Studio group came to be as a result of occasional reunions by members of the ‘70s band Cabbage. Drummer/vocalist Foster Peacock related the story in the liner notes to their self-produced CD single “Quido and The Beach Weasels.”
“In 1968 Jack Bennett and I started a blues band called Cabbage in the suburbs of Baltimore. Jack brought Charlie Stagmer to the band and I brought John McNulty. Jack played bass, I played drums, John played lead guitar, and Charlie was our ‘front man,’ lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist. The band went through many changes over a three- or four-year period and as most bands do, eventually broke up.”
“As time went on, we drifted apart and John moved back to his home state of Texas. From time to time he would come back to visit friends and family in Maryland. While he was in town, the old band would get back together for a jam session. On one of these occasions in 1988, I came up with the idea of getting together in a small recording studio I knew of and recording a few tunes. Jack brought guitarist Sam Miller to the session and I invited Tim Taylor.”
We did a couple of old blues songs, “All Your Love” (by Otis Rush & Willie Dixon), “Checkin’ Up on My Baby (by Sonny Boy Williamson), and a Randy Newman version of “My Old Kentucky Home.” The last thing we recorded that day was an original instrumental piece written by Tim who is an old friend of the band. He’s about a decade older than the rest of us and Cabbage used to play on the parking lot of the boutique he owned in Baltimore during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s (until the police made us stop).”
After recording “Quido and The Beach Weasels” I wanted to write lyrics for it and asked Tim what his inspiration for the melody was. He told me it was about going to the beach with a bunch of friends in his old Volvo station wagon. The group of friends had dubbed Tim ‘Quido’ (pronounced “Guido”) and themselves ‘The beach weasels.’ The Volvo was “the weasel wagon.” After showing my first draft to Tim for his approval, one re-write completed the lyrics.”
In 2001, thirteen years later, Foster had the instrumental version burned to CD by Gail Vogal at her studio The Tracking Station, in Essex, Maryland. Foster, now into computer wizardry, loaded it into his computer and added vocals, percussion, and reworked the ending, and released the song independently on CD at his Lake Windsor Studio in Rossville.
In addition to Cabbage, Peacock had also played in Kee, London Fog, River, and was formerly a road manager and sound technician for Paper Cup. He moved to Florida in the early ‘00s. In 2007 he released the CD “The Specter,” a collection of original songs he had been writing since the ‘70s. Stagmer and McNulty were also in River after Cabbage split.
