Once upon a time there were these two guys, Jeff and Gary, who worked for a safety equipment company run by Gary’s dad, and sometimes after work or at lunch Jeff would break out his guitar and a few songbooks

And they would sing Beatles songs or Tom Petty or Bob Welch or The Who or some of Jeff’s original songs or Jeff’s brother Danny’s stuff (“Cord Whippin Mama” was a real saga)

And then one day in 1983 Jeff suggested that Gary buy a guitar and a little Gorilla amp

And he did and some more songbooks too like Great Songs of the 60s and Jackson Browne and another bigger Beatles book and Bob Dylan

So they played stuff and then Marty K came back to town and he had what he called a Good Smellin Bad Guitar and he joined in

And the fledgling band was christened The Snot Dogs and Marty who couldn’t always be there took to saying “We are The Snot Dogs/The Snot Dogs are we/Sometimes there’s two/And sometimes there’s three”

And fellow GHS alumni Charlie and George got the word from Marty and there started to be get-togethers mostly in Jeff’s living room

And Marty went off to law school and before long fellow law school students Karen, who played fiddle, and Vicki, who played flute, started coming to the sessions

And one fateful night at Jeff’s the heavily pregnant audience member Joni, who was Gary’s wife at the time, let Gary know between songs that she had felt something that may have been a contraction

So Joni and Gary left to give birth to their daughter while the band played on

For many years.