The Cringeworthies were on the verge of stardom early in the 21st century before the usual band problems stopped them in their tracks.
The Cringeworthies were:
Rick Gardner - Piano
Tom Dean - Bass
Penny Dreadful - Vocals
Elvis Sheen - Guitar and vocals
Kevin Horner - Drums
From the unpublished autobiography of Tom Dean, bass player for The Cringeworthies...
"It seems like forever ago. Thanks to Bush, the US was at war (for most of my life the US has been at war thanks to a Bush).... I was separated from my wife, which was pretty typical, but no matter how many times it happened, somehow I never expected it, and it always made me feel bad. Most Friday nights I'd go over to Rick's.
To me, Rick had it all; two masters degrees, a regular paycheck, power lifting, his gig as high school wrestling coach, a double wide on a nice lot, a Hummer ... But he lacked female companionship, too.
So we'd buy a couple of sixpacks (he'd buy it, actually, since I was unemployed or underemployed all the time, and broke) and I'd pull out my guitar and he'd sit down at the piano, and we'd jam on some Neil Young tunes...
After we'd gotten a bunch of songs down pretty solid, we thought it would be great to try some of them out in public. We remembered a high school buddy, Kevin Horner, was a pretty mean drummer, so we tracked him down. We rehearsed as a trio, and we were getting a pretty good sound going, so we gave ourselves a name ("Cotton Candy") and started trying to get some gigs. The trouble was none of us could sing worth beans. We thought it would be nice to have a chick singer, always helps pull an audience, so we placed an ad the Nickel - "chick singer wanted for up and coming rock and roll band."
Penny answered the ad - she was from the midwest originally, and had a job with the school district. She had dynamite pipes, but she said she'd only join the band if we'd take her brother, Elvis, too. She said he could sing as well as her, and he was a great guitarist.
I wasn't too happy about the idea of another guitarist in the band, but we were desparate to get her, so we agreed to try them both out. Things fell into place pretty fast after this.
I hated to admit it, but Elvis was a better guitarist than me, so I switched to bass. I think it was Johnnie that came up with our new and final name, "The Cringeworthies" - "Cotton Candy" was too fluffy, We all agreed Cringeworthies has some crunch! Like when you hit a power chord real loud, and people cringe.
The interesting and unexpected thing was that both Penny and Elvis wrote original songs, so we started to work them, up and perform them, and started dreaming of something beyond the usual bar circuit. People liked the songs and we strarted to have a fair amount of regional success, but we ran into the usual troubles... after my marriage broke up for good, I got involved with Angela... but that didn't work out, and it was just too hard to be in the same band, maybe Abba or Fleetwood Mac could do it, but we couldn't.
Penny moved back to Nebraska or Kansas (I didn't want to know, and I haven't tried to look her up) and that was the beginning of the end for the band... Elvis moved to Seattle, I moved to Ypsilanti. I ran into this guy who said he wanted to put these songs (demos, really, we never finished the album) out on his label, so I said sure."
The Cringeworthies played some of the finest venues in North Central Washington - for example, Caffe Mela in Wenatchee, The Mansfield Museum in Mansfield, the Waterville Hotel in Waterville....
Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Golden Earring, Air Supply
Piano. Guitar. Drums. Bass. Voice. We kept it real
I still love you Priscilla, where ever you are
