Mosaic was formed from the Dallas Bull Band, and the frustration of working for a
tyrannical bar owner. The three of us (along with drummer Kerry Demeria) had a
steady gig at the premier country bar in Tampa, the Dallas Bull. And we probably
could've kept the gig for quite some time if we had been left to our own devices.
However, the guy who owned the bar was a really arrogant and obnoxious fellow
who also thought he owned the people who worked for him. We had a great band,
and were a very entertaining bunch. Just the four of us were enough to consistently
please the crowd and keep 'em there dancing, drinking and spending money.
However, the bar owner (let's just call him Norb) had some kind of loyalty to this
local singer/songwriter, forced him into our band and put him in charge. Billy was a
trainwreck and his presence took every bit of enjoyment out of our nightly shows.
Though he could sing pretty well, he was a mediocre guitarist and at best a shoddy
bandleader. So Susie, Steve and I decided we would put together another band and
leave the Dallas Bull behind. For the next few weeks, we would get up early every
morning, go to Steve's house and work on the concept for the group and an inital
demo tape to start shopping the band. We sent tapes out to several booking agents,
and a short time later had one of them over for a live audition. She really liked us,
and hired us to play at the Hoilday Inn Sabal Park, which was a new hotel in Tampa
and a top-shelf venue. What she didn't know was that the three or four songs we
played for the audition were the only songs we knew at the time. But we busted our
butts for the next few weeks and when gig time came we were ready. We ended up
booking almost two years of work from that one audition and we were cruising.
Mosaic was a very unique and versatile trio...all of us were good lead and
background vocalists, and we all played multiple instruments...
Joey - electric guitar, keyboards, pedal steel guitar
Susie - bass guitar, keyboards
Steve - keyboards, saxophone
...so we could play many genres of music and have many different "personalities" as
a band. A high-tech rhythm machine was our drummer, and I programmed it to
sound incredibly like the original recording for every song we played. We were good
friends, we played together well and had all the work we wanted. Then, on a fateful
night in 1990, Lee Greenwood wandered in to the bar, sang some songs with us and
a few weeks later asked Steve if he wanted to join his band. Hooray for Steve!
Though we hated losing him, we wished him well in his new high-profile gig. We
auditioned a few keyboardists, and settled on a great player named Howard Helm.
Howard had just come off the road with a fairly prominent rock act, and had good
chops and good stage presence. He was with us for around 6-8 months I guess, but
I think the lounge lizard life wasn't what he wanted and he moved on. After that, Tim
Jacobsmeyer joined the band. Tim was a good fit personality-wise and he was a
good player too. I guess we played together for about a year and a half...then
Mosaic disbanded and we went our separate ways.
Epilogue...in Spring 1992, Steve called me and asked if I would like to come to
Nashville and audition for Lee Greenwood's band. To be continued somewhere on
this site...