Daved Kohls:  

After 1967's graduation, I briefly dabbled with life as a keyboard player in the local Stockton music scene performing in local groups such as Decaying Organisms, Black Roses, the Ether Sea, Morris Toad, and hanging with others such as The Family Tree, The Strange, Plastic Explosion, Sweet Wine, etc., until enlisting in the military in 1969 & then spending 6 years as a petty officer in Naval aviation electronics. I carried a high security clearance while working on search & track radar, TACAN, radio, navigational computers, and specializing in ECM & IFF systems (primarily on EA6B and A-4F aircraft), till the end of the Vietnam war. During this period I married Donna Anderson, a local Stockton girl, for almost 5 years and had a son, Kristian, who, as an adult, has become quite succesful in his own showbiz career as a prominent Los Angeles session drummer and with his own gold-record award winning, multi-album group, Adema. While in the Navy, I picked up an interest in guitars, fueled by the instrument's portability. My first acoustic guitar, was given to me in early 1970 as a birthday present from fellow military classmates, while stationed near Memphis for electronic schooling. I then spent 2 years of shore duty on Whidbey Island, WA, maintaining aircraft in the first EA6B training squadron, VAQ-129, followed by 3 years of sea duty on the aircraft carrier, USS Hancock, with an A-4F squandron, VA-212. At the end of the Viet Nam war, before being honorably discharged in 1975, I spent 6 months at NAS Subic Bay in the Phillipines helping to process escaping refugees. I closed out the '70s living out of an Econoline van while traveling around the country looking to re-find myself, briefly settling in mid Iowa and working at the John Deere factory in Waterloo as a construction and maintenence electrician for a couple of years, before missing the coast and moving to southern California. L.A. 'Boogie Nights' got crazy for awhile as time passed and by 1980, I had settled in the Pacific Northwest, where I gained some local celebrity in the Portland, Oregon area as a performer and session musician, till I fell into entertainment production and finally found my true career calling as a "Backline Technician"... ...or, the more familiar term... "Roadie". Begining as a keyboard tech with the band, Quarterflash ("Harden My Heart", "Find Another Fool", "The Night Shift", "Take Another Picture"), I moved onto guitar teching a year later with a spinoff group, called "Meinstreet"; fronted by their lead guitarist/lead male vocalist, Jack Charles. Eventually I moved on to an up & coming Portland band called The Dan Reed Network ("Get To You", "Ritual"), bringing them up thru the Northwest nightclub scene and ...Expand for more