Mike Parker adds:

My first memory of Al Silverman was meeting him in his room at Bronson House [at Brown] where he was strumming on a priceless Gibson mandolin.  We started to talk music and soon thereafter he took me to Greenwich Village to hear The Blues Project.  Totally blown away by Danny Kalb's lightning-like fingers and perhaps a little "elevated in mood," I approached the caped Al Kooper as he came off the stage on break and said, "Where'd you get that cape, man?"  He replied, "Cape store," and walked away.  I didn't ask any more stupid questions that night!  Following that, I told Al [Silverman] about my old band The Serfs and he said, "Why don't we organize a mixer and get them here to play?" (From upstate New York!!  I think The Serfs had already changed their name to Coin Operated Laundry by then.) I called Bird and he thought it was a terrific idea. Al and I went around to all the women's schools and recruited them to come to Brown, we provided buses, etc.  Came the night in Sayles Hall we filled the place with maybe 1000 people, the Brown guys all hanging out at the front door leering as the ladies waltzed in off their buses.  What a night!  I'm not sure they ever allowed a mixer in Sayles Hall again after that.  But that was the spark igniting the idea to put a band together, just like Alan Musgrave had done with The Night People [The American Dream's chief on-campus competition].  And Bobby Mason [of The Night People] was such a good drummer! 

Bob Mason later became the drummer for The Fugs when they recorded on Reprise.

Bill Bird again:

The Sayles mixer!  Spring of 1966!  We were so psyched to be doing a job that involved crossing state lines!  "Dirty Water" had just come out and so had "Good Lovin'."  I think we had already copied "Good Lovin'" (minus an organ at the time) but we had only just heard The Standells, so when we got to Providence, we went to a record store and bought the 45, took it to Mike's room, listened to it and learned it.  We played it at the mixer that night.  As I recall, Musgrave was watching us, and I think Mike might have told him we had just learned the song earlier that day.  He couldn't believe it until Mike pointed out that [lead singer] Don Bird was reading the lyrics from a crib sheet.

I also heard the Blues Project at the Café Au Go Go in Greenwich Village.  Bob Hazard (Coin Operated Laundry's lead player) and I had gone to NYC while Don and Herb Clark (the drummer who replaced Mike) went out to Haight-Ashbury for a little summer break.  We saw the Blues Project, but Don and Herb saw a couple of bands playing on the back of flatbed trucks in Golden Gate Park at the funeral for Chocolate George, a deceased Hell's Angel.  The bands were the Grateful Dead and this other band with a wild chick singer (Janis Joplin).  Ah, yes, that was the summer of love, '67.

Mike Parker continues:

One other vivid memory was the night The American Dream played at the Biltmore the same night that Moby Grape was playing on campus.  We saw them come in about midnight and Carlson said, "Let's play ‘Omaha,'" which we did. They came up and told us we did it better than them.

Bill picks up the story:

That song was always a Coin Operated Laundry staple. The Dream decided to pick it up after hearing us play it during that summer of '67 when they came to Sandy Creek.

After rehearsing with The American Dream, we hit the upstate New York circuit.  We did a memorable gig for weeks as the house band at the Halfway House in Eagle Bay, NY, deep in The Adirondacks and home bar to most of the summer help at the many resorts in that area. The kids would come in after work and get hammered and dance to us several nights a week.  We were housed at Gifford's Little Cottage Motel in Inlet, in tiny cabins (slept 2) with no showers.  We bathed at a coin-operated laundry (!) down the road that had the first pay showers I'd ever seen.  The most affordable food was at Dave's Chicken Hut, home of "Broasted" chicken, next door to the Halfway House.  Dave was big fan of the band, but we got kicked out of a different restaurant in Inlet for looking too sleazy and unkempt! Then there was the night Mike had a sore throat and OD'ed on the spray pain-killer for same, Chloraseptic.  We didn't realize he was taking hits off that just about every song, and I think the recommended dose was like once every 4 hours.  He didn't know who or where he was when we finished our set that night!  [The alcoholic content of Chloraseptic was not a well-known fact at the time!] Today the Chicken Hut is gone and the Halfway House is an outdoor sporting goods store.  It was a great bar.  I haven't had the heart to step into it since.

In the summer of '68 we recorded "The Bells of St. Stephen's" and "Henry Hawthorne" in Utica in a four-track studio for our agent, Gene. I played a Farfisa because Al Kooper played one, and we wanted to capture that same sound as when we covered the Blues Project numbers in The Coin Operated Laundry.  We did a couple of Blues Project songs, "Wake Me Shake Me" and "I Can't Keep from Crying," with those pure Farfisa opening chords. We may have also done "Cheryl's Going Home" with some nice Farfisa riffs on it.  I added Fender Leslie speakers later on and played it through a Twin Reverb amp.  Also, if I'm not mistaken, Al Silverman's homemade fuzz tone on "Henry Hawthorne" consisted of components scotch-taped to a piece of wood; it was the only time it worked that well.  He would curse that thing every night at some point.

Other fun stuff that summer: picnics at Gracie's [a special friend of the band's]; the visit to Loomis' bar to hear the band that did "Tighten Up," Archie Bell and the Drells; and a bottle of old champagne we found from like 1918 in the basement of the PAOWNYC camp.  We actually tried it.  Tasted like jet fuel.

Summer '68 ended, and Bill, Mike and the rest of The Dream all went separate ways; see the main "History of the Band" for details. But although not playing in Benefit Street, Bill remained in contact:

My first wife, Joanne, was a fan of The Dream back when we played The Halfway House. We caught up with the band when we moved to Boston so I could attend seminary (Boston University School of Theology - yes, BUST) in the fall of 1969.  We would drive down to Providence where Joanne would hang out with Lisa [Carlson] and Denise [Roberts] while I was Benefit Street's roadie for lots of gigs almost every weekend - Boston College with Grand Funk, Bucknell U., Skidmore at the Casino in Saratoga, J. Geils, B.B. King, Firesign Theater, Quill, several outdoor concerts, a bunch of bars.  I would drive the truck and schlep gear, set up and be the sound guy.  In the summer of 1970, between semesters, I took a temporary church assignment up near the Canadian border, and the entire band came over to visit from a gig in Vermont.  I can still remember the parishioners' jaws dropping when this group of long-haired hippie freaks walked in, especially Josh - long-haired bearded Jewish guy who looked a lot like the picture on the church wall...  Some must have sworn it was the Second Coming.  I also helped officiate at Rob's wedding to Lisa in Westport.  As I recall, we continued to do the weekend roadie/groupie thing through the next school year, stopping about the time Josh and D. Noyes [Roberts] left the band.

I heard a great interview recently on Fresh Air that Terri Gross did with Peter Wolf.  I thought of all the times we did jobs with J. Geils, and how good they really were - mostly due to Peter Wolf.  As I listened to his history, I thought that, for all of the b, s, and t that we put into being a band, he really grew up in the business, lived it in a way we could only approximate, met and got to know so many musical legends, and paid the dues for the fame he has achieved.  Not to take anything away from our experience, but I thought about our "bumping into" fame and fortune and coming so close while someone we occasionally worked with got there big time.  But, like Dave said, I wouldn't trade any of it.

Bringing things up to date: I've been married to Mike's sister Pam for 15 years.  I work for the New York State Office for People with Developmental Disabilities, managing a staff that relates to 85 non-profit agencies that provide services for us to people with developmental disabilities in central New York.  Joanne, the mother of my children, is now living in CA and is married to Sean, a musician (an excellent guitarist, mandolin player, etc.) who's in several groups in the Sacramento area; we have a very fine relationship.  Sean loves the album, and thinks "Bells" would have been a big hit back in the day. Personally, I'm even more impressed after listening to the CD a few times.  Paul did a really fine job of re-engineering those tapes and catching the sound of the band in all its forms. Also, the whole website history brought back more than a few good memories and made some connections I didn't even know were there. Ah, those were the days....