I had an old accordion  that I had traded some electronic equipment for when I was going to school at Wichita Technical Institute in the early ’70s.  Here is was, 30 years later, and it was horribly out of tune.  I called my buddy George who owned Shiloh Music and ask it there was anyone he knew that could tune an accordion.  He didn’t, but he said if there IS anyone that could do it, it’s Rudy Harley.  He gave me his number, I called him, and we connected immediately, talking about accordions, old accordion players and music in general. We soon started jamming together and he introduced me to Stan and other musicians he knew.  Rudy only played accordion and mandolin on these jams, and it wasn’t till later that I found out he was an amazing guitar player.  He was a finger picking virtuoso, who as a solo act, had opened for world famous acts in Santa Cruz, CA.

For years after we started playing together, we only played instrumentally; first as UNIVOX, and then as Three Of Us, no vocals were ever heard on those band recordings. This was a strict rule of Rudy’s for some reason. But one day I was listening to some early music he had done, I heard a live performance with a KILLER singer.  I asked “Who is singing on that recording?!”.  His reply “Oh, that’s me”. I was shocked. But it still wasn’t until we did this project that we finally got his singing recorded again.  

On phone calls with Rudy we developed this habit where we would answer each other’s calls as if we were a business…”Mort’s Mortuary, you stab ’em, we slab ’em”, that kind of thing. One day I was in Shiloh Music when he called and I answered “Shiloh Music”, and then handed the phone quickly to the owner George who immediately caught on to the joke.  Rudy asked for some arcane musical device, whereupon George answered saying “Rudy, you know we don’t have anything like that here”.  There was a stunned silence, then Rudy says “George?”   Meanwhile, George had handed the phone back to me and I said “What do mean George? You called me”.  Then an even longer pause…after which Rudy confessed that he might be having an acid flashback!  We both burst out laughing & George told him the situation. Rudy was relieved that he wasn’t losing his mind. So funny. Gotcha, Rudy!