From The Scranton Times - Tuesday, September 19, 1978

Going In Circles...
Will History Repeat Itself? These Two Musicians Hope Not

by Lance Evans,
Times FOCUS Editor

(Last of Two Parts)

They say that history repeats itself, that if you can wait around long enough things which have happened once before will occur again.

But don’t tell that to Bill Kelly or Jerry Hludzik.

These two young men form the core of The Jerry-Kelly Band, which is having its first album, “Somebody Else’s Dream,” released nationally on the Epic label this week.

HOVERED ON BRINK
Nationwide notoriety, if not a certainty, is, at least, a distinct possibility, hovered on the brink of coast-to-coast pop music acclaim.

In the early ‘70s, as part of the highly successful, regionally based group, The Buoys, they were in the same position.

Once again, Bill Kelly,left, and Jerry Hludzik are poised on the brink of national recognition for their musical talent. In the past, as members of the popular local group, "The Buoys," the two were in the same position, but never quite made it. This time around, however, they hope things will be different.

Their single hit of “Timothy” made the number 13 spot on the national charts. “Give Up Your Guns,” which came next, cracked the top 50.

These successes were followed by tunes such as “Bloodknot” and “Liza’a Last Ride.”

In terms of area popularity, The Buoys soared to heights which were unheard of previously. But their dreams of sustaining a national image failed to materialize.

Oh, yes, the group did tour and serve as the opening act for many top name groups and individuals.

And, yes, Kelly, Hludzik, Fran Brozena, Chris Hanlon, and Carl Siracuse could rightly claim the bragging rights to being this area’s most sought after ensemble.

But the group never made it to the place of being able to headline a national concert tour. Still, multiple benefits accrued to their talents.

“For a while,” explains Kelly, “it was good enough to be on the top of the local heap.

“You know, we’d hit one of the area diners on a Saturday night and there’d be guys from other groups there, talking about their jobs.

“One guy’d say, ‘We just came from such and such high school dance.’ Another guy would tell how they had brought the house down at club so and so.’

“Then they’d ask us where we’d been and we’d tell them something like Pittsburgh or Boston or some other big city.

KIND OF STUPID
“It sounds kind of stupid, but at the time it was a nice feeling to lay something like that on them.

“They would have been busting themselves all night and we would have flown somewhere, played 45 minutes, and flown back home before they were done.”

But Kelly and Hludzik aren’t easily satisfied with where they are. They have long harbored dreams of making it big. No, make that BIG!

“Having a hit with “Timothy” at such a young age kind of spoiled Jerry and me,” Kelly says. “You know, all the attention. Limos. Playing before big audiences in large theaters and auditoriums with the best sound and lighting equipment.

“Not to put anybody down, but it was just kind of hard for Jerry and me to adjust to that old local club circuit again. I mean, you see how things can be…how they should be…and that’s the way you want them.

CAN’T BE COMFORTABLE
“If you’re like we are, you can’t scale your goals back down and be comfortable.”

In the quest of trying to make it as a band, it is not very difficult for some members to get on each other’s nerves.

This agitation can be sparked by many causes. Of these, two of the more prominent are differences of opinion of how much work a group is going to do in order to become better known and what the scope of the material played will be.

In the realm of music, ego plays a pivotal cause in how long a group can exist as an entity. In order to last, compromises have to be made. These concessions, when not forthcoming, constitute another wedge that can drive a musical aggregation apart.

“Let’s put it this way,” Kelly says as he reconstructs the schism between The Buoys which brought The Jerry-Kelly Band to pass.

“Certainly there are some hard feeling left. Jerry and I don’t hate them and we hope they don’t hate us. But they weren’t happy that we left.

TWO AGAINST THREE
“When we were part of the group, especially in recent years, we weren’t happy how things were going. It got to be a regular two-against-three kind of thing. When you get into that situation, changes have to be made.”

From their vantage point, which Kelly and Hludzik admit does not account for everything that happened, it was felt that the group should do more demo work (cutting tapes with the hopes of getting producers interested in them) and more original material should be inserted into the group’s concert dates.

The fact that much of this “original” material would come from the pens of Kelly and Hludzik, both talented songwriters as well as singer-musicians, was a nettlesome thing to the rest of the group.

“It also seemed,” Kelly maintains, “that the other guys were quite content with the pattern we had fallen into. They didn’t see the need to keep reaching out.

“But Jerry and I couldn’t help it. We were hooked on the kind of rush you get from playing a first class concert. To us, that’s what the business is all about.

“We just couldn’t reconcile our differences.”

Kelly’s leaving marked the exit of an original member of the group. For his part, while he had participated in the successes of The Buoys, Hludzik was actually a “Jerry-come-lately.”

At the aggregation’s inception, six players were part of the membership, which Kelly points out was initially managed by Bill Bachman, now the editorial spokesman for WNEP television, but, in the mid ‘60s, a disc jockey for WBAX radio.

“It was Bachman,” Kelly recalls, “ who gave us our name. He called himself the ‘boy from ‘BAX’ and thought it would be kind of cute to be able to introduce us by saying, ‘Now, the boy from ‘BAX brings you The Buoys.

TASTELESS EXCESS
“That was really neat, huh?” Kelly laughs as he remembers the tasteless excesses of that time.

“You did a lot of things for attention. Long hair. Wild clothing. But even that was progress, because we used to have a group called The Escorts and we wore white socks, Beatle boots, whist shirts, dickeys and black pants.

“That was real cool, too,” as he laughs again. “Actually, though,” he says, modifying his posture of ridicule, “it wasn’t that bad of a group. We were one of the first groups to sing. Most of the popular music then was instrumental. So, our singing made us different.”

From The Escorts, the next move was to The Buoys. The six-man group recorded “Timothy” in 1969. Nothing happened.

Disgusted, the group chose up sides and split. Kelly, Brozena, and Hanlon retained the name. They recruited Siracuse and Hludzik.

The group now had five members and something else: a hit record, because in the early months of ’70, “Timothy” took off.

Briefly, The Buoys hovered on the brink of crashing through the barrier into the big time. They didn’t quite make it. But, they were close. So close.

“I’ve always felt we had the talent,” says Kelly. “We’ve been around the stars and can really look at ourselves and say, ‘Hey, we’re that good!’ I’ve felt it would be wrong to shortchange ourselves by not reaching out."

COULDN’T WORK IT OUT
“I guess that with the conflicts we’ve had internally, Jerry and I are as much to blame as anyone. But we’ve always felt we were doing the right thing. We just couldn’t work it out with the rest of the guys. The split became inevitable.”

But the troubles — as well as the hopes — were just beginning for Kelly and Hludzik.

They formed The Jerry-Kelly Band and cut a demo tape, while going about their routine of club concerts.

A fellow named Mike Stahl heard and enjoyed them at a concert in the Dallas, PA area.

Now, Mike Stahl isn’t your basic local music fan. He happens to be the sound mixer for the internationally popular group Chicago.

He asked Kelly and Hludzik if they had a demo tape. They gave him one, which he was going to play for Chicago’s manager at that time.

But The Buoys weren’t the only group that experienced internal troubles. Chicago split with their manager. Stahl, however, was so impressed with the demo tape that he eventually cornered Danny Seraphine, the Chicago drummer and a producer in his own right, and played it for him.

DULY IMPRESSED
Seraphine was duly impressed. He journeyed to Pottsville late last summer to hear the new group. He liked what he heard and persuaded his production partner, David “Hawk” Wolinski, keyboard player for another group, Rufus, to sign The Jerry-Kelly Band. At least, part of it.

A recording date was scheduled for April in Los Angeles, but both Seraphine and Wolinski felt that the other members of the existing Jerry-Kelly Band couldn’t cut it in the studio sessions.

Their services were severed, leaving more bruised feelings in the wake of Kelly and Hludzik’s progress.

Once the recording work began, however, all this was soon forgotten.

Seraphine assembled his studio musicians with the goal of having them sound like a club band.

NOT AS GOOD
On the West Coast, Kelly says, the bands aren’t generally as good as in the east (with some obvious exceptions), since the best musicians gravitate to studio work where they can make big money with a lot less difficulty than concert tours entail.

The result of the recording sessions, “Somebody Else’s Dream,” is an interesting, often exciting album.

“We’re quite proud of it,” Hludzik says, “ and we can’t say enough about the professionals who worked on it.”

The album certainly demonstrates how far sound production has come in the last 10 years of so.

Listening to it in comparison with, say, “Dinner Music,” which was the album by The Buoys containing “Timothy,” the contrast is obvious.

At the time of its completion, “Dinner Music” was highly representative of professional standards at that time, featuring Kelly’s tenor wailing to full advantage.

But, immediately after hearing “Somebody Else’s Dream,” the songs on “Dinner Music” take on a kind of tinny, less-than-full quality.

COMBINATION OF FACTORS
There is a combination of factors involved.

As good as the musicians who cut the “Dinner Music” disc were, their level of professional ability falls far short of the talent assembled for “Somebody Else’s Dream.”

And Kelly’s voice – which, once you hear it, has a recognition factor that couldn’t be any greater if he were singing his name instead of lyrics – has come under control.

So, it is a far fuller sound – both vocally and instrumentally – that marks The Jerry-Kelly Band’s work than when Hludzik and Kelly were with The Buoys.

Both musicians feel that “Dream” is something of which they can be completely proud.

Locally, record stores seem to sense that the disc will be a giant. However, on the national level, there are still plenty of question marks.

But their answers rest more with Hludzik and Kelly having their current run of luck hold out than with any uncertainty regarding their talent.

ONLY THE BEGINNING

“This is only the beginning,” Hludzik says, “because our contract with Danny and Hawk calls for another two albums.