Rain Cloud Woman

We were called "Rain Cloud Woman"-- my sister Linda Lee Shattuck, a good friend Carol Dean Calvert and myself, Jo Ellen Doering. Back then I was Jolene Yester. (T-Bone Burnett started calling me "Jolene" from Dolly Parton's song by that name) The three of us crazy girls loved to sing and get rowdy and when we got together, we were rowdy! Carol Dean had a cute little apartment in Belmont Shores and I started hangin' out with her down there by the beach. One night Carol Dean and I went down to the Bodega Bar to hear some music and we ran into my sister Linda Lee. That night in the girls bathroom, for some silly reason, we started singing harmony together and boy was it fun! We decided to create a girls band and we began making our plans for stardom. We started meeting at Carol Dean's apartment and we'd sing in the kitchen where the echo was real nice. Linda Lee had a voice like liquid Amber, deep and golden; Carol Dean had a strong but sweet voice in spite of her years of singing in Texas honky-tonks and my voice fit real nice between the two of them. There were times in Carol Deans kitchen that we would all start crying 'cause the harmony was so pretty. Girls! I remember one time we all three felt and saw a soft, golden glow fill the room while we were singing. I would find out years later that we were a lot better than I thought we were at the time. Recently I found a cassette of one of our rehearsals and even the rough stuff sounded pretty good. When I told this to my sister Linda she said, "You were always too critical, saying it wasn't good enough and erasing the cassettes". Sure wish I had some of those cassettes to listen to right now.

Linda had a cool 1972, Red Mustang, 302 Glass Pac, with three speed on the floor.  We'd cruise all over the beach in that car.  We went around to the local beach clubs and sang at audition/open mic nights and eventually got ourselves a few gigs.  We never made much money, but we were just happy to be getting paid for singing.  We sang at Mike's Munchies, The Bodega, The Come Back Inn, and then one night we went over to The Sweetwater in Hermosa Beach to sing at their open mic night.

A few days after we sang at The Sweetwater they called and asked if we wanted to play on a week-end, opening for Byron Berline?  Did we ever!   That started us out on a long relationship with The Sweetwater that continued until just before it was torn down to build a Hilton Resort.  For the whole summer of 1976 we had Tuesday nights all to ourselves. Carol used to kid around with the few people (mostly cute young fellas) in the audience saying it was free to get in but it cost $5 bucks to get out.

It was at the Sweetwater that we met Vince Gill and The Sweethearts of the Rodeo.  Vince was in Byron Berline's band at the time and whenever Vince was on the road with Byron we would stay at Vince's house.  It was a real nice house and we were two minutes from the Sweetwater.  When Vince would come back into town we would pay him back for the phone bill and ask him if he'd come down and play guitar with us. Vince was a good friend to us, so were the guys that owned the Sweetwater;  it was a haven, a home.   Every other weekend we would be the opening act for whoever was the main act; and on the in between weekends "The Sweethearts", Janis and Christina, would be the opening act.  A couple of years later Janis and Vince got married.  But, you know the ending to that story.

The Sweetwater was a good place to learn and grow;  we could bring out newly learned songs without the harsh glare of Hollywood lights.  There in that mild climate and friendly neighborhood of Hermosa Beach we sang our hearts out and dreamed of getting a big job in Hollywood.  After awhile we got another regular spot at Houlihan's Bar on the Redondo Beach Pier.  Boy, was that a tough gig.  It seemed that every single time we worked there something would go wrong!  I'm not kidding!  A mic wouldn't work, or a guitar cord, or a mic cord, Something!  It was awful, and we had to haul our amps and equipment up two flights of stairs.  But, we were singing and it was invaluable practice.

By now we had no money and we'd sold all of our worldly possessions;  TV's, records, books and clothes for any cash we could get. We even sold my trusty VW Bug that had transported me safely across the Rocky Mountains.  Linda's boy-friend Greg bought it and Carol Dean and I took possession, literally, of the Mustang.  It was almost a year later that the Mustang caught on fire and burned up by the side of the road. Seemed terribly symbolic at the time, "out in a flash of fire".

At some point another sister, Aggie, got involved with this hair-brained idea and before you knew it we were camped out on her living room floor.  She had more than one room, she had two! well, maybe three if you count the bathroom.  She also had a real job and she would go off to work in the morning and come home at night and buy us all some cheap wine. Then we'd raid her closet for clothes to wear when we played a job somewhere; and she had great clothes.  We drank a lot of Cribari in that apartment, sang a lot of tunes, had a lot of group therapy and many, many laughs.

The girls and I also spent a lot of time out in 29 Palms where Mom and Pops had a home they kept while they wandered around the U.S. in their truck and trailer.   While we were out there in the desert, we made a few visits to the Pioneer Town Bar.  Somehow, Carol Dean and Linda convinced someone that we were a band, and we were hired to play music for a wedding reception.  We were going to make some actual money!, I don't remember how much, but it was enough for us to book a room in Yucca Valley at a motel with a pool!  Mind you, this was the desert, it was summer! AND our first gig out of town!

That big Sunday we left the motel with our equipment and our make-up and headed down the road to Pioneer Town.  When we got to the bend in the road where you could see the old-time buildings, our mouths dropped open! There, in front of the Pioneer Town Bar were no less than 150 motorcycles!!   What had we gotten into?   This was a biker's wedding!    Were they Hells Angels?   Were they just locals?  Would the females beat the crap out of us? Back then bikers weren't doctors and lawyers. Well, we just had to go on in and find out.  Boy were we happy to see some people Linda had known when she lived out there a few years before.

Well, that was certainly one of the most interesting gigs we ever played; three girls with one acoustic guitar playing Jimmy Buffet and Eagles tunes and anything else we could think of to keep those drunk bikers dancin'!  And I've got to say, we did it!  I also got a fat lip, not from a biker chic hitting me, but from one of them falling over drunk and knocking the microphone into my mouth while she was dancing.   I figured I was getting paid back for the time I did the same thing to a Jimmy Discount when I was drunk and danced into his mic while he was singing.

 We played there many more times and we always got paid real good, which allowed us to get that motel room with the pool.  One night when we were on our way back down the hill I was in the back seat, depressed and wondering if it was all supposed to be this hard.  Meantime, Carol and Linda were in the front seats having a great ol' time.  Linda was driving and dared Carol Dean to "moon" the next truck. Well, she took the dare and sure enough, the next truck we passed, she rolled down the window, rolled down her pants and mooned the driver!  Sure snapped me out of my depression real fast.  We laughed for the next two miles.

Somewhere during this time we auditioned for The Gong Show.  By the time they called us back to be on the show we felt embarrassed to do it; they actually begged us, but we feigned a death in the family. We just couldn't face doing it, though it would be fun now to say that we had.

One day when we still lived with Aggie at the Charlie Chaplin Apts. in Hollywood we got a call to be the opening act at The Roxy on Sunset Blvd.  (This was before you had to pay to play there)  We were so excited!   At the Sweetwater we had opened the show several times for a local DJ named Jimmy Rabbit and he had asked for us to be his opening act.  He could barely sing, but knew how to get a good band together and how to entertain the crowd. I loved one of his lines; he'd yell at the audience, "How many of y'all out there have four-by-fours?!",  the crowd would respond with a rowdy yell, then he'd yell back, "How many of ya  ever been off the asphalt?!".

I wish I could say that Rain Cloud Woman went on from there to make more beautiful music, but that was the last time we really sang together.  Later that night my sister Linda gave me a clip to the jaw and I knew that was it.  We all knew that it wasn't going to work and we didn't have whatever it is that makes a group keep going on. That night we became Rained Out Woman.

I sure miss singing with those crazy girls.  Hey! Shirley Christian and Marc Cohen, wherever you are, thanks for lettin' us sleep on your floor.

Are we having fun yet?  What is my name?  Where's my red socks?

P.S.
All of us are now sober and have been for many years.  Thank the good Lord we finally wised up!

Another P.S.
My sister Linda Lee Shattuck passed away on August 5th, 2009.

The photos were taken by Richard Wedler. www.microfence.com