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Food and Money

Dave Adams EARLIEST DAYS THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL   I was born in Kingston, Ontario, Canada in 1946. I came from a musical family on my dad’s side. I was brought up, through high school, in the expanding suburbs of Toronto. My aunt was a singer employed at WJR in Detroit. She later married the station’s organist. My grandfather was a pianist and I recall the family getting together at his house to sing corny songs around the piano while he bashed them out. Everyone would get a chance to sing something … even me. He used to have a microphone and I got to sing through that too. I really liked doing that! My dad was always singing and playing piano, as well.

In Ontario public schools at that time, everyone was expected to sing. There was no way out. Since my voice was OK, I was selected to sing in competitive choirs and several years running my public school and the groups I was in, won Ontario championships. This led to singing in operettas as well.

COLLEGE THROUGH THE ARMY   In 1963 my dad was job transferred to the US and we moved to Rockford, Illinois. In my first year at Rockford College, we started a band called the Henchman. We had go-go dancers and wore hooded jackets with small nooses on the lapels. I flunked out of college but did much better as a singer in the band. It was a sort of greaser soul band with the odd splash of surf music and lasted a couple of years. It was a popular band and people were mis-led into thinking I was cool. I liked that. Simultaneously, my brother Doug was learning to play piano in the classical style, and he was very good. As time went on he and his high school buddy, Brad Carlson (Bun E Carlos of Cheap Trick), started playing in the basement of our house. Doug had quit piano and moved on to playing bass. Eventually I ended up in the Army in 1967 and spent almost two years in Viet Nam, flying around to find North Vietnamese so that we could bomb them. That was interesting work but I did not see it as long-term employment. I got out in 1970 and set about to salvage my wretched academic career.

THE SPRINGFIELD YEARS (Part One)   I had heard there was a school where you could elect not to have grades and could subsist on a pass-fail basis. This was Sangamon State University and I knew it was for me! Jim Troxell’s dad taught music there. By chance, when the Tonguesnatcher Review played there with Pat as their drummer, I talked them into letting me whistle a version of “Book of Love” by the Monotones. It was just Pat and me and a crowd of three hundred. I don’t know if Bill and Jim were in that iteration of TS, but I never saw Pat again until Food and Money was up and running. I did perform sporadically at bars in town since the Helton Brothers would let me sing during their breaks. I sang Fugs songs while playing bass.

I eventually graduated and went to work for the state of Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) as a parole officer and firearms instructor. Doug came to visit from Canada and talked me into buying PA equipment. Shortly after that I met Johnny No at the Appletree Records he managed and we decided to start a band. Danny Fafoglia and Doug were the other original members, with Danny on drums and Doug on bass. So, at the age of 35, while carrying a gun, I became lead singer for Skylab, which later became Food and Money. We started out by surveying the best alternative music we could find and developed a complete show of covers by such luminaries as Devo, The Talking Heads, Iggy, Snakefinger, Nick Lowe and the Residents. My early experience of fooling people into thinking I was cool paid off when Michele Hogan saw my cheek-bones at a gig, made herself apparent to me, and we got married in late 1981. F&M played at the reception.

Food and Money was active from 1979 until 1982 and we eventually replaced all cover songs with three long sets of originals. Jim and Pat succeeded Danny and Doug and Bill played with us whenever he could. Doug came back on an emergency basis when we had a gap in bass players before Jim joined. In mid-1982 I was transferred by the DOC to be the warden of a work-release center in Peoria and because of distance and availability issues, could no longer dependably or easily play. Ironically, I was then laid-off in early 1983 when the Peoria Center was closed due to budgetary reasons.

SAINT LOUIS   jobless and 37 years old, I decided to change direction and to get re-educated. I was accepted at Saint Louis University Law School and started classes in the Fall of 1983 and graduated in 1986 at the age of 40. While at law school I sang and played guitar in a Law School band called the associates for over 2 years. The band played pop covers but was excellent and became very popular. The current version of Food and Money had a reunion in Springfield in 1985. At my graduation party in Saint Louis, Johnny No came down from Chicago and we had a 10 or 12 song reunion of the very first iteration of Food and Money, complete with Danny and Doug.

THE SPRINGFIELD YEARS (Part Two)   after passing the Missouri and Illinois bars I became a Springfield lobbyist and regulatory attorney with the Illinois Association of Electric Cooperatives in 1986, working there until 1990. We had a bluegrass band called The Linemen and we played at Cooperative functions. I discovered I was better at rocking than bluegrassing. While back in Springfield I also played with a saxophone-hero band called the Rocking Rebels that played frequently. It played charity events for Make-A-Wish and Parents Without Partners, as well as numerous country dives that had no names. The songs mostly were epic sax songs from the 50s and early 60s and were very cool. I’d never been in any band like that but we played in front of thousands at the Illinois State Fair for several years.

CALIFORNIA   in early 1990 I was recruited into the Corporate Law Department of State Farm Insurance Company to run their lobbying and regulatory programs in the Pacific Northwest. Proximity issues required us to move to a detached law office in Sacramento, California. I worked in that very same job for the next 25 years, retiring in 2013 at the age of almost 67. While at State Farm I did not play in a band since it would have been impossible due to emergency travel requirements. However, I was able to write a major musical and a major play that were used at State Farm legislative conferences as full-blown musical and acting productions in 2004 and 2005. Upon retiring I set about organizing an original music band and the Dave Adams Project began. It was not my choice for a name but other bandsters liked it so it stuck. The band lasted for about two years and played occasionally. Mostly we wrote and rehearsed original, theme-based tunes. As the band dissipated I continued to write music as Popasana and released a strange rockish album of originals called “Yoga! Rock! Party!” in January of 2017. With a friend, I continue to play at charity mental health events in Sacramento, as Tune Buggy. In 2015 and 2016 I went back to perform solo gigs of my new tunes in Springfield, and Bloomington.

WHAT’S NEXT? hopefully the Food and Money records and documentary will draw interest sufficient to ensure that I get to continue playing great music until I die. I intend to release an album on Chinese Food in 2018, and, in the meantime I’ve been learning how to record and produce and am now doing it for others.

Jim Troxell-Bass and Vocals

Jim began playing the bass in 1973. After two years in the music performance program at Illinois State University, Jim ventured out on the road. Performing with artists Bob Hope, Myron Floren, countless blues and jazz greats, and current and past country stars has helped to build a solid musical skill set. Jim works as a producer and performer in the studio, as well as appearing in TV, music video, and motion picture projects. Jim is currently performing weekly with Lorri Gill and the Notebenders at the Tropic theater, in Leesburg, Florida. In addition to his musical duties, Jim also manages digital and social media and online commerce for the Notebenders.