The Notorious Noblemen were born in Albert City, Iowa in 1965. The band's original members were Doug Smith, Mike Bucholz, Steve Smith, J.B. Anderson. Johnny Johnson was added later that year. I was asked to join in late summer 1965 after my last gig with the Jaggs at the Coblestone Ballroom in Storm Lake, Iowa. I was asked to on a Sunday and my first gig with The Notorious Noblemen was at the Roof Garden Ballroom in Arnolds Park, Iowa the following Friday. I couldn't believe how big a deal this was. The place was packed and the crowed was screaming. Of course, it helped that it was a battle of the bands with "The Senders" and both bands were from the immediate area. You can read all about it in the Era 1 Description on our official website.

I was with this band longer than any other band I've been in and it was because the musicianship was great and, for some reason, we were able to play some non-Top 40 songs that we actually liked and were very proud to play. Nazz? Who had heard of them? Sons of Champlin back in those days? "Loosen Up Naturally" was one of our favorite albums. Our break song was "Take Five" by Dave Brubeck. Of course we did lots of songs by popular bands as well, and sometimes we would dive deeper into album cuts to find songs that we loved but were not played on the radio. Also, we had some great singers in the band. Hence, we became very vocal oriented doing songs by "The Hollies", "The Association", and believe it or not, "The Carpenters".

This was a fun band and for a bunch of high school kids, we did a ton of traveling, were away from our parents for long stretches at a time, sometimes played out of town on school nights, and played dozens and dozens of gigs each summer. In fact, in 1968 we played 90 gigs between May 24, and September 7! This was a busy band!

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