Art/rock-folk troupe founded in late 1973 by George Puia, who along with Tom Fezzey, co-managed a small guitar store in Michigan called Carty’s Music. According to George “Carty’s was near Eastern Michigan University which had a good experimental theater program and I began writing music for local shows (though never a student there). I had done some music in Baltimore in 1973 with a duet Indian Summer (with John Potter). Indian Summer had played the Theater Project and a small place called the Upstairs club (we played Thursdays and Bobby Whitlock of Derek and the Dominos played Fridays). We drove to Baltimore and auditioned in Phil Arnoult’s office. One of the theater staff members got us an audition at the Upstairs club.”
“While in Baltimore in 1973, I wandered into the Theater Project when Kathy Pierson was playing. Her band (Heliotrope) was a no show if I recall. Phil Arnoult, director of the theater, remembered me from the Indian Summer gigs. I asked if it would be okay to sit in with Kathy. She was a little (uneasy) about having a complete stranger drop in on her set, but after a few minutes, we were really communicating musically (see an old Baltimore Sun article ‘Suddenly George and Kathy find magic’ (or something similar – July 9 or 10 1974).”
“When I decided to pull together a band I wanted songwriters. I pulled John Bell from Baltimore (I had met him at the upstairs club I think). John was creative and a decent writer. He had just come back from India and played some sitar (which put him in a very rare league). He said he could play a little bass and could learn more if I thought he would fit. Kathy was the best songwriter of the group. Fezzey was studying guitar formally and had no idea how good he really was. Larry Illges was a jazz drummer; really played question and answer with you all night. He later teamed with Harry Daily to form a backup band for the great songwriter Mike Smith (the Dutchman). Later, Harry left that band to become bassist for Jimmy Buffet’s Coral Reefer Band. Fezzey later switched to bass and still performs with the one hit wonder band Jamestown Massacre (“Summer fun”).”
We rehearsed for about 3-4 months as I recall. (My memory of those days is somewhat vague). Kathy played piano, acoustic guitar, dulcimer. I played a Marine 00-45 acoustic, miked acoustically. I also played a beat-up black Fender strat through a clean Ampeg tube amp with a big muff fuzz. Fezzey played electric guitar, a Gibson 335 that he had modified by stuffing with fiberglass to keep it from feeding back. John played a hollow body bass (Guild I think). Larry played drums and small percussion.”
The group performed at The Theater Project in Baltimore on August 9-10, 1974. It was “an eventful day” according to George, “the day Richard Nixon resigned. The city was nuts and DC was even crazier. There were bumper stickers that said “honk if you think he is guilty” while people passed out champaign to strangers. The band stayed together less than one year after that.”
The album “The Theater Project Concerts” was released on Grinn Records out of Ypsilanti, Michigan. “We used a small time Michigan recording studio to record the tracks – K&R recording. The mastering was done by Eddie Wolfram” (who had done previous work for Motown).
“After the recording, we came back and did a record release concert. My last Rainwater concert in Baltimore. I returned a year later with guitarist songwriter Rick Rubarth for one last Theater Project concert. I also had one gig at the project with a woman poet, Gail DeSilvio. Gail wrote amazing poetry and with two friends did interpretive readings of her work (with my music as background).”
“Phil Arnoult loved my acoustic instrumental stuff (like “littler murders” on the LP and another piece I had written for the theater, “a death in the family”). I had also done instrumental duets of original theater music with John Potter (“watermelon sugar”) and Rick Rubarth (“if wishes were horses”). Phil used to call the instrumental music ‘eyelid painting’ — an image I always liked.”
“The theater project was a hotbed of experimentation. The album would never have happened without Phil Arnoult’s passion for original work. For our music, Baltimore was New York or Hollywood, but without the pretense.”
Pierson, a former member of Baltimore group Heliotrope, had recorded locally with Michael Penn. She also made local solo appearances including a noted March 12, 1976 performance at the Antioch Theater Project Song Fest. As of 2008 Puia was performing with a Michigan group called Hopevale.
1974(LP) Grinn 1003 The Theater Project Concerts
