By Jonathan Kirby

Of the many Carolina curiosities forged at Harry Deal’s Galaxie III Studios in Taylorsville, N.C., few recordings seemed to have burrowed deeper into the hills than It’s a Nice Place to Live But I Wouldn’t Want To Play There by The May Street Tops. By the time the small run of shrink-wrapped records had shipped from the pressing plant, guitarist Tom DeVoursney had undergone a religious conversion, upending the band’s uncertain future. Of the 300 copies sold by the Wilkesboro group, only a handful have surfaced in the intervening years. Considered a grail by a global consortium of psychedelic rock enthusiasts, this informal Southern rock masterpiece fuses the melodic motifs of the Allman Brothers, blades of bluegrass, and a high/lonesome sensibility that is uniquely Appalachian.

The following recollection is comprised of two separate phone conversations with the group’s guitarists and primary songwriters Don Story and Tom Devoursney, who reside in Wilkesboro and Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, respectively.   

Don Story: My folks always had music playing in the house, primarily things like Miles Davis, Erroll Garner, and Wes Montgomery. My sister was six years older than me and she was in the pop vein; she introduced me to the Ventures. And then my parents always seemed to be very interested in the things I became interested in, which, obviously The Beatles on Sullivan in ’64 was an epiphany. I remember right after that, everyone in school was either on the football team or in a combo or both.

Tom DeVoursney: My grandfather was a bluegrass fiddle player, Sherman Thomas Boggess. My mom told me that when Bill Monroe came to town, back in the olden days, he would ask my grandfather to come and sit in with him. My grandfather would go off and play bluegrass music, make absolutely no money, and come home hungover and broke. When the family would all get together, it’d be a hundred people there and they’d all be singing. The lady down the road, Nancy Earp, would play the accordion and my grandfather would play the fiddle and two or three uncles would be playing guitar. So [music] was definitely in my family.

Don Story: It was the summer between my seventh and eighth grade years in school and drums was all I cared about. But I was starting to be around some people that had guitars and they sort of caught my interest, too. But I had an accident where I severely injured my right arm going through a plate glass window, to the point I came pretty close to losing it. I was in a cast for the better part of six months and so drumming was out. But I could cram a [guitar] pick in where my thumb came out of the cast, so I got a guitar, just to have something to do. And as soon as I was able to get out of the cast and start doing the drums again, I did. But the guitar bug was there by then too. 

Tom DeVoursney: I started playing in local bands and went to Wilkes Central High School. As time went on, we just kind of congregated together and formed a band. It was like a dream come true. We were all young guys. I mean, I was like 16. 

Don Story: Well, they were already together. I was in another band and actually I was living in Chapel Hill. I came back and I think went to see them play at the armory. I remember thinking they were a little young and a little raw, but, there was something there. They were very very big into the Allman Brothers and the way they presented it there was with two drummers and a keyboardist and two guitars—they had the exact same line-up and they did that music very very well and very faithfully. 

Tom DeVoursney: We were the like the Almost Brothers.

Don Story: Tom and I lived maybe half a mile apart from each other, so we started getting together and playing guitars, either at my place or his house. And the songs would just sort of come. I wish I could remember—it might of been a year, it might of been six months—how long we were actually a band, but it wasn’t a tremendous length of time. So, the idea had to come fairly quickly once we started playing that we were going to record the album.

Tom DeVoursney: Alright, this might get me in trouble, but Ronnie and Allen Pruitt were two of the early rockers there in Wilkesboro. Everybody came to their house and we could do anything in there—we could smoke pot. They lived on May Street and we used Top [brand] rolling papers, so we named ourselves the May Street Tops. 

Don Story: I knew of Harry’s reputation as being a full-time professional entertainer and so I admired that aspect of things. I just knew he had a studio and it was close by. It might have cost a thousand at the most—it was somewhere between $500 and $1000. And that was another education for me—I financed that record. I got my first loan. I couldn’t believe it, that in Wilkesboro, they would lend to a 21 or 22-year-old musician. So, it was a great coming of age moment for me—that was the genesis of my stellar credit rating today. 

Tom DeVoursney: We came in with the band and basically recorded the tunes live in the studio, pretty much in one take. The worst part was, back in those days, nobody knew how to mic acoustic guitars hardly—especially with a rock band. I’ve always been an acoustic freak—I love acoustic guitars, and I was trying to use acoustic guitars. I wasn’t satisfied with the sound we had with the guitars on there. But considering where we were? I mean, we did it on one of those four-tracks with 2-inch tape at Harry’s place. And Donny was pretty much the engineer. I think he did a really great job. We did the vocals after the fact and we overdubbed the acoustics, but again, we were limited in that we were trying to keep it within a time frame, so we knocked it out pretty quick. We came in there and set the whole band up and it was like, okay, we’re cutting this record today… and we did! 

Don Story: That record was recorded in one eight-hour session. It was get in there and let’s do it, and if something wasn’t quite right, well that’s too bad. In my mind it was a lunch break when we took the picture, but it could have been done after. Because I’m sure we got in there by, let’s say maybe 7 or 8 in the morning and by 4, the recording aspect of it was finished. So, it could have been after that. That was our standard garb in those days—a flannel shirt and jeans, probably a blue-jean jacket and as much hair as we could muster.   

Tom DeVoursney: This is the beginning of my awakening. I was sitting with my best friend and we were smoking a joint at the time, and he said, you know, I’m dating this girl, and she was a Christian, then she became a witch, and now she’s an atheist. And he said I guess I’m an atheist too. And I said, no man—everyone knows there’s Jesus and God. You know, you can’t be an atheist. And right then and there, I thought to myself, I really believe that. And I said a little prayer in my head, like, God, I know I’m really a sinner and please have mercy on me. And from that point, life began to change for me, man! Everywhere I went, there was something going on. I’d be walking down the street and all of a sudden, some guy’s be there to hand me a Christian tract. And I’d be with the rest of the guys, and they’d just walk right by. Like—they didn’t even see the guy! 

Don Story: I’m trying to think if it was all of us or just Tom and me, but after the recording, I could just tell something was on his mind. And, he probably broke it to us as a group—the religious thing. And he hated it, but he just couldn’t play anymore with us. We had a lot of work lined up. The Rally Weekend at Appalachian—that date was booked and coming up quickly. Like I said, we were not thrilled. And I hate that there was any animosity at that point, but I don’t think there’s any way we could’ve not had a little bit under those circumstances. 

Tom DeVoursney: I’d be asleep at night; people be knocking on my window at 2 o’clock in the morning to take me out for a drive to try and talk me out of it. The guys in the band wanted to pay for me to go to a psychiatrist because they thought I was losing my mind. It’s a big change, man—a psychic change you go through. I was living a lifestyle that just didn’t go with Christianity at all, and I had to make a decision. And it was hard because those were my friends, we built this band together. It was very difficult. 

Don Story: It’s great to me now that there’s no lingering animosity. I remember when I first spoke with you, just for a laugh, I went on YouTube and there was one song from [the album], a song called “Southern Lady.” I’d totally forgotten about that song. I mean, in a lot of ways it sounds like 20-year-old kids that are still learning how to tune their guitars. But there was some interesting bits. The writing was, I won’t say derivative, but we wore our influences pretty heavily. But there was something there. If we could have kept going and leaning in that original direction, I think there was some promise.  

Tom DeVoursney: I guess one of the neatest things is when my boys were in high school, they got the May Street Tops album. And they didn’t know what to think of it, but their friends, loved it. The 16-year-old friends of my boys liked the record and once their friends liked it, they liked it. So, I guess, after all these years to see your kids and your kid’s friends really like it was nice. 

About the Author

Jonathan Kirby is a record collector, author, and producer with the esteemed reissue label, the Numero Group. A native of Winston-Salem, he is an authority on music recorded in the Carolinas and has amassed thousands of independently produced records from the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, spanning all genres from doo-wop to hip-hop, folk to funk to rock. From 2007 to 2010, he served as the Associate Editor for the Brooklyn-based music Journal, Wax Poetics, before joining the Numero Group in 2011. He has been nominated for two Grammys in relation to his archival work—in 2014 for his expansive liner notes for Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound and again in 2017 for producing Bobo Yeye: Belle Epoque in Upper Volta. He returned to Winston-Salem in May of 2018 to intensify his research and preservation of the underrated, unknown, and marginalized musicians of North Carolina. He has just completed the cover story for the Oxford American South Carolina Music Issue, where he goes deep on the musical accomplishments of Lake City native and astronaut Dr. Ronald McNair, whose untimely death aboard the Challenger in 1986 put a tragic end to saxophone solos performed in orbit.

Asheville’s Sunn Cycle on Acid Raga

by Jonathan Kirby

Asheville’s psychedelic revolution began, not with a bang but with a raga. A nod to the Indian motifs being woven into progressive rock during the late ’60s, “Acid Raga Pt. 1 & 2” was 
conjured in a sleepy iteration of Asheville, considered by most to be a retirement community. Named for the Blue Cheer song of the same name, Sunn Cycle was comprised of drummer Tommy Walker of Knoxville, Tenn., guitarist Danny Kennedy of Cramerton, N.C., and organist Larry Blanton of Gaffney, S.C. Bassist Billy Farmer, the lone Asheville native, had spent his high school years strumming guitar for the Fabulous Untils, an R&B group comprised of hometown soul heroes Charles Pickens (of the journeymen soul duo Pic and Bill) and Stanley Baird (of Bite, Chew & Spit and, later, New Central Connection Unlimited). After nearly eight years on the road, Farmer returned to Asheville where he crossed paths with Larry Phillips, who owned the Lake Lure nightclub the El Tango, and ran the Asheville booking agency, Talent Attractions. Although a guitarist by trade, Philips convinced Farmer to fill the bass vacancy in Sunn Cycle. The quartet worked small rooms through the Southeast, using both Asheville and Knoxville as home bases. While they earned a reputation for raucous renditions of Steppenwolf, Vanilla Fudge, and Jimi Hendrix hits, their enduring legacy would be built on five furious minutes of improvised insanity dubbed “Acid Raga,” a lysergic cacophony, recorded on a Sunday in one take, smeared across both sides of their lone 45.

Essentially a sound check for a premeditated recording session, “Acid Raga Pt. 1 & 2” captures the quartet pounding on their instruments, completely unaware that studio owner Chuck Taylor had begun rolling. Unscripted and unrestrained, “Acid Raga” is a pure distillation of the brilliant and chaotic alchemy beginning to swell in Appalachia’s musical underground during the late ’60s. 

On August 9th, 2018, all four members of Sunn Cycle reconvened at the studios of AshevilleFM, where they were interviewed by musicologist Vance Pollock for his weekly radio show, Riffin’. This oral history has been assembled from the resultant conversation; it has been edited for length and continuity.

Larry Blanton: We used to call “Larry Phillips” the Terror of Asheville. Talent Attractions? We changed it to “Terror of Asheville.” You didn’t know what you were gonna find when you got to the gig. He had an office in the top of the Northwest Bank Building [later, the BB&T Building], and we used to have to go up there and wait by his door until he came out. One day we took [the letters in] “Talent Attractions” and made the word “Latent Rat Actions.” 

Tommy Walker: It was early September maybe even late August of 1968. I was sharing an apartment [in Knoxville] with a guitar player, who later turned out to be my cousin, and we formed the band Sunn Cycle. Our inspiration was heavy rock and roll music—Steppenwolf and things of that sort. Eventually Larry Blanton came through town with one of the Carolina road bands and played at one of the clubs near the University of Tennessee. He left that band and joined us. We ended up with Billy Farmer on Bass and Danny Kennedy on guitar—which seemed to be the combination that worked—and we were out gigging within a couple of weeks. 

Danny Kennedy: What was the club down on the river? And they had chicken wire up over the stage? The Casa Loma! If they liked you, they’d throw empty beer bottles. If they didn’t like you, they’d throw full ones. 

Larry Blanton: We used to drive back home [to Asheville], Billy and I, every Saturday night. We’d get to play for some of the frat parties and got to know some of the students that were the thing on campus, and it was great. What Asheville didn’t have; Knoxville made up ten times for it. 

Billy Farmer: Chuck Taylor actually found us. There was a big battle of the bands in Asheville in early 1969. And somehow, we got booked in as the professional headliners for this thing. We weren’t part of the competition but a couple of us were judges on one weekend; the following weekend they had the concert and the show in the Asheville Coliseum, and we played then. That’s where Chuck saw us.

Tommy Walker: We were there [at his studio] and we just did this to get loosened up before we recorded what we were there to do. We got through doing it and Chuck, in the control room, said, “Okay, we’ll keep that one.” And we were saying “You’ll what?” We didn’t even know he’d recorded it, much less that he was gonna put it out as a 45. 

"Acid Raga Pt. 1 & 2" from the Numero Group compilation, Warfaring Strangers: Acid Nightmares, on which Jonathan Kirby was a producer.

Danny Kennedy: We had played a gig that previous night. We were up pretty late. We were all pretty much ragged by the time we got in the studio. 

Billy Farmer: Chuck, he titled that song. And like I said—now this is just my opinion—it was just more of a jam. We were just running through something and—poof. Next thing I know, it’s out, floating around. 

Larry Blanton: We had to more or less teach him how to be an engineer. He had the equipment, but—it’s like an instrument owner and an instrument player? There’s a big difference. 

Tommy Walker: [Regarding the title, “Acid Raga”] I think realistically, there’s more of a perception of wildness than there was true wildness. For example, when I was in high school, everybody assumed I was on drugs. I wasn’t on any drugs—I didn’t even drink. I was always at band practice. I just wanted to play music.  

Larry Blanton: If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’d leave it just like it is. I wish we could have done more; you can only do so much and then fate guides your way. 

Danny Kennedy: To me, it was one of the better parts of my musical career. I wish I could have stayed with them longer, but like Larry said, fate takes over.