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RoadRunners and PageBoys were early garage bands

by Herald ColumnistDENNIS. L. CLAY
| July 26, 2014 6:00 AM

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The original RoadRunners formed in 1963 with Mike Balzotti on piano/keyboards, Bob Galloway on drums/vocals, Spencer Clark on sax, John (Jack) White on guitar and Ray Camp on bass guitar. Balzotti and Galloway later formed another band called The Bards.

Two of the early Columbia Basin garage bands of the 1960s were the RoadRunners and the PageBoys. Spencer Clark was a member of both bands and explains the band configuration this way:

The band originally started as the RoadRunners in 1963 with Mike Balzotti on keyboards, John (Jack) White on guitar, Spencer Clark on tenor sax, Ray Camp on Bass guitar, and Bob Galloway on drums/vocals.

A few months later, Mike Balzotti left the band along with Ray Camp. We found Rob Lilly from Ephrata to play keyboards and Dennis Weston from Soap Lake played drums for a while. Rob finally left to go to college and Dennis left to go into the Army.

Bob Wikstrom of Ephrata also played keyboards for a while and I moved over to playing bass guitar. A few months later the band broke up over differences in the direction the band should go.

Bob Wikstrom, Jack White, and Danny Dazell wanted to build a new band without Bob Galloway. I felt very loyal to Bob and thought they were wrong to do this. So I did not go with them.

Bob and I worked during the summer of 1964 in Dayton driving trucks hauling harvested peas to the Green Giant plant. Just before school started in the fall of 1964, I returned to Moses Lake and got a job washing dishes at Elmer's Restaurant. It was a dreadful job and a low point for me.

A few weeks later, the guys who broke away from the old band contacted me asking me to play with them. They said it just wasn't the same without me playing bass and adding my vocal harmony.

I really wanted to do it, but still felt loyalty to Bob. I talked to him and told him how unhappy I was washing dishes. He was very understanding and told me to go play music.

He appreciated my loyalty, but hated to see me so unhappy. He said we were good and would always be friends.

With that I joined the old band guys and we changed our name to the PageBoys. We normally made the name all one word, PageBoys. Depending who printed up posters etc, they sometimes separated the name. We played together the rest of 1964 and 1965. In 1966 we started a Big Bend Community College.

Our original guitar player John (Jack) White left to go into the Army and marry his girl friend, Lorraine. We found a young student at BBCC named John Souzawith to play guitar with us.

We all moved to the Auburn/Seattle area to continue college at Green River College in the spring of 1966. We stayed together until spring of 1967 when the draft got most of us. I went into the Navy. Bob Wikstrom and Danny Dazell went into Army. John Souzawith went into Air Force I think. The rest is history. So far we are all still kicking.