Groundwaters

The Groundwaters Magazine Project

Check out our new revised website at http://www.groundwaterspublishing.com! It’s still a work in progress, but you’ll find new profiles on many of our contributors, information on Groundwater’s history, its staff and its policies.

Well, things have been pretty intense the last couple of weeks, so I have a lot of catching up to do on the blog. The magazine part of Groundwaters Publishing, LLC has now become a nonprofit project licensed by the State of Oregon as “The Groundwaters Magazine Project.” The project is being fiscally sponsored by the Applegate Regional Theater, Inc. (ART, Inc.) of Veneta, and we will now be able to apply for grant funding as a nonprofit entity. As our fiscal sponsor, ART, Inc. will oversee any grant monies that we receive. We have just applied for our first grant today. If it is awarded to us, it will pay for one full year’s cost of printing and distributing the magazine. I believe that we made a good case for the award and thanks to 22 letters of support we received, I don’t know how they can refuse!

That brings me to the main point of this blog posting. I want to thank each one of you who took the time to write and send us your letters of support! This list includes:

Vicki Sourdry of ART, Inc.
Judy Hays-Eberts
Colin Rea, Manager of the Fern Ridge Library
Lisa Livelybrooks of the Rural Arts Center
Jo-Brew
Quinton Hallett
Joey Blum
Linsey Kau
Herbert Medlin
Paula Krug Keys
Joan Mariner of Fern Ridge Community Action Network
Linda DeAngelo
Karen Wickham
Greg Williams
Karla Garrett
Alix Mosieur
Jane Capron
Teresa Anderson
Jean Marie Purcell
Tom Howell
Lee Taylor-Loewe of Neighbors for Responsible Growth
Ken and Jane Wickstrom

We are truly grateful to each one of you… especially since you had such short notice! So, wish us luck, because if we get funded we will all benefit. All donations to The Groundwaters Magazine Project can now be used as tax-free deductions and we can be assured of at least one more year of Groundwaters. Thanks, all!

A Plea for Help…

Happy New Year All!

2009 has started out really well for Groundwaters. The beautiful January issue is printed and distributed and is disappearing out of the racks and off the shelves faster than normal. We’ve also added a couple of distribution sites this issue. It can also be found in the Junction City Library and Books on Main Street in Cottage Grove. I will also be leaving some at the Cottage Grove Library this weekend.

Good news! In our never-ending quest for financial stability for the magazine, we are joining with ART, Inc. of Veneta, a non-profit theater group, which has agreed to be our fiscal sponsor. This arrangement will allow the magazine project of Groundwaters Publishing, LLC to apply for and hopefully, receive, grants that will be administered under ART, Inc.’s 503(c)3 non-profit status. We are very grateful to the group for giving us their support and providing an umbrella that will open up to us a new avenue of funding. Depending on how successful we are in obtaining grants, we hope to increase our free distribution and possibly institute school outreach programs and/or incentives and possible help to fledgling writers, young and old alike. We have not looked that far down the road, but whatever we decide to do, you can be assured that Groundwaters magazine, itself, will remain a wholesome showcase of the talented writers of our area for the enjoyment of our ever-expanding family of readers.

We would now like to ask you for your help. As we begin applying for grants, we need to compile letters of support from our contributors, readers, supporters and organizations. We will then include them with appropriate grant applications to show the granting agencies that we are touching lives in a positive way within our community. We’d like to invite any of you who are willing to write a letter of support to do so. Include your reasons for reading it each quarter, what you like most about it, who your favorite writers and artists are, what features are your favorites, how important it is to you to see it continue, etc.

If we all work together and gain success in this effort, we can help to stabilize the deep roots that Judy Hays-Eberts set down in the soil of West Lane County almost five years ago.

Send your letters to: Groundwaters, P.O. Box 50, Lorane, OR 97451 or send them by email to us at contact@groundwaters.org.

Thank you all, and again, Happy New Year! May 2009 be a year of contentment and increasing prosperity for each one of you.

Who are They? … the inside “scoop” on some of your favorite local writers

“Every form of refuge has its price.” Quoting from a lyric from the Eagles’ 1975 hit, “Lyin’ Eyes,” Gary L. Lewis, aka “Spyder,” described his 58 years of “heartaches and good things, too.”

Gary was born near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho where his father worked as a welder in the Bunker Hill zinc mine. While Gary was a small child, the family moved to Coos Bay, Oregon.

Early on, Gary was a huge Elvis Presley fan. Music – or rather, rhythm – had always been a part of his soul. By the time he was in the 6th grade, he was forming his lists of spelling words into a rhythmic beat. He dreamed of playing the guitar, but in his head, he heard the beat of the music rather than the melody, so a set of drums became his instrument of choice. In the 8th grade, Gary and his friend, Jim, began “dinkin’ around” in the music room on their lunch break. Gary played his drums and Jim, the saxophone. Soon, classmates began to gather to listen to their music and others joined them and they formed their own rock ‘n roll band called “Logical Conclusion.” By the age of 13, Gary had written his very first song entitled “The Last Trip to Boston.”

Music took over his life. Soon, he was doing gigs with a new band with a different mix of members called “Hate’s Brother.” They named it after one of their band members, Jeff Haight, deliberately misspelling his name. As the lead guitarist, Jeff developed a flashy gimmick of spewing lighter fluid from his mouth onto a lighted flame during their wildest and craziest songs – long before Kiss and other rockers did the same.

During that time, Gary and Jeff began to experiment with drugs and alcohol. It was a pattern that followed Gary throughout his career as a musician and songwriter and for Jeff, it ended his life in an overdose. According to Gary, there’s a huge “not so hidden” underbelly to the entertainment industry – especially rock music. He estimated that 90% of those who were involved in the industry used drugs, and “the other 10% were liars.”

Gary wrote a lot of song lyrics in those days. When asked if he wrote them as a melody formed in his head, he said, “No.” The lyrics came to him as a rhythmic beat just as the spelling words had done in the 6th grade. They didn’t always rhyme and sometimes seemed disjointed, but they came from his own special rhythm. The melody came later when the rest of the band worked their music around them.

Gary hired an agent and eventually, some of the songs he helped write were recorded by the various bands he was with and added to playlists of local radio stations. In 1972, while Gary was with the band, Chisom, 2,000 copies of one record called “Give Me What You Got,” were released by Northwest Incorporated Records of Portland, Oregon. The flipside of the record was another song with Gary’s lyrics, “Little Boy.”

While touring, the band traveled in two converted 1951 Cadillac hearses with the band’s name painted on the side. One towed a homemade travel trailer and they conversed back and forth between the cars with walkie talkies.

In 1973, Gary began playing the chain nightclub circuit in Nevada with his band at the time. They began a series of appearances in the Pilgrimage nightclubs going from Lake Tahoe, to Reno, Winnemucca, Las Vegas and ending in Laughlin. Then they reversed the order, playing the same cities in the Fireside clubs. “Since we only worked nine months out of the year, the summers were mine.” This became Gary’s life for the next three years. He describes life on the road as, appropriately, “rhythmic… We always knew what time and where our destiny would take us.”

In 1977, Gary joined a group of gay female entertainers called “Ganhna” as a backup musician. There was also an Elvis impersonator by the name of Jimmy Ball who toured with them. Gary was offered and accepted a contract for $25,000 plus 10% of the gate and included the cutting of a record and a four-month tour with the group.

After the contract expired, he bought a ‘53 three-panhead Harley-Davidson and had it “fixed up with eight coats of gloss black paint.” Gary had a large metallic gold black widow spider painted on the gas tank and his nickname, “Spyder,” was born. His riding companion was a Native American woman named Sherry Longtree, and they traveled around the Northwest where Gary began playing impromptu gigs. In the early 1980s, when they learned that Sherry was going to have a baby, they settled down in the small town of Vernonia, Oregon. During that time, Gary became clean and sober and he took a job with the railroad. Tragedy struck, though, and Sherry and their unborn baby were killed in a car accident on an icy road.

Gary’s life spiraled downward as, according to him, he “went off the deep end.” He sold his Harley and went back heavily into drugs. “I was on a one-way street to nowhere, becoming a poor Howard Hughes.” After watching him live as a meth-addicted recluse, Gary’s parents and a long-time friend interceded. In 1986, they took him to Serenity Lane in Eugene where he stayed for 60 days, getting much-needed counseling and drying the drugs out of his system.

It’s been a long road back for Gary, but he hasn’t touched drugs or alcohol since.

“I very much miss the road. On-stage, there is something to be said about the spotlight. You can’t see past the first three rows, but the wild crowd says it all. Your relationship with your fans is the life-blood of an entertainer. It’s the rush of the crowd, the music and the people you meet. It’s the ride of your life on the wings of a song.”

Gary eventually settled down in the Cottage Grove area. He now lives with his fiancé, Linda, whom he met nine years ago through a dating service. “We’re still putting up with each other. She’s a down-home, out-going person – loves animals and even me.” Gary, Linda, and a mutual friend have become interested in crafts and they designed and merchandised decorative lighted garden stones which have become popular in the area.

Gary has been retired from the music business for many years now, but his song lyrics live on. He’s interested in putting them to music and would like to find a collaborator who would like to work with him. He’s shared many of his lyrics with the readers of Groundwaters and hopes to put them all into a book someday… in fact, there’s a whole Rubbermaid tub full of them. According to Gary, for him, one of them called “All Fables, They Have Wings” says it all.

Gary L. Lewis aka “Spyder”

Gary can be contacted through the Groundwaters‘ contact address: contact@groundwaters.org