{"id":24332,"date":"2022-12-28T05:30:06","date_gmt":"2022-12-28T10:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=24332"},"modified":"2025-06-15T11:22:40","modified_gmt":"2025-06-15T15:22:40","slug":"it-came-from-asheville-wnc-garage-rock-in-the-60s-part-three-the-ron-de-voos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/12\/28\/it-came-from-asheville-wnc-garage-rock-in-the-60s-part-three-the-ron-de-voos\/","title":{"rendered":"It Came from Asheville! WNC Garage Rock in the \u201960s, Part Three: The Ron-De-Voos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trip of the imagination<\/b><\/p>\n

Music historians trace the origins of psychedelic folk (or \u201cfreak folk\u201d) back to 1964, when The Holy Modal Rounders gigged around New York City\u2019s Lower East Side and Greenwich Village. But guitarist Mike Baker \u2013 then a 13 year old student at Asheville\u2019s Hall Fletcher Junior High \u2013 wouldn\u2019t have known anything about all that. Like untold numbers of other youths, Baker\u2019s musical epiphany happened on the evening of Sunday, February 9, 1964 when he (and an estimated nearly 74 million other Americans) sat transfixed in front of the television watching the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Thus inspired, Baker acquired and learned to play a guitar. By the time he was 15, he was accomplished enough to form a group, The Ron-De-Voos. \u201cThat was the 1965-66 wave of garage bands,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThere were already some [local] musicians who were two, three years older than us, like The Wunz. They had already made their mark; we were part of the second wave of groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

The Ron-De-Voos, one of several Asheville and WNC garage rock bands captured on ‘Psychedelic States: The Carolinas in the 60s,’ a new compilation. L-R: Mike Baker, Bill Graham, Ron Watt, Doug Kilgo. Photo courtesy Mike Baker<\/p><\/div>\n

And he was writing songs, too. Baker\u2019s imagination served him well as he composed \u201cTrip So Wild,\u201d a first-person tale of a young man struggling with heroin addiction. \u201cI wanted to write a serious song,\u201d he says, noting that to this day he has never used illicit drugs. \u201cBy the act of imagination, I came up with the idea of a journey into the heart of darkness.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than a half century later, the 1967 song\u2019s inspiration remains a mystery, even to its composer. \u201cHow I came up with that at the age of 15, I couldn\u2019t tell you,\u201d Baker says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Most of The Ron-De-Voos\u2019 material was considerably more upbeat than the spooky, forlorn psych-folk of \u201cTrip So Wild.\u201d Baker says that his group \u201cmade ourselves experts in Dave Clark Five songs.\u201d He says that the group was part of \u201can energetic, exuberant [local] scene. We played at any kind of gathering that needed a group.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact Baker\u2019s song was one of only a small handful of original tunes. \u201cLocal bands were cover<\/i> bands,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt was more important to us to get that song list fine-tuned, and find gigs to play.\u201d But his band mates were receptive when their guitarist brought in the self-penned composition. \u201cThey loved it,\u201d Baker says. \u201cSo we decided to go for it, and we found that little label, Mastertone.\u201d<\/p>\n

The in-house label of Greenville, S.C. Mark Five Studios, Mastertone would release nearly four dozen singles beginning in 1965. Backed with another Baker original (\u201cRun Run Run\u201d), The Ron-De-Voos\u2019 single is exceedingly rare today; discogs.com currently lists one copy for sale, and the seller is asking $350.<\/p>\n

The band never cut another single, and Baker eventually went on to another more successful local band, The Looking Glass. But The Ron-De-Voos\u2019 lone A-side hasn\u2019t disappeared into total obscurity. When renowned music historian Richie Unterberger published his 2003 history of folk rock, Eight Miles High<\/i>, he praised the song as a \u201cdespondent gem of morose acid damage, with its arresting minor-key melody, drumless guitar-bass busk, and visions-of-spiders-crawling-on-the-wall vocal.\u201d
\nOn its original release, few if anyone outside of Asheville heard the song. As Unterberger asks rhetorically, \u201cCould anyone have reasonably expected it to have gotten played on AM radio even once, let alone become a hit?\u201d<\/p>\n

For their part, the four musicians in the Ron-De-Voos may have harbored some hopes of stardom, but Baker says that for the most part he was \u201cgrounded in the fact that we were amateurs.\u201d Wistfully pausing a beat, he adds, \u201cBut thinking back, I guess any kid would dream, wouldn\u2019t he?\u201d<\/p>\n

To be continued…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trip of the imagination Music historians trace the origins of psychedelic folk (or \u201cfreak folk\u201d) back to 1964, when The Holy Modal Rounders gigged around New York City\u2019s Lower East […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24333,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,33,41,49,62],"tags":[5005,3264],"class_list":["post-24332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-garage","category-interview","category-new-release","category-rawk","tag-psychedelic-states","tag-ron-de-voos","cat-19-id","cat-33-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24332"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29620,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24332\/revisions\/29620"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}