Clockwise from left: Kim, Mick, Ken and Jon in front.

I seem to remember we were popular in a lot of clubs we played. If you look at our booking calendar and the itinerary that’s on the newsletter, you can see we were invited back to a lot of the same places. Some were better than others, but Worthington, MN was always one of our favorites. Originally I think we played a different night club, but eventually we ended up at Cheever’s. We made a lot of good friends there. Our job was to stop at as many tables as we could during our breaks to meet the people who came out every night to see us. We used to joke that we were meeting our fans one at a time.

The stage was small, so we had to turn the little electric piano sideways to fit all our equipment, but somehow we made do. Jon and I also completed several songs for “Handle With Care” in that town. The hardest part for lazy guys like Ken and me was when the “commander”, Jon Ludtke, got us up after a long night of partying to rehearse new tunes. We would record the cover songs on tape and then break them down for each instrument and try to discern the lyrics to get as close to the original arrangement as we could. This was especially important for the Beatles Tribute we were planning.

Occasionally, we got to the club and it would be locked. Ken and I would act angry that we couldn’t get in, but secretly I think we were relieved not to have to spend 2-3 hours in the club practicing before having to come back in the evening and perform for another 4 hours. On rare occasions, Jon would reach the club owner by phone and manage to get us in to rehearse. Having thought we were off the hook to go have fun, we grudgingly returned to work on whatever tunes we were getting ready.

Worthington also provided a lot of distractions since there were many pretty Minnesota women in the audience to whom we were attracted. Occasionally some of them would drive to other locations, clubs in other states, just to see us play. That often caused problems if the Silver Laughter member they were coming to see was already with someone else in the other town!

It would be interesting to see how many people in Worthington still remember our band seeing as how we were such a big deal back in the late ’70’s.

Mick Orton

Categories: History