Pictures R U, LW! Early 80's
Last time, we published an entry featuring pictures of us from the 70's. As promised, here are pictures from what was our most active touring decade, the 80's. In this episode, we will look, in particular, at the early 80's. As I noted before, this task of showing group pictures had already been done in a sense in the video for "Love's in a Name". That video is here:
As the 80's dawned, it seemed like the group was done for a short time, because we had left the retreat center where we were based. But, we discovered that Living Waters had its own wonderful, family identity quite separate from where we had been. We moved our equipment to St. Linus parish in Natick for a short time...and we came up with tshirts! At first we had a light blue version with a circular logo, I think, but soon settled for a dark blue with white letters. You can see the shirts here in a picture from a Christmas show in Woburn from 1980.
These pics show us practicing & posing in the basement at St. Linus:
At this point, I decided that we needed to find our own 'home base'. I noticed the Marists in Framingham had an abandoned house on 505 Pleasant Street, across from their place. I negotiated to get it and we got to work, renovating and making a home. Tony & Denise moved upstairs to the third floor and served as house parents. Pepi, Greg, John and I moved to the second floor, joined by various others as time went on. We parked Betsy, the bus, in the large area outside and put all our sound, lighting and recording equipment in the basement.
Top to bottom: Chuck R., Tom, Joyce, Suzanne, Jim G., Mike, Beth, Mike, Michelle, Dave, Kathy, Chuck T., Sharon, Omer, Tony, Denise, Greg, Mark
We started touring SO much, mostly in Massachusetts, but also in the rest of New England and New York. We made trips to conferences across the Northeast in places like Hartford or Providence Civic Center. (We had previously done a couple of Steubenville Youth Conferences.) We were using the second version of our converted school bus, Betsy; we took out the back seats in order to carry tons of lighting and sound equipment. Here we are, performing right in front of the bus, at a common destination in Rhode Island:
Back: Mike, Dave, Denise, Tony, Mark, Greg; Front: Kathy, Joyce, Chuck, Mike, Sharon
At this point, I decided that we needed to find our own 'home base'. I noticed the Marists in Framingham had an abandoned house on 505 Pleasant Street, across from their place. I negotiated to get it and we got to work, renovating and making a home. Tony & Denise moved upstairs to the third floor and served as house parents. Pepi, Greg, John and I moved to the second floor, joined by various others as time went on. We parked Betsy, the bus, in the large area outside and put all our sound, lighting and recording equipment in the basement.
Top: Mike, Greg, Dave Mark; Hood: Kathy, Sharon, Chuck; Front: Mike, Denise, Jim, Joyce, Tony
It was in this cellar that we recorded the Christmas album for which we took the following picture as a cover. (We were in front of Jim's house down the street, and it was actually warm!)
On rock: Mary Gillis, Mike & Carole; Back: Tony, Denise, Jim, Greg, Dave, Kathy, Mark, Joyce, Chuck
We were also doing a Themed Concert entitled, "The Prodigal Daughter". This was done in support of Covenant House in New York, the place for young victims of human trafficking. We made a couple trips and played there in the very early 80's, and continued to support them through PR and contributions.
Left: the Marist House, the view across from our house; Right: CH logo in the 80's
In the mid 80's, we faced a major crisis when Mike decided to go off to college and leave the group. At first, it really affected the way we sounded, but eventually, through constant touring, we came up with a new sound without him, even while doing some of his songs. It was at this time that we recorded the "Basement Tape" of three songs that we were doing so much in concert: Nobody Else, It's Not the Same & There's a Woman. Here they are:
At some point in the late 80's, we moved most of our stuff to Fatima Shrine in Holliston in order to get a good practice space. In the late 80's and early 90's, there were even more changes coming. Stay tuned for the next installment!
Fatima Shrine in Holliston which became our practice space in the 80's!
Peace & Love & JOY,
Mark LaJOIE!
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