Bill Mallonee / Vigilantes of Love Bio Quotes: Athens, Ga.

Americana/Folk-Rock/Rock/Folk

– Review Quotes –

Bill Mallonee: #65 in Paste Magazine’s “100 Greatest Living Songwriter’s” Poll

“The poetry and intelligence of Bill Mallonee’s songs rivals Dylan’s, and the spirituality and inspiration of them is like the timeless hymns. He’s one of my favorite all time artists.” –Buddy Miller (No Depression Magazine’s Artist of the Decade)

“…the best folk-rock act nobody’s ever hear of…” – New York Press

“Bill Mallonee… [has] remained fascinated with the shadowy emotional toils and struggles inherent in the American experience, compelling, insightful, [he] continues to probe through Americana rock and roll proving that sometimes the only story worth telling is that of the journey.” – Rolling Stone

“Dylan-tinged vocal and introspective lyrics that spin out big-picture stories imbued with chilling small details.” – Billboard

“Mallonee’s songs give words to shadowy fears of intimacy, of its loss, even of the value of what he feels compelled to do.” – USA Today

Related links:

To hear Bill Mallonee/Vigilantes of Love work check: Works Progress Administration:

MySpace.com/WorksProgressAdministration

Bill Mallonee / Vigilantes of Love:

MySpace.com/BillMallonee

To purchase Bill Mallonee / VoL albums, including WPA projects: VoLSounds.com

Bill Mallonee News: BillMallonee.net

MySpace: MySpace.com/BillMallonee

Booking Info: highhorsebooking@hotmail.com

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When Matt and I started Down The Line, I knew several people who I wanted to feature in our pages. Gene was one of the first. It was difficult to figure out what to do… how to write a story and article on someone that I never knew, but someone that I knew was so dear to so many. I figured the best thing was to get contributions from as many of his friends as I could. Then came the task of trying to get in touch with a lot of musicians, and Lord knows they all carry extremely busy schedules. This story has been months in the making and the more I gathered the info, the more I thought about Gene. His Mom, Carole, has been extremely generous with me, sending me photos and sharing stories. I am grateful to her for all her help, and to top it off she also trusted me with the original photos from her scrapbook. She mailed them to me and we got them in digital format here on our end. It felt like such a precarious place to be, asking Carole about her son, asking Gene’s friends about him. It is never easy to deal with the death of a loved one, but I felt like an insider digging into a sensitive area. So I offer my many thanks to everyone who helped me in this story. Thanks for letting me, a fan, learn more about Gene and who he was. I hope that you, the reader, will be inspired as well.

Gene was born on April 6, 1961 in Fort Frances, Ontario, Canada. He was the oldest of four children. Lisa, Gene’s sister, was born the following year on April 22, 1962. Jana Lyn was born the third child, but due to a very difficult pregnancy, she didn’t survive and never came out of the incubator. In 1968 Gene’s parents started adoption proceedings and they became parents to Todd in 1969. Todd was 8 years younger than Gene, and as Carole put it, “attached to Gene’s coattails.” Unfortunately, Todd passed away in 2004, and Lisa is the only surviving sibling. In talking with Carole she told me that Gene was Todd’s mentor, and that the three siblings had a very close relationship. Carole said, “Gene would lock his bedroom door at times just to get a break from his brother… but for the most part, he loved him dearly and put up with his tagging along. When they became adults they were the best of friends, and Todd never got over Gene’s death. We all mourn in different ways, but I have never seen anyone as lost as Todd after Gene‘s passing.”

As most know, Gene was a child actor, and had numerous roles in several TV shows, maybe most famous was the Bewitched episode in which he played a young Darren. Gene also starred in plays, one in which he was the son of Steve Martin. He was a good student, a boy scout and even the valedictorian of his high school class, but it was music that would become his passion and his career.

There was something about the chemistry in Adam Again. I remember the first time I heard their music (it was the Homeboys album) and it was so eclectic that I didn’t even know what to think at first. It was so diverse… an amalgamation of pop, funk, soul, R&B and rock fused together in this blend that was unlike anything else that I had ever heard. The thing that drew me in was Gene’s lyrics. They were honest and intense, and for Christian music they were refreshing. There was a camaraderie in his lyrics, between races, between his friends. His songs were socially relevant as well as politically tinged, and he talked about things that you didn’t typically hear in Christian music (just check out his cover of “Inner City Blues”).  His lyrics hit a depth that is not easy to dig to. Songs like “Bad News on the Radio” could really put the listener in the place where they felt what he was singing about. Gene was an artist, and had the ability to vocalize a scenario in ways that not many can. I still cry when I hear “Relapse,” and thankfully I was able to ask Greg Lawless about that song which is my favorite Adam Again tune.

As I stated earlier it is difficult to write about those people that we have admired who have gone on before us. It is easy to put people on a pedestal when we don’t know them and only see them in part, typically only the part they want us to see. This is not an attempt to make Gene seem like someone that was perfect… he wasn’t. Carole sent me an email one day that said, “One concern about your article is that I want Gene to look like the human being he was. He wasn’t a saint and he certainly made mistakes. One of the things that was mentioned at his funeral is that he would always borrow money from his band members and never pay it back. We are talking about huge amounts, but it was a standard joke, he never seemed to have any money in his pocket at any one time. Gene was witty and funny, but very human and like all of us had his bad sides. Just be careful and make him look real.” So, this is not an attempt to “canonize” Gene. I think his struggles were clear in many of his songs, he sang about them, and you can hear the searching in his voice. This is just an attempt at remembrance, a small way of trying to say thanks to the artist that Gene was.

In writing this story I asked for help, contributions from some of Gene’s dearest friends, family and band mates. Below are the responses, how Gene will be remembered by those who knew him best, and by those of us who were touched by his music. Not everyone that was contacted for the article was able to respond by the deadline. It isn’t easy to get in touch with some folks, and I regret that I wasn’t able to get Derri Daughtery of The Lost Dogs in here. Even so, the list below were people that I thought knew Gene very well, had worked with him for a long time, and I am grateful that they all helped out and were so gracious with me.

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Man… sorry this issue was a little late getting out there. It was cram time for sure with all the holidays and stuff going on.  Thanks to Matt for pulling this one off, I constantly was saying, “I’ll get it to you today; I’ll get it to you today, blah, blah, blah.” It seems sometimes I just get a little ahead of myself. I am excited about this issue; there is a bunch of cool stuff. Brian‘s cover shot was cool. Rick McDonough has been generous with us and taking great photos that we need. We also have a sort of “collector’s edition” coming in the next couple of weeks. Originally we were doing a story on Gene Eugene. That story grew and grew and grew until we decided that it could fill up its own issue. Look for that soon, and then we should be back on track for the next issue to hit in April. The Gene story has numerous contributions from several band mates, friends and family. I hope that you find the story with Brian compelling, and maybe someone that you know will benefit from reading it. Now, a request… visit the website and leave us feedback. It helps to know what you guys think. I tend to write the way I like to read and I like reading more quotes from the artist and less from the writer, but in the end that ends up being long. So give us some feedback on how we’re doing. Have a great New Year!

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This has been a blast! I want to say thanks to Matt for making this all come together, I look forward to doing this as long as we can get good articles, and there is definitely no shortage of great music so we should be set for a long time. To anyone reading this magazine, please leave us feedback about what you think. We would also like to hear who you would like to see covered in the pages of Down The Line.

Doing this interview with Knott was heavy, it is a heavy subject but hopefully everyone reading here will do something pro-active, whether it’s calling or emailing your Congressmen and women and asking for help for these soldiers that need it so badly. Get online, educate yourself about PTSS, and above all please pray for these soldiers, that the help they need would become available. When Michael and I were talking, I was telling him a story that Bill Mallonee had shared with me. We were going to include it in the article, but the article became so long that we cut it out. I want to share that story with you here, because fortunately, this story had a good ending. Bill covered this guy in a couple of his songs, “Vet” and “Friendly Fire”.

Bill was working in a psych ward many years ago, and this guy came in to get help. Bill’s job was to take notes, write them on the charts for the doctors to read. This veteran relayed his story to Bill… he had served in Vietnam, and his job in Vietnam was to guard the airfield where the cargo helicopters would land. The Vietcong would send these women and children out with armloads of what appeared to be food, but packed underneath were explosives. The obvious thought here was that if these women or children could get close enough to the helicopters, they could throw these explosives in the open bay doors, blow up the helicopters, and take out the supply lines. This soldier’s job was to take out the women and children if they didn’t heed the warnings to stop. This veteran had internalized this horror for years. He was suffering from PTSS and he had reached out. This guy had never even told his wife what had happened when he served in the military, he kept it all in until he had no other option but to seek help. The good news was that this guy was finally able to open up, share what he had been going through with his wife, his doctors and his pastor, and get the help he so badly needed. Bill never saw him again. The point is, when this guy needed help, it was there. These soldiers deserve to come home and be able to get treatment when they need it.

Thanks for reading this, and I hope that you will tell all of your friends about Down The Line magazine. We are already at work on issue number two, and I can assure you that it will be fantastic! If you want to email me directly about stuff you would like to see my email address is brokenagain143@yahoo.com Again, please leave us comments and feedback about the magazine, thanks for reading and please support all of these artists directly by buying directly from them.

Best,
Steve

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