Outer Planets Bio

Big Daddy Sun and the Outer Planets
was established in August of 1979 in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. The first move towards creating the band was to put together a photo shoot with some of my friends. The result of that shoot became the cover for the Outer Planets single Tupelo Dust. The original incarnation was as a six piece combo featuring myself on guitar and vocals, Urban Djin (AKA "The Little Red Rooster") on guitar and vocals, Alton Patches on bass, Johnny Hahn on keyboards, David Reinish on sax and Mark Obu on drums. A lot of the early material was the standard "Sun Records" stuff like That's Alright Mama, Good Rockin, Whole Lotta Shakin', Honey Don't, Blue Suede Shoes, Dixie Fried mixed with Gene Vincent and Johnny Burnett and a lot of early R&B classics like 60 Minute Man and Right Around the Corner.

We played locally for a few months honing the craft of performing on stage and began to mix in some originals like Tupelo Dust, Train to Nowhere, Breakout and others that were the mainstay of the album released in 1980. The Neo-Rockabilly thang began to take off in late 1980/81 enabling the Planets to tour the Midwest college circuit headlining small clubs and occasionally opening for the New York and California acts that were getting all the national press attention. The band was soon honed down to a five piece when Hahn left with his keyboard.

During this period the band was averaging 4-5 gigs/week growing tighter and more seasoned and writing stronger material leaning towards the "Billy" side of Rockabilly. The collection of vintage clothing kept growing and attitudes growing more radical. Urban's pompadour climaxed at a height of about 12" of flaming red vinyl treatments, everybody wearing makeup on stage and living the rockabilly/punk existence. Life on the road was not luxurious! I think we stayed in a total of 2 motels during the first 2 years, preferring to stay with people we met between sets to save money. The problem with this was that the people always thought it was party time because the band was staying at their house so, they invited their friends and cranked out their collection of obscure cuts that you just "had" to hear until four or five in the morning. This was exciting at first but after a year or so all you were interested in was throwing out your sleeping bag on the floor.

The band built a substantial following in the midwest region centered around Chicago during this period. We forged a reputation as the premier rockabilly band in the area. We played a constant stream of one nighters traveling the highways in our 1956 Ford school bus that was converted into a great road vehicle by it's previous owners (Captain Rat & the Blind Rivets). There were many truly great rock&roll shows with the audience pouring as much energy back at the band as we were putting out from the stage. The punk movement was burgeoning at the same time and we were accepted at those clubs as well. We did some wild shows at O'Bannon's on north Clark street, Exit in "Old Town", Waves (now known as The Smart Bar) near Wrigley Field, upstairs at the same location was a theater venue then called Stages now The Metro where we played with Carl Perkins.

That gig had an interesting side story attached. Jason & the Nashville Scorchers were playing the same night at a little club called Kiley's which was doing an all rockabilly format at the time. Urban decided he would visit them after our set at Stages and on the way over there he got jumped by several gang members. He blocked a knife thrust at his stomach with the base of his thumb. He escaped with his life but not his leather jacket. We had no idea what happened to him for more than a day. He just never showed up for Carl's set. We were scheduled to play Kiley's that Friday and Saturday which involved playing five sets without Urban who sang lead on about a quarter of our material. We stretched solos for ever, pulled out all of our retired material, and invited every musician we recognized in the audience up to do a number with us. We got through the gig!

This kind of lifestyle is not exactly conducive of great attitudes and moods. There was constant bickering and out and out friction between members over directional control, the ever-present clash between commerciality and artistic integrity. The band disbanded for a while and then reformed just about the same time "Rock This Town " hit the charts.

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The band reformed as a three piece outfit stripped down to the essentials. We sold our '56 Ford and bought a '63 Olds hearse and hit the road again. This was a prosperous period for the Outer Planets. We continued to play full time on the college-town club circuit and were still big in Chicago. One of the more memorable gigs was "The Country Stage" ( they couldn't figure out where else to put us ) at "Chicago Fest" where we shared a dressing room with Steve Goodman and Jethro Burns who were the act after us. That was a pleasure.Nervous Records offered to put out our album on their label in England. We were getting decent air play on college stations, in some places outpacing The Blasters. I was asked to do the vocals on the "Donkey Kong Cereal" ads and the money poured in! The one thing that was missing was a decent manager to steer our career from a regional based success to a truly international one. We had always done our own management, albeit reluctantly. We worked with several booking agents from Chicago that got us plenty of work but, had no real sense of what to do as far as development beyond the club level. They were just happy to get their 20% on five gigs a week and couldn't see any further than that . We played the festivals and clubs from Minneapolis to Huntsville and Kansas City but never took on the coasts. Which would have been the thing to do. That is, lose money on a tour to get exposure in the media markets of L.A. and New york.

And then we thought we solved that problem, due also to the gig with Carl Perkins. His booking agent, who had previously handled The Palladins, signed us to a management deal. He was gonna book us on a tour with Carl playing one set a night for $750 a night and motels paid, DE-E-E-LUXE. This would cure our national exposure deficit and help push the records. But fate has a funny way of pointing it's fickle finger wherever it wishes. Carl's son , who played drums in the band, had a bad car wreck. He killed or heavily maimed someone in another car and was being sued on top of recovering from the accident. The whole tour was canceled! Our dreams were dashed and our hearts broken.

Things were downhill from there. The owner of Nervous records turned out to be a sleaze. He never paid us any royalties although the record was in his catalog for six or seven years. (Added-June24,2008.. I just found out from a rock journalist in Spain who I am doing an electronic interview with that there is a version of our first album on the "Rough Trade" label that I didn't even know existed. The bastard at "Nervous Records" must have sub-leased it to them without my knowledge. ) Friends would return from Europe and tell us they saw the record in every store they went in, in it's own bin no less, not in a rockabilly section. We begged him to hook us up with an agent that could get us over there to tour but he never would. The only rational reason I can think of was to keep us from seeing how well the record was doing. He also did this to Buzz & The Flyers and every other American act on his label that we were ever in contact with.

Couldn't see the forest for the trees, I suppose.

We recorded some new material in 1985 that foreshadowed the coming neo classical country revival of later years which we shopped around ourselves with no interest. This stuff is still the slickest recording Big Daddy Sun ever did. We used pedal steel, fiddles, real background vocalists, a big horn section and it has never been released! The rockabilly craze began to fade and we were exhausted and disgusted from chasing that "Golden Ring" and slowly fizzled out.

We had a wild and crazy run!