BUGZY Together from 1985 - 1995 A Little History The band BUGZY didn’t start out as a band. Originally it was just the writing team of Franki Gorgo and Bob Kimmel. They had played together in a cover band and left that band to chase their desire to write original songs. The idea was to write material and bring various players and singers into the studio to flesh out the songs and then try to sell those songs to a major artist, publishing company or band. Just before leaving the previous cover band, that group made another personnel change and got a new guitar player named William Boyer but known as Bugsy. Bugsy had a fire in his playing and a great gruff voice that seemed like the perfect vehicle for the songs Franki and Bob were writing. So after splitting from the cover band Franki and Bob set up shop in a recording studio that Bob was working at in Atlantic City, NJ and they started recording new material. Whenever Bugsy was available to come into Atlantic City for a day or two he would run in, play a bunch of guitar tracks and sing some vocal tracks and then go back out on the road with the cover band. Finally after about a year of this the music they were making started to take shape and sounded like it was a band, even though there was no real band yet. Bob & Franki finally convinced Bugsy to also leave the cover band and move to New Jersey so they could start putting together a real band and continue writing and recording. Up to this point all of the songs were being written by Franki primarily with Bob co-writing on some. Bugsy had never really done much writing of original material but he jumped right in and they found out that he was a natural and the songs Bugsy wrote fit in perfectly with the material being written by Franki and Bob. The cohesive glue that brought the writing styles of Franki and Bugsy together was the recording and production input from Bob. And that, right there is the foundation of the band BUGZY. Throughout the nearly ten years they worked together as a band they went through a few different versions of the line up of players but the central force and consistent nucleus of the band was always Franki, Bugsy and Bob. The writing team of Franki and Bugsy and the recording and production prowess of Bob was the center of, and the driving force of the band BUGZY. The first version of BUGZY to play out live dates started in late 1985. Of course they didn’t even have a name for the band yet. Their friend and manager at the time Dan Mulhern gave the band their name when he needed something to call them for a perspective gig. Bugsy was singing all the lead vocals and was by definition becoming the focal point of the band so it was decided to call the band BUGZY. The spelling differentiated between Bugsy (with an “S”) the player & singer and Bugzy (with a “Z”) the band. This first version consisted of Bugsy on guitar and lead vocal, Franki Gorgo on keyboards and backing vocals, Bob Kimmel on drums, Ed Abrams on guitar and George Davison on bass and backing vocals. It was a formidable group and that form of the band played several shows with great success and started developing a bit of a fan base. In fact it was this first version of the band, and their recorded music that caught the ear of producer and studio owner Tony Bongiovi who designed, built and owned the world famous Power Station Recording Studio in NYC and discovered many great bands like Blondie and Talking Heads. Tony signed BUGZY to a short lived production deal and the band got to record a few songs in that historic studio. In fact while BUGZY was recording in studio A, Eric Clapton happened to be recording in studio B at the same time. The core of the band, Bob, Franki and Bugsy were not completely satisfied with the first line up. They were recording a lot of backing vocals in the studio but they only had three singers in the band since neither Ed nor Bob were really strong vocalists. Also, George was a guitar player but joined the band as a bass player because he was so into the music and really wanted to be a part of the band but they had already brought Ed into the organization so George said he would play bass instead of guitar. So with the new changes they moved George over to guitar and added a great bass player who could also lend his voice to backing vocals, Kenny Joniec. So now the second line up of the band was Bugsy on guitar and lead vocal, Franki Gorgo on keyboards and backing vocals, Bob Kimmel on drums, George Davison on guitar and backing vocals and Kenny Joniec on bass and backing vocals. This version of the band played several live shows but spent most of the time in the studio writing and recording. During this period the band signed a production/management deal with the relatively successful record producer John Ryan in Los Angeles who produced the Santana album Shango among other successful releases. John loved the writing and production that the band was doing and started putting them through their paces by insisting on a much faster and larger output of material. The band started virtually living in the studio and almost constantly had two or three songs in production at the same time. BUGZY started really taking shape as a very strong writing team and the songs poured out. It was interesting that John Ryan never saw the band perform. He became interested strictly based on the strength of their writing and production and in fact they never met face to face. All of the communication between John Ryan and BUGZY was done over telephone and through the mail. After a while, as he was starting to get ready to approach record labels looking for a deal he asked BUGZY to send some pictures and record some video so he could see what he was working with visually in addition to the music that he already liked. He was not impressed. He felt that the band needed their look and live performance to be as strong as their music. It was decided that George and Kenny should be replaced and that Bob, who had been losing his hair needed to get some kind of hair replacement or something to fix his look. It was, after all the big hair 80’s at the time. So Bob bought hair and the band brought in two new players. They added bass player Jeff Seykot and guitar player Chris Reynolds. This third version is usually the line up that most fans of the band think of when they think of BUGZY. Bugsy on guitar and lead vocal, Franki Gorgo on keyboards and backing vocals, Bob Kimmel on drums, Chris Reynolds on guitar and backing vocals and Jeff Seykot on bass and backing vocals. This version of the band played out doing live shows pretty often and became what is probably accepted as the strongest version of the band in its history. They did showcases for perspective record labels and A&R guys in NYC and took many trips to New York to meet and spend time with various record executives and A&R teams from a few different labels. It should be noted that because BUGZY spent more time in the recording studio than they ever did on stage, they used not only the core players that were in various versions of the band but also a whole lot of other great musicians and singers that they brought in to play and sing on songs throughout their nearly ten year history. For the record there will be a list of those players and singers at the bottom of this piece. Over the course of the history of the band they were courted by and seemed very close to signing deals with three different major record labels. As is the story with so many bands, they got close to deals and then something always seemed to pull the rug out from underneath them at the last minute. With RCA Records they had the interest of one of their top A&R guys and it looked as though they were going to sign a deal with them and then all of a sudden that A&R guy left RCA New York to move to Warner Brothers in LA and of course he promised to bring the band along but that never happened and there was nobody else at RCA who knew about or cared about BUGZY so that was the end of that deal. At Polygram Records BUGZY was up for a deal and it came down to a time when they had two bands they wanted to sign but the corporate office said they could only sign one for that business quarter so the A&R staff had to vote on which band to sign. The other band was a group of triplet girls from Texas called The Triplets. They got the deal and BUGZY went home. By the way, anybody ever hear of The Triplets again? I didn’t think so. The third time they were close to a deal was with EMI Records and it was an unfortunate bit of timing. Right about the time that the A&R guy who loved BUGZY was bringing them to the table, EMI was in the process of buying up several other record labels and because of that the corporate office put a freeze on any new signings for a year and again, BUGZY went home. Eventually after getting kicked in the teeth so many times the moral in the band was getting pretty low and it came to an end. But the process was always fun anyway. BUGZY played showcases for label heads, one was at the old famous China Club in NYC. There were several trips to NYC to visit offices of various labels and meet and greet big time A&R people and record executives. It all felt pretty amazing at the time but it just didn’t culminate in a record deal for the band. After Bob left the band and Franki became less involved, just offering songs to be recorded but not performing any more, there was a version of the band with Bugsy and some other guys that did get a small deal with an independent label and they released an album. Not much ever became of it and it didn’t reflect the same feel and vibe of the original BUGZY. As mentioned above, here is a list of all the players that played on various BUGZY songs in the studio over the course of their nine year history: Band members who recorded and also played in live versions of the band: William “Bugsy” Boyer - guitars, lead & backing vocals Franki Gorgo - keyboards & backing vocals Bob Kimmel - drums, drum programming, keyboards Ed Abrams - guitars George Davison - guitars, bass & backing vocals Kenny Joniec - bass & backing vocals Jeff Seykot - bass & backing vocals Chris Reynolds - guitars & backing vocals Additional players who played on recordings but were not in live versions of the band: Additional bass players: Arland Gilliam - Andy Lalasis - Philip Polsinelli - Jerry Scafario - Michael Maiorano Additional guitar players: John Mulhern - Zack Bocelle Additional keyboard players: Dave Hartl - Demetrios Pappas - Chris Michaels - Patty Balbo Additional Backing vocals: George Hackett - Patty Balbo - Zack Bocelle - Shari Skain-Murray