Locals With A Rock ‘N’ Roll Past

WAITSBURG - About 50 years ago, five local Waitsburg teens brought long hair and rambunc- tious rock 'n' roll to the Touchet Valley with their band LSD & The Adicts.

The band played in Waitsburg, Prescott, Walla Walla, Dayton, Milton-Freewater, Ore., Pend- leton, Ore., and a few members even made some trips to Seattle and San Francisco hoping to score a record deal.

Today, four of those original five, Dr. Randy Pearson, Mi- chael Hubbard, Robert Maib and Clint Donley have remained in the region, their days as the "Animal House-type band" behind them, working now in sales, as dentists, lawyers and school teachers.

"We were the ones who had the instruments and started playing," Hubbard said of the group's beginning in 1964.

All five members were 12, 14, 15 and 16 years old when they came together and start- ed practicing cover songs in Vaughn Hubbard's basement on Orchard Street in Waitsburg.

Fritz Anderson and Hub- bard played guitar, Donley was vocals, Maib was drums and Pearson was the electric organ and keyboard. Hubbard said Anderson was a talented singer and songwriter as well.

Pearson said he was the band member with the most musical background.

"They wanted somebody who was actually a musician to play in the band," Pearson said with a laugh.

Pearson, now a dentist in Walla Walla, had started taking piano lessons in first grade from a woman named Dorothy in town whose family owned the local grocery store. In his sixth grade year, the accompanist for the high school chorus lost its piano player and Pearson filled in. And in eighth grade, he began playing organ for the Waitsburg Presbyterian Church, as he still does today.

Being part of a rock 'n' roll cover band was what Pearson expected, he remembers. He liked the fact that he was able to learn and play music in a differ- ent way. In his piano lessons, he always read the music. With his new band, the group would lis- ten to a song and Pearson picked out the melody and chords and helped instruct the band on how to play.

"It allowed me to learn how to ad-lib and play rather than read music," he said. "It added to my musical abilities."

Maib was excellent on drums, Donley said, and the rest of the group would often leave the stage for a break while Maib performed drum solos.

Maib, now a school teacher, never returned calls from the Times to share his memories of the group.

Hubbard, now a lawyer in Waitsburg, said he picked up the guitar when he was young, and even today, he's "still learning." Hubbard wanted to join the band because it was cool.

"It was rock 'n' roll's idea," he said. "That's why I wanted to be part of it. It was the most fun thing going."

Donley, who works in sales, said the idea to form the band actually came from Anderson, who passed away in 1998. Anderson was the ideas man and the one who really lead the group, he said.

"If we tried to stray he put us back on track," Donley said.

And because Hubbard's fa- ther was a lawyer, Donley said the group always had iron-clad contracts for their gigs.

Donley began singing in school and was lead vocals for the group. He remembers the early gig at Town Hall in Dixie where the band played "House of the Rising Sun" five times in a row. He said even though the band wasn't stellar, the crowd seemed to enjoy them because they were upbeat and fun.

Next, the band played in Waitsburg High School with their homemade amplifiers and old guitars. Donley said that was a very rough performance, but they got through it. From there, the band grew in popular- ity and the gigs kept coming.

"It was a blast and we kept at it," Donley said.

Pearson remembers being invited to perform for a group of organ players in Walla Walla in the band's early days. He said it was a funny idea to play rock 'n' roll for a group of people who enjoy calming, organ music.

"But, they were apprecia- tive," he said.

The gigs grew more numer- ous and at one point, Hubbard said they were performing all the time. He remembers pack- ing the people into Waitsburg's Town Hall for dances and charging $1 per person.

The band hauled its gear around in Hubbard's 1937 Buick Hearse and donned matching gold pants onstage that Donley's mother had sewn for them.

One of the highlights of the band's career was opening for Marrilee Rush, a pop singer from the Seattle area, in Walla Walla.

"She told me I was cute and I about peed my pants," Donley recalled.

In 1967, Donley said as the awareness of illegal drugs, including LSD, was reaching new heights across the country, local businesses began refusing to hang the band's signs in their windows advertising upcoming performances.

Hubbard said the band members originally chose the name because "it seemed to fit the times."

"We weren't liked by every- body, but we were generally ac- cepted by the adults who would come and dance," he said.

The band changed its name to The Lost Children in 1967 and at that time, Pearson bowed out of the group.

Pearson said it has never been his dream to be "a rock 'n' roll guy." He said he was quite different from his band mates - a little more laid back, a little less wild.

Playing at all of the local dances was stressful for him because he had a serious girlfriend. Pearson said he worried that because he could never attend dances, his girlfriend may be snatched up by another young man.

Also, the time commitment was considerable and any mon- ey the group made went toward new instruments and equip- ment.

The final straw for Pearson was that the band always want- ed him to grow his hair our and he wouldn't do that. He wanted to keep it the way his mom had always combed it -with lots of VO5 moisturizing hair oil and a curly wave.

Pearson said he was never proud of the controversial name of the group.

He remembers sitting in church one Sunday listening to the reverend make comments about that kind of illegal drug behavior.

"It kind of sunk in," Pearson remembers.

But, he added if there was any drug use by the band mem- bers he wasn't aware of it.

The group managed to cut a couple of records with Steiner Fugelstad on bass to replace Pearson. The Lost Children recorded a few songs called "Of Leaves," "Imagination Tour," "Everything, That's Our Own" and "My Reasons For Living."

Both 45s were released, about 300 copies each, and are today worth $5 to $8 a piece.

The band also opened once in Pendleton, Ore., for the New Yorkers, who later became The Hudson Brothers.

The group eventually trav- eled to Seattle to play for a music executive. Unfortunately, they never scored a music con- tract. Donley remembers the executive telling the group that they were either terrible or too far ahead of the game to sign.

The group played together until 1974, but many of the members played in other bands during their careers. Hubbard participated in a band called No Details into the 1980s.

Pearson still plays organ for his church, Donley plays music occasionally with his brother at Waitsburg class reunions and Hubbard said he still picks up the guitar every now and then.

"There's still a lot of folks around here who remember us," Hubbard said. "It's all good, clean fun."