This is gonna be pretty long, drawn out and boring to some, so unless you're interested, surf on... For the daring and curious, please, read on...
A long, long time ago... |  |
Yeah, that's the best way to start this story, because that's exactly how it began. Two guys meet for the first time through a mutual friend, and the rest is...well, it's been a long time.Chapter 1: Beginnings
It was the summer of 1988. A young David Mann had just finished high school and was spending the summer partying with old friends trying to decide what direction to take in life. For Dave, it was college at the University of Florida in Gainesville. For best friend Kevin Moore, it was the theater, (which would turn out to be a key factor in the direction of David's life to come).
At the same time, Ron Betts had finished a stint of schooling studying radio broadcasting at Rollins College in Winter Park and was currently pursuing a career in acting in Orlando. He had always known he wanted to be an entertainer since he was a small child singing in the church choir and also when he spent some time touring the world with a young performers group called Up with People. Having developed some singing and vocal ability, he felt acting was the way to go, possibly delving into musical theater.
So it was through Kevin and the theater that Ron and Dave would meet, though they would not actually play music together until the next summer in a band put together by another mutual friend, Rick Forney. Kevin had starred in a play with Rick, and Ron had known Rick for some time before. So the way it worked was Kevin introduced Dave to Rick (because Kevin knew Rick was trying to form a band) and Rick introduced Dave to Ron (because Ron had already agreed to form a band with Rick). That was 1988.
At the time of their introduction, David just played guitar on the side and considered it one of his favorite pasttimes, never once thinking about playing professionally, and Ron, who also played the guitar, never considered himself a singer, much less frontman for a band. However, the next summer opened their eyes to the possibilities ahead. David came home from a year of college, (playing bass in a band for fun), and Ron and Rick were ready to form Flyer, an attempt to break into the eighties club market and make some money. After a few practices and one free gig, the band disbanded, but Ron and Dave, having gained mutual respect of each other, kept in touch as David went back to college.
After just one more semester, Dave was handed the reality of his college partying antics in a letter stating he had been suspended for the next semester and could not return until the fall term of 1990. You see, David went to college with the wrong (or right, depending on your point of view) idea in mind. He was free for the first time in his life and wanted to party. He let his attendence and grades suffer for all of his college fun, and after his suspension, he decided college wasn't for him until he got serious about it. Mind you, he was on the right track at the time studying journalism, writing theater reviews for the university paper, The Alligator, and working in in a darkroom for the university's publications department, (developing pictures of Emmitt Smith), but something was missing and he couldn't put his finger on it. So when he came home in the spring of 1990, he called Ron and said, "Let's go for this music thing." Ron, who had almost decided to pack in his guitar, said, "Sure." And that's how it began.
