May 3, 1985 - Rick & Krys Wedding gig

Other than this one wedding date in May for Rick and Krys, we have no known records of 1985,
But this is what is going on with Tricks in 1985:

Tricks plays several weekends at the Royal Knight in Hilliards.
Tricks plays several weekends at the Family Tavern in Caledonia.
Tricks auditions and plays several weekends at a new rock bar called the Party Station, just west of Paw Paw.

There also are a few Tricks parties in 1985, no info available on dates and locations though.

Tricks has little desire to travel very far to find gigs, because we all have day jobs. Steve is very busy working at Dick's Market, as he takes on more and more responsibilities. Dale and Tom also have demanding jobs that occasionally involve out-of-state travel.

Krystal's band, Fine Line, breaks up and there is an attempt to create a new Fine Line band. The members would be: Rick - guitar, Randy - guitar, Krys - bass, Steve - drums, and Debbie Mancuso - Keyboards. This band rehearsed in Krys and Rick's living room at their house on Lake Allegan. This group had very strong vocal skills, and we did lots of work on songs with intricate harmonies. This version of Fine Line ended up playing one wedding gig and then folding for various reasons.

STEVE COMMENTS: "Cannot remember when the time period was - for one summer I came to Rick's house and rehearsed with a band that was doing pop rock. A lotta singing stuff."

April 27, 1985 - Fine Line plays at Kandi and Fred Gibson's wedding
The new Fine Line's one and only gig. Randy was no call, no show for the gig. Fine Line played what they could without Randy. Fred and Darl played a bit for the wedding reception. Rick and Darl also did some songs together.

Tricks is having trouble staying busy, partly because of the drop in popularity of classic rock music (it's the middle of disco / new wave / punk rock 80's). So, the idea is to get a band together to play at weddings, with Tricks still playing at the Royal Knight and The Family Tavern.

Of course, the search continues for another Tricks bar gig within reasonable driving distance.

November, 1985 -
Because we are anxious to find new venues to play, Tricks gets together at Rick's house and Krys takes some black and white promo pictures. We pick the picture we like best and print it up on a flyer with our current Tricks song list.

STEVE COMMENTS: "We were rehearsing in Dale's basement at the time, and the basement flooded with several inches of water. Our equipment wasn't set up, but was sitting in cases after unloading after a gig. My new snare was sitting in its case, on end, so it got half-soaked with water. I disassembled the snare drum to dry it out. It was at this time that we were dreaming up a unique idea for a promo picture. We decided to use the shell of my snare drum with a bowl of water inside, and dry ice added to the water for the "smoking drum" effect."

On to 1986

Back to 1984

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