Seems like almost everyone was in a little garage band at one point in their life. Well, so was I. For 3 years, I was the drummer in a Rock and Roll band, practising in a spare bedroom, playing at the local bars, and generally enjoying the hell out of life

It began in the summer of 1990. I had been in college, and the spring semester of 1990 it became painfully obvious that school wasn't going to work out. So I was going to move back to my home town. The first day back, I went to Rockabilly Music, the local Music store where I bought my drumsticks and generally hung out all the time, and while I was there hanging out I got a phone call (this may give an indication of how much I hung out there, as I'd been away at college for 5 years) from this guy named Rodney

It seems Rod was putting a band together, and they were looking for a drummer. They'd tried out another guy, but he wasn't really interested, so he told them to call me at Rockabilly. I went to practise with them, and the rest is a small piece of Fort Smith music history.

When we played in public for the first time, we did not have a name for the band. We had learned songs and practised, and even thought about a name some, but nothing had sounded right. Well, that first public appearance was at a club here in town which would hire a band to play Friday and Saturday nights, then had an "open mic night" on Sunday, so anyone could go and play. We later learned that most of the local bands would gather there on Sunday, but none of them really put any effort into their show, it was just a laid back jam session kind of night.       It must be known at the outset that the youngest of us was 22 years old, but apparently we all looked a bit younger than that, as we were all carded at the door, and in fact the bouncer looked like he thought they were all fake, but he let us in anyway.

Well, we went on and played for a half an hour or so, and apparently did a decent job. As we were sitting around a table afterward, listening to the other guys play and discussing what had gone right and what had gone wrong, a girl from the audience came by the table to tell us we had done well. One of the thing she said was that we "looked so young and sweet and innocent that we didn't really think y'all would be able to play."           It was finally a name that felt right.

The Innocent were (from right to left in the picture):     Rodney Lowery: Lead Vocals, Lead and Background Guitar     Tim Womack: Bass, Backing Vocals     Bill Dunlap: Drums and Percussion      Eran Robertson: Lead Guitar, Lead and backing vocals