fontaine—Why Am I Straight?. She said, “Come out and we’ll have lunch, we’ll have a soiree.” Billy Idol was featured in the opening skit and had his then guitarist Mark Younger-Smith, an Austinite, in tow. “We had hung out just a few weeks before at the Palomino. Mark and I were real good buddies. We spent the balance of the afternoon and this time with Whoopi.” During the resulting conversations Griffin explained his legal dilemmas. “Whoopi gave me a referral to an attorney that would take my case pro bono to get my release from the binding agreement in New York. And I [finally] secured that over the course of weeks.”

Griffin would not hear the entire story of how the working relationships broke down until 2009. “From 1987 until 2009, I was operating in a veil of complete evasive fog. I’ve suspected malfeasance on behalf of [everyone involved]. They were the active and accountable parties for the management team, and none of these things should have been out of my immediate purview. But after a twenty-two-year vacuum, I finally got some answers via an online discussion on Facebook with Lynn Robinson. I suspected embezzlement by unknown parties. But an irresponsible, childish decision by someone on my team torpedoed my project.” A jealous wife having detected an unfaithful husband in the organization had stopped payments on the checks, sowed distrust in the participants, and brought Griffin’s ascent to a standstill, a freefall even.

With a new lease on life and feeling restless in California, Griffin spontaneously reached out to Austin guitarist Denny Freeman, a long-time friend. “I told him that I would maybe come back to Austin or try New York. He said in so many words, ‘If you can get back here, we can start a band.’ That sounded interesting. I ruminated on it for a few days. I called him back and asked if he was serious and he said, ‘I think that would be great. We can get something going. I have a rhythm section already with Sarah Brown and George Rains.’ And I’m thinking like J. Geils Band energy or [British pub rock band] Dr. Feelgood. Like maximum R&B but showcasing Denny. That was Chill Factor. So that’s the end of ’88 and we started playing at the Black Cat and we created a buzz. And then we started at Continental Club just as Steve Wertheimer was taking ownership. He offered to be our booking agent. We were playing the Continental three times a month. We played Hole in the Wall, Steamboat, anywhere but Antone’s. Denny didn’t want to play there. It worked out to our benefit. We started talking about creating original material. We taped a great live recording over at KUT with Paul Ray as host. Beautifully recorded. We were in great form.” Freeman was called away for family matters in Dallas, and the band lost steam during the resulting lull.  

Griffin’s disappointment was quickly dispelled by an unexpected phone call from Vernon Reid. “He tells me, ‘Guess what? We’re going out [on the road] with the Rolling Stones.’ I said, ‘That’s awesome!’ Living Colour were designated as the exclusive opener for the Rolling Stones’ historic 1989 comeback as a touring entity. Griffin traveled with Living Colour from shows at the Dallas Cotton Bowl to Atlanta, two weeks of exposure to the jet-set life he had aspired to. He returned home to prospects such as a development deal with Ray Benson, cutting demos in an industrial duo RawHead TechX, and an opportunity to front Austin roots rockers Solid Senders. A chance encounter with Mississippi-born pianist Beth McKee led to collaborations and performances billed as Kulebra Dragons. In 1991, a benefit performance for beleaguered local singer/songwriter Alejandro Escovedo prompted the creation of an Austin supergroup featuring Stephen Doster, Will Sexton, Malcolm Welbourne, Thierry Le Coz, Kyle Brock, and Tommy Taylor, and christened by Griffin as the Cosmopolitans. “It was like a local Traveling Wilburys with a bunch of bandleaders in one band. Alejandro got wind of the scheme and he wanted to play with us, too. So, he was debuting songs that would subsequently appear on his first solo record. We made a club crawl playing local venues like Steamboat and Antone’s. We sold ‘em out. We did a whirlwind [local] tour: Hole in the Wall, Electric Lounge, Liberty Lunch, everything that wasn’t the Frank Erwin Center.” The Steamboat performance had a particularly profound impact upon Griffin, as that’s where he first encountered his wife to be, Kim.

“My [local] stock had been reconciled. Nobody ever got into, ‘Hey, what happened with that New York thing?’ It felt very supportive when I came back. All this perceived anxiety, all this embarrassment I had been harboring was all inside of my head. I kept myself very busy. So, by the ’90s, I was really back in the mix. But now I’m chasing the perceived clock. Now my enemy is ageism. Between even the ages of 30 and 35, your window of opportunity begins to shrink exponentially. It’s all about that next new, new, new, unless you’ve established some fanbase for yourself. At that juncture when I met my wife, things started to stabilize for me emotionally and psychologically because now I’ve got a solid partner and someplace to live. I took a job at Sound Recorders in Hyde Park where everyone and their momma was having cassettes made and then CDs. It didn’t suck because it was music related. And it kept me abreast of who was doing what [musically]. I lowered my expectations. It wasn’t a surrender, but what you call now a reality check.”  

“In 1993, I had an overture from Dino Lee who had seen me in Solid Senders and he was friends with Kim. It was a project called the Love Johnson. He enlisted guitarists Billy White and Bobby Landgraf, Courtney Audain on bass. There were zany costumes. There was a show starring (pioneer dirty rapper) Blowfly. It was a funk metal free-for-all!” Immediately after the Love Johnson performances Griffin reunited with Chris Bailey for One Fell Swoop, described as “our earnest attempts to capitalize on this grunge wave that had swept the industry. But we were merging it with a new English sound like Radiohead or (Smiths guitarist) Johnny Marr. I still had my full power as a vocalist, three octaves. There was nothing else in Austin that sounded like it.” Griffin had historically enjoyed a lengthy rapport with the Austin homegrown Reggae outfit Killer Bees, even occasionally sitting in with the band. A stop-start side project with Bees guitarist Malcolm Welbourne (perhaps better known as Papa Mali) called Spy vs Spy later prompted a larger scale endeavor, the Instigators.  

“In 1997, Malcolm called me up and said, ‘I’m starting this thing up with [drummer] Frosty and we really need a singer. I think your energy will be good for the project.’”  In addition to Frosty, members included Courtney Audain, Billy Cassis, Tomas Ramirez, Paul Mills, Claude McCan, and Tom Robinson. “I was intrigued by [how it] was heavily geared towards the seminal influence of the Mardi Gras Indian tradition, not just the standard tourist fare. I got really engaged into the true, original, territorial street gang mentality. It was an homage to the area Native Americans that had extricated slaves. Each ward would represent a particular tribe. I was skeptical at first. I saw it as cultural appropriation. Once I understood the true historic origins, I was able to get with it. I did the research and I found layers to it. That informed my presentation of the show. I became infatuated with it. We had residencies at White Rabbit, Steamboat, and Antone’s all at the same time. We opened for Maceo Parker at Antone’s. We played with the Neville Brothers at the Galveston Mardi Gras and later with Cheap Trick and Chuck Berry in Galveston. We were writing original material. I had become friendly with Art Neville and I wanted him to produce our debut album.” The Instigators’ record label Fog City balked at Art Neville’s requested wage. A clash with Welbourne resulted in what Griffin describes as “one of the most unfortunate things that has happened in my entire career. We went into the studio a cut the lion’s share of everything we knew. We had these vibrant, live-sounding recordings, and the tapes were taken to a studio in San Francisco by producer Dan Prothero.” There the album was bent to the inclinations of Welbourne, the only band member present for the mixing process. “That is the closest I have ever come to initiating an injunction on a project. It was completely diverted into a solo presentation as opposed to the visceral thing that had brought us to the table in the first place.” That was in 2000.

“Subsequent to that, I went straight back to hard rock! I worked again with Chris Bailey in a project called Paradigm with Mark Younger-Smith as producer/engineer/studio owner. We were able to do it at an affordable rate. In 2005, we recorded these four tracks that we were gonna release as an EP. And I was so pleased because this was the first time I had done the entire [session] stone-cold sober. It was done all what I call ‘raw dog.’ By the time we hoped to market, my manager Chuck Rottersman had a mental breakdown. That was my indicator that no matter what I do, there seems to be some kind of impediment to the full progress of this thing. And if this is the way it’s got to be, this is where I’m gonna end it! Because now I’m 40. I’m not going to pursue this fantasy, this pipe dream that is obviously not meant for me to achieve. By now this is like, my fourteenth project. Besides, do I really want to be [touring] on a bus? Maybe for a weekend (laughs). But not for three months! I can’t think of anyone else that’s tried harder to break that ‘glass ceiling.’ If it was in the cards, it would have happened a long time ago. The music stands up. I have the songs, many on YouTube (others in personal collections). There is no argument that I was not technically qualified to participate. I could point fingers all I want but I won’t. The buck stops here. It wasn’t all painful. A lot of it was exciting. I never went through my career pouting or with a chip on my shoulder. No sour grapes. I loved making that music. When people invite me to jam or sit-in, I respectfully decline, it’s not because I’m jaded or too cool. I just knew when I had to turn that light off. My final band was Bevis and the Painkillers, a tight little R&B outfit. We did this show opening for Rudy Ray Moore, “Dolemite”! For me it was like full circle. I had an imaginary conversation with myself and thought, “Where do you want to be in five years?” and I said, “Not here!” I didn’t get into this to be obscure; I didn’t get into this to be a starving artist. I got into this to participate at the highest conceivable level imaginable. That was my aspiration!”  

Griffin then took his years of intense experience in the music industry into management. Starting with local musicians, he assisted unschooled acts on how to avail themselves to radio and booking entities. He upped the ante by working with the proto-punk Michigan band Death, made up of three Black brothers from Detroit. Death had broken up in the 1970s, but a documentary and rereleases by the Drag City label bolstered a groundswell of interest and the brothers reformed. Later Griffin served for two years as the manager of old friends Living Colour. “I had to get these guys to open up to interpersonal communications in a meaningful and pragmatic way. They had numerous delays delivering a record to their label Megaforce. I met them in Hidalgo, Texas, where they were opening for Aerosmith. Vernon pulled me aside and asked me to assist.” Griffin agreed initially for three months and then for two years until their equilibrium was regained. Follow-up gigs included assisting André Cymone, Cincinnati funkster (and Bootsy Collins protégé) Freekbass, and John Norwood Fisher of Fishbone. In a moment of levity discussing business acumen he states, “I’m still fishing for it. I would be happy to be a late bloomer!”

After decades of being on the scene, Bevis still laments a dearth of diversity. “I have developed skin like rhinoceros hide. By going into all these uncharted spaces, not because I felt threatened, but I was determined not to be excluded. That’s what it was. It never occurred to the people in the space to welcome me ‘til I showed up. Here’s a benign example. There was a recent record release party for Freda and the Firedogs at Antone’s Records (in autumn 2022). I’m friends with Marcia Ball and really good friends with John X. Reed and Bobby Earl Smith. I go to support the event and my friends. Well, I look around and I am the sole diversity factor in the room. It’s not that big of a deal, I’m comfy because I know so many people there. But my point is this is what it was like for the majority of the ’70s, for me. It was very unusual to see another person of color.”  

Most recently Bevis Griffin created curriculum utilized by instructors in musical programs offered by the School of Rock franchises. He says that it is important that students have a firm grasp of popular music history. To know the roots of the music they are taught and that the students are drawn to individually, to expand their personal palette and understanding. He remains happily married to Kim and they breezily abide in central Austin with chihuahuas Iggy Pup and Chula. “The episodic tone of my narrative, it really does have a sort of Forrest Gump underpinning to it, because I have landed in all these really interesting scenarios. Not always as a focal point, but even as an observer. It has just happened again and again.” He shakes his head in disbelief, laughs. The circle of friends, great and dear friends, Bevis Griffin has accumulated now over his seventy years is extremely broad. Let alone the untold number of acquaintances, fans, and contemporaries. He says, “The phone still rings!”