Wendy  Hearl  Musician and Songwriter

Culture Shock

	Publicity photo.  Left to Right: Wade Crounse, Will Henson, Jared Bentley, Me, Taylor Burgess.

Lineup:
Jared Bentley - Vocals, Tambourine, Keyboard
Taylor Burgess - Drums
Wade Crounse - Bass
Me - Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals
Will Henson - Guitar, Vocals, Percussion

Culture Shock was formed sometime in the spring of 1992.  With a recommendation from Dwayne Edwards, formerly of Fantasy, I was invited to join by Taylor Burgess, one of Dwayne's fraternity brothers.  I showed up at Wade Crounse's funky little house and met  a lot of people; so casual were the proceedings that I didn't realize Jared Bentley was the lead singer until the next practice.  I had run into Will Henson before this, most notably when he offered to trade me his Jimi Hendrix shirt for my Beatles shirt.  I had a couple of classes with Taylor and knew him only casually, and I had never to my knowledge met Wade before.  I had some misgivings about playing with these guys, as they led a more, shall we say, bohemian lifestyle than I was used to.  Still, there was a definite energy in the air and I had a lot of fun playing, so I talked myself into seeing where it led.  We played our first gig four days later, on April 30, 1992, under the name "The New Housing Policy," at a talent show at Clinch Valley College in Wise, VA (now called the University of Virginia's College at Wise).  In an auspicious beginning, we were disqualified for playing too long.  After a brief period as "Bullwinkle's Nightmare," we settled on the name "Culture Shock".  After a second gig at the College in early September, we were banned from playing there altogether due to a supposed violation of school alcohol policy.  Of course, controversy is very useful to a rock band!

Our first tempest in a teapot.  Click to read the whole story.

 
After a couple of months, the charges were dropped and all was forgiven. 

The storm blows over.  Click to read the whole story.

Meanwhile, we got some publicity photos taken and recorded a demo tape, including one original song, Will's "Skag-Hit Woman".

An early review by Joel Mullins.

Poster for a gig at the college on Dec. 10, 1992

We got our first gig outside of the Wise/Norton area on January 16, 1993, when we played The Tavern in Abingdon, VA, the beginning of an extended run there.  Our territory kept expanding.  Sometime during the summer, we played a high school reunion at the Martha Washington Inn in Abingdon, where we were asked to stop playing after just a few songs due to volume, confirming our status as "one of Wise's loudest bands."

Above, poster for a February 13, 1993 show at the Coeburn, VA Civic Center.  Below, a press clipping after the gig.

Eventually, we made it to the Tri-Cities (Bristol VA/TN, Kingsport TN, Johnson City, TN)--the big time!  We had quite a long run at the Offshore Cafe in Bristol, TN.  This was a favorite haunt of ours.  At our peak, we drew capacity crowds at both the Tavern and the Offshore every time we appeared there.

There were lots of people who came consistently to see us, among them some interesting characters.  Paul Pitman could always be counted on to shout "Play more Kinks!" and "Do 'Cinnamon Girl'" at each performance; if our playing was really inspired, he might yell "Decent!"  There was a guy named D.R. Mullins who used to show up at the Tavern was invited to wail on his harmonica along with us during "Roadhouse Blues."  One enthusiastic and very drunkenly dancing fan fell on my keyboard at the Tavern.  (A year later he did it again at the Offshore).  Any Vietnam Vet in the audience would gravitate toward Will for some reason.  Then there was the very sad woman who stood staring at us in a daze and then told us between sets that her boyfriend had just knocked out her front teeth. We would do weird things for the hell of it, like the time I played "Them Bones" lying on my back onstage at the Offshore.  Or when we had a trumpet player join us onstage for "Smells Like Teen Spirit."  Or when we played a ramshackle jam on "Hot For Teacher" with Jared on bass.  Wade, who had a wireless setup, would often disappear into the crowd during songs.

Ad for the Offshore in 1993.

I had some strange subjective experiences, too.  Once at the Tavern I started seeing the room shimmer and shadows dancing strangely on the walls during some song or other.  Months later, at Oscar's, I had some sort of mini-seizure while playing the guitar solo to "Southern Man."  I can explain neither, especially since I don't indulge in mind-altering substances.  Part of the vibe of the band, I suppose.

In the October 13, 1993 issue of The Loafer.  Click to enlarge.

Eventually we added more original songs to our repertoire, written by various members of the band.  "Throughout Time" was one I had written before joining the band.  Will had "Side Tracked," "Turn to Stone," and "The Waiting Room", though we only ever played the first of these.  Wade had "Switch Hitter," "We Will All Be Dead Someday," and "All I Wanted."  Jared and I collaborated on "The Book," Jared and Will wrote "Hold On Me," and all three of us worked out "Stop Me Now."

Alas, all was not well within the band.  Tensions often ran high; our diversity was both our strength and our weakness.  We all liked different kinds of music, and while there was an area where all our preferences intersected, each of us was trying to pull the band in a perferred direction.  Harsh words were often exchanged, and sometimes the specter of physical violence was even raised, including the memorable time two of the band members had a brief altercation on stage.  After a while, our interpersonal relations degraded to the point where we didn't even get together to practice anymore.  Any new songs that we added to the set list were learned live on stage!

Another point of contention was my work schedule.  I worked 2nd or 3rd shift on Fridays, which precluded any gigs on Fridays.  After a while, and with my consent, the band would play the occasional Friday show without me.  If I was on 2nd shift, I could sometimes race to the venue and join them for the second set.  If on 3rd shift, I could sometimes play the first set before heading to work.  There was some pressure on me to quit my job, but I had serious doubts about the long-term future of the band, and couldn't see myself sacrificing my livelihood for it.

I came as Kurt Cobain for our Halloween 1993 show at the Offshore.  He was still alive at the time.

In fact, I temporarily quit the band a couple of times.  The first time was early on, when people stopped showing up for practice.  I had an hour's drive each way to get there, so I was obviously not happy about this.  I was asked to come back and I think the others got little more serious about the group from then on.  The second time was in April of 1994, when the constant conflict drove me to a breaking point.  I gave two weeks' notice, but after the next gig I persuaded myself to stay on for a little while longer.  It was hard to beat the rush of performing.

Above and below: Our last appearances at the college, 1993.

Not too long after that, we entered a Battle of the Bands in Bristol, VA.  We made it to the semifinals, then the finals, and finally came out the winners!  It was a triumphant moment, but all too brief.  The owner of the club sponsoring the contest gave us the prize money, then asked us to play at the club on a certain date, but we had already committed to playing at the Offshore on that date.  We refused to cancel that gig, but offered to play at some other date.  He became angry and refused.  Later on, when local radio station WQUT announced the winner of the Battle of the Bands, they announced...some other band!  How petty can you get?

A couple of set lists.  Click to magnify.

We had some interesting engagements that summer.  One was at an old mill in West Virginia, where I slept on the floor of an old barn after the show and tried to sleep while people drummed all night long outside.  Another was "The Fizz" at the Holiday Inn in Norton, where after our first set we were asked to leave.  Apparently the patrons didn't take to our sound; one woman was overheard saying, "You've got to be on drugs to like that band!"  Plus a rare daytime gig for a class reunion at Boone Lake near Blountville, TN, which we quickly dubbed "Culturestock," and Jared peppered the intersong banner with announcements to avoid the brown acid and stop climbing on the scaffolding.  We also had an extended run at Oscar's in Bristol, VA.  The night after Kurt Cobain committed suicide, we played all the Nirvana songs we knew and wondered how we could have missed all the dark portents in the lyrics.  "Man, I swear I don't have a gun," Will intoned dramatically to me. I remember one night playing while watching the TV as O.J. Simpson rode down the highway in a white Bronco. 

I was still dissatisfied with what I felt was the slack attitude of the band as a whole.  When I found out they played a couple of shows without telling me, I took that as the sign to depart once and for all.  

The band continued on without me for six months or so.  Then one day, through a chance encounter with Wade, I learned that the band was playing its last show on May 4, 1995; furthermore, I was invited to play.  I decided to do it, and while Taylor opted out of playing that last show, I had a good, if surreal time playing with the other guys again.  Perhaps fittingly, the strange final scene of the Culture Shock saga came right after the show was over.  The club owner from the Battle of the Bands showed up, highly intoxicated and still with an axe to grind.  He briefly tried to fight Jared before the police took him away.

Except that it wasn't the final scene, after all.  Fast-forward a little over fourteen years.  Taylor began rallying the troops for a possible Culture Shock reunion gig.  When Wade unexpectedly came to town, four-fifths of the group reconvened for an afternoon of jamming.  We missed Will, three of us had colds, and I had a broken ankle, but we had a good time, anyway.  Despite this promising beginning, we ran out of gas, and the reunion gig didn't happen.

Culture Shock 4/5 Reunion, August 2009

Then, in late 2013, we started talking about the reunion once again.  Taylor wanted to get something going for the college homecoming in October 2014.  After some discussion and plenty of reminiscing on Facebook, we all agreed that October 4, 2014, would be the day.  Jared landed us a gig--a paying gig, even--at The Hangar Grill in Wise, VA.  I drew up a draft set list, the others tweaked it a bit, and suddenly, it looked like it was really going to happen!  This being Culture Shock, I knew the unexpected could happen, but I began to get excited.

Reunion posters

On the night before the gig, Taylor, Jared, Wade, and I gathered in Taylor's rehearsal room and went through many of the songs, aided by Taylor's friend Dean sitting in on guitar and vocals in place of the missing Will.  Taylor was recovering from a bout of flu but was in fine form and it became clear that not only was this going to happen, we might even sound good!

The next night, Will was there and as the five of us gathered onstage for the first time in twenty years, it was like a time warp.  We rehearsed for maybe 15 minutes and found that we still had that Culture Shock sound.  Even better, we were getting along. Appropriately, we kicked off the show with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"--"It was twenty years ago today..."

We must have played for three hours that night.  I saw many familiar faces in the crowd, and though we were occasionally ragged, and I had a few technical difficulties, mostly we sounded solid and the energy was great.  I felt we really did ourselves justice and at the end of the night, we left on good terms and with a memory of a great, unlikely night playing music together one more time.  That may truly have been our last bow, but who knows--maybe the world hasn't seen the last of Culture Shock!

After the reunion gig

Here's some video of our reunion.

Here's some audio of a few original songs performed by Culture Shock.