Album: Nomadic Sands
Artist: Lodgic
1985 A&M
LP: SP 5094

Band members:
Mike Sherwood: vocals, keys
William Sherwood: vocals, bass
Guy Allison Steiner: keyboard systems, vocals
Jimmy Haun: guitars, vocals
Gary Starnes: electric & acoustic drums

Additional musicians:
Lenny Castro: percussion

Produced by David Paich, Tom Knox, Steve Porcaro
Mixed by Tom Fletcher, Knox
Engineered by Fletcher, Knox, Greg Ladanyi

Tracks:
1. "Romance" [W Sherwood/Allison/Haun/Paich] (4:37)
2. "Step Back" [M Sherwood/Allison/Haun] (4:12)
3. "Lonely Man" [W Sherwood/Allison] (4:37)
4. "Red Light" [W Sherwood/Allison/M Sherwood/Haun] (4:30)
5. "Rise & Fall" [W Sherwood/Allison] (4:07)
6. "Push So Hard" [Haun/Allison/M Sherwood/W Sherwood] (5:21)
7. "In the Cards" [Allison/W Sherwood] (4:26)
8. "Nomadic Sands" [Allison/W Sherwood/Haun] (4:10)
9. "Linda Sue" [Allison/M Sherwood/Haun] (4:26)
10. "Bringing Me Back" [W Sherwood/Allison/Haun] (3:35)

Comments: William is of course better known as Billy. His brother, Mike (Michael) Sherwood, sang backing vocals on Union. Haun also appeared on Union, performed with Jon Anderson on Kitaro's Dream and the Jon and Vangelis album Page of Life, and worked with the Chris Squire Experiment. Producers David Paich and Steve Porcaro are best known for their roles in Toto. Porcaro also played in the Chris Squire Experiment, appeared on Union and Open Your Eyes, and contributed to Jon Anderson's In the City of Angels. Fletcher later worked on both volumes of Keys to Ascension.

Lodgic was kind of the Sherwood family band and it existed for some years in Las Vegas before moving to California and getting a record contractor. Michael and Billy's parents, Bobby and Phyllis, were performers. Haun, in a 2022 Facebook post explained how, "[Bobby] was a father to me. After my dad died (1975) Bobby kinda took over the role of Dad and led me into being a professional musician. He brought me in to join his band which included Phyllis and Michael Sherwood and Gary Starnes and later Billy. It was the first time I joined the musicians union, and at 14 years old I gotta tell ya, that’s HUGE!!!" Haun and Michael were best friends.

In a May 2022 interview with YesShift, Sherwood told the story:

My first band was a little punk band that I had and then I moved to Los Angeles where my brother's band Lodgic had moved to [...] they had a bass player who had bailed out and, at that point, Jimmy Haun […] we were all living in a band house here in LA, six people in this tiny little place, and Jimmy says to me, 'Y'know, why don't you buy a bass, man […] You've got the drum thing down, but it's really loud and no-one in the band wants you to be playing drums in the afternoon, because they're all asleep [...] Buy a bass: you can play in headphones'

[...] I had actually introduced them to another bass player. This guy, Jim Zeeland[?], who was a friend of mine in school, and he was a real solid bass player. I didn't have the confidence that I was the guy yet. So, Jim was in the band. It didn't really work out for the guys, so they're back to having no bass player and it's at that point, that they all looked at me and said, you know, just play bass.

[…] The guys in Toto stepped into a rehearsal, heard our band, Lodgic, and waltzed us into A&M Records and got us a great record deal. So they had just done Toto IV [...] they had carte blanche in LA [...] We thought [...] especially at a very young age, I think I was like 18 or 19, I literally was y'know, just out of high school, or [...] when I was going to high school... So, we make the Lodgic album and, of course, we're all buying Maseratis and Porsches in our mind, but as the business teaches you if you're in it long enough, [...] there's highs, there's lows, so from the high of getting that band signed and making a great record and feeling really good, came the downside, which was we lost our record deal and the label's regime changed and the president was no more and this guy moved and our A&R guy was gone [...] so Lodgic ended.

[...]

Lodgic was 83 to like 85, 86, then we broke up.

(HP, 3 Mar 22; updated 6 Jun 22; thanks to Falsini & Ray Riethmeier for information)


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