The Morells made their bow at last in 1980, with Whitney, Thompson, Gremp, and Maralie on board. They became a regional hit, with regular gigs in Chicago, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Madison, Indianapolis, and St. Louis. Occasional forays into New York also went well, earning them favorable notices from The Village Voice and The New York Times. When the group released Shake And Push, it earned a four-star review in Rolling Stone.
“I was with the Daredevils when the Morells’ first record got reviewed in Rolling Stone,” Terry recalls. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is so cool.’ And then Donnie came over one night and said, ‘Wanna be in the Morells?’ Man, I thought I’d hit the jackpot!”
The group found themselves teetering on the precipice of a major-label record deal, but then fate dealt a crippling blow. An A&R executive at MCA invited the band in and made an offer to re-release Shake And Push. The parties agreed to the various figures involved, and the band walked out figuring it was a done deal. Two days later, the label’s entire A&R staff was fired, and with them went the Morells’ deal.
“I’m not saying that’s what got him fired…” deadpans Whitney.
But the fact remained that, after that, the band couldn’t take it to the next level. “We’d go around playing the same old places,” he says. Frustrated, the band broke up. For a time, Whitney turned to full-time production work, and Thompson signed on to play with the Daredevils. Gremp also joined that band, and still plays with them today. Maralie, meanwhile, led her own band for a while, then retired from music.
In 1987 the Skeletons re-formed, in name only, to release Rockin’ Bones, a collection of singles from the late ’70s. The next year brought a new album, In The Flesh! Both records were released on the Scottish Label Next Big Thing. When that label went belly-up, the Demon/Fiend label released both albums on one CD, turning the band into a cult favorite of sorts in the U.K. From there, East Side Digital released the U.S. version of the disc, collectively titled In The Flesh! The same label had also reissued the Morells’ long-lost Shake And Push.
Asked about the differences between the bands, which share three key members, Whitney quips, “You know, there’s a lot of difference between a Taurus and a Sable…” but then he turns serious. “The Skeletons broke a shitload of ground in my book,” he says. “I couldn’t believe somebody like Keyboard magazine did not notice that we had a rock ‘n’ roll band with two keyboards, and five, six different keyboards, and sampled sound and everything back in that period of time, to augment a rock ‘n’ roll thing.”
“The Skeletons were a little bit more musically progressive than what we’re doing now,” Thompson adds. “But I don’t think people want to see anybody our age doing anything progressive. We’ve tried to avoid saying it’s roots music for so long, that now we probably should. After all, nobody over 40 has ever broken big into pop music.”
“Except Rockin’ Sidney,” says Whitney. “And those guys that did the Macarena. And hey, those guys that do ‘Who Let the Dogs Out’.”
So there.
The Skeletons released two new albums, Waiting in 1992 on Alias and Nothing To Lose in 1997 on HighTone. They also achieved perhaps their widest recognition by taking on gigs as the backing band for Dave Alvin, and later, Syd Straw. Hicks and Terry stayed on in Alvin’s band (and are still with him to this day), which eventually brought the Skeletons era to a close the second time. Says Thompson: “The van died around then, too. When the van dies, the band dies.” Whitney opened The Studio, which has played host to both regional and national bands, including the Bottle Rockets, Hadacol, Kelly Hunt, and the Domino Kings.
“I don’t really go out looking for producer jobs,” he says. “It’s like calling places looking for gigs. You have to kind of toot your own horn, and it’s kinda hard to do that. The proof is in the pudding. It’s a results-driven business. The results are, if you make a record with somebody, and somebody hears it and says, ‘That knocks my hat in the creek, and I wanna record with that guy at that place.’ That’s where I get my stuff from.”
To fulfill an offer to become the house band at a Springfield watering hole, Whitney, Thompson, and Smarties drummer Kristi McInnis formed Combo.com, a short-lived group that ended when McInnis decided to move to California, even as the band was completing work on a now-finished but unreleased album.
