http://www.myspace.com/xboysmpls

The band initially got together to do a gig on the West Bank…Chris might remember the venue…but I can’t right off the top of my head. I believe it was a fund raiser for the People’s Center or something? Maybe the Red Door. The band consisted of John King (guitar), Charlie Bingham (guitar), Chris Osgood (guitar) Steve Fjelstad (bass), Dave Ahl (drums )and my self. No keyboards or horns at that time. It was all guitars, guitars, guitars. No room for anything else. Initially we called ourselves Wakan Tanka, but very quickly changed the name. Wakan Tanka is roughly translated as “The Great Mysterious” in Lakota and we soon came to realize that this was, in fact, a tad insensitive. It would be akin to calling your band “Everything that is Holy” or “The Sacred” or “God.” So…we changed the name to the Xboys. This was a conflation of a number of ideas. First…Chris, Dave , Steve and I were all in a band called “Boy’s Life.” Chris, Dave and I were in the same Boy Scout troop. (We all got kicked out of that troop on the same day. Ostensibly for draining Lake Jonathon out past Chanhassen, but it was just a pretense for getting rid of what was thought to be the “bad element” of the troop. Nothing could have been further from the truth. First of all…they don’t create man made lakes so that just ANYONE can twist the valve and drain them. It’s also a well known fact that we were the movers and shakers in the troop at the time. We were, in essence, the elders who knew all the ropes. But we were also the long haired, guitar playing goofballs and…well…everyone knows there’s no room for that in the Boy Scouts. As you can imagine, this guitar playing aspect would continue to haunt us for years to come. And anyone else that listens to the band.) Also there had been a gang that frequented Excelsior Amusement Park in the early ‘60’s called the Xboys. We were to young to be members, but not too young to think they were cool. So…the Xboys it was. And continues to be to this very day. The whole ethos of the band was simple. All covers, no originals and no seeking the big Deal. It was all for fun and fun for all. Pure and uncomplicated. And that has served as well and either baffled or delighted audiences everywhere. Depending on just how much fun we are having at the time. Not too long after that first gig we lost both Charlie and John. Charlie…of course…had his work cut out for him in the Hoopsnakes and John lived in NYC. So Bruce and Chan were brought into the fold to fatten up the now thinned ranks of the guitar players and add a bit of tinkling ivories to the mix. This just increased both the fun and the bafflement. And…we started to get more gigs…playing wherever our pictures were not displayed in the local post office. Round about 1985 or so my sister was booking the Uptown Bar and asked if we would don our disguises and play a gig in that smoky room. We soon parlayed that into the infamous “Ladies night at the Uptown with the Xboys.” We played every Wednesday for the next4-5 years until I moved to Ojai, CA. The Hospitality Tent was open! The deal was that during those years any one of our illustrious friends could…and would come and join us on stage. Slim, Paul, Bill Curtiss, Kurt, Curt…didn’t matter…If you could stand on your own two legs you could get up and play with us. Didn’t matter if you were in tune or not. By this time the band had added a sax player…Tom Burnevic. Tom was Good…but we soon decided that 2 sax players were better than one. And so we adopted Max Ray and Rochelle Becker. Tom was funny…Max was funnier. Tom was cute…Rochelle was even cuter! Tom could blow. Max and Rochelle could blow HARD! Oh the joy! We always threw a big Xmas party we dubbed ‘The Jingle Ball.” There was a lot of punch, many elves, some hootin’ and hollerin’ that ensued, and the sound of carols was heard throughout the land. Or at least around Lake and Hennepin. When I moved, that gig ended. Curtiss A. Killed my sister…er, wait…that’s another story altogether. I wandered in the wilderness for the next 15 years. But every now and then I would hear the jangling of the 6 strings, the pounding of drums, the rumbling of a bass guitar, the mighty wind of twin saxophones, and the tinkling of the piano player and I would be drawn back to celebrate the 25 years of xmas…over and over and over. Finally, I succumbed to the siren song and came back to the Twin Tone cities to band together with my friends…my good friends…the xboys. And the rest…as they say…is history.