Gettin’ Down and Dirty in New Palestine, Indiana
’70s Proto-Metal with Primevil
“Musical Groups: Why not showcase your ideas and sounds with a great demo tape?”
— From a 700 West promotional kit.
Jay Wilfong: A Reformed Metal Warrior
As a twenty-plus years resident of Wilson County, Tennessee, reformed indie-rocker Jay Wilfong repeatedly drove by a beautiful piece of farmland. Not knowing what to do with the land but seeing potential in what the earth had to offer, the Indiana-born ex-rocker — who got his start with the teen rock band the Poverty Programme and came to leave a respected mark in the ’70s progressive rock annals with the proto-metal blues of Primevil — came to negotiating a deal to buy the lot, transforming it into Starstuck Farms: an 11,000-square foot structure comprised of sixteen horse stalls that once served as the horse barn of country music star Reba McEntire.
The new Wilfong-operated farm comprised a 46-acre horse farm and seven-acre lake lot beside McEntire’s old house, which he purchased in 2019. If one frequents Airbnb during their web travels when planning a vacation, they can stay in one of those quaint, 16 “horse-stall” suites upgraded with a big-screen TV and bathroom. Then, after you have a “big country breakfast” in the farm’s kitchen, you can head on over to the riding area and barn’s showroom to enjoy live music. On Fridays nights one finds Wilfong in the revamped “Arena Room” as he jams with the best of Nashville’s session players. It’s a room where he never forgets his roots and relishes the branches that blossomed into his own personal heaven on Earth.
Yeah, life’s been good to Jay Wilfong, now in his seventies: a post-rock ’n’ roll life rife with success in the hospitality industry operating restaurants, as well as a music store. His musical past additionally served in his establishment of a company specializing in sound reinforcement services and, eventually, a sound equipment manufacturing concern that he successfully sold to Gibson Guitar Corporation. Then, logically, considering the creation of Starstruck Farms, Wilfong became adept in the real estate industry: he purchased, refurbished, and flipped properties. Amid all of those works, Wilfong became one of Nashville’s eminent vintage guitar collectors, of which he owns near 100 classics.
Yeah, life’s been good to that kid who grew up off a dirt road in Indiana.
700 West Studios
While there were plenty of other independent studios in and around Indianapolis, Indiana, those studios opted to work in the television and radio advertising realms. One Midwest studio owner dared to be different by creating a niche market offering affordable rates to local bands to cut demo tapes: 700 West Recording owned and operated by Moe Whittemore and his wife Betty — inside their home.
During the studio’s twelve years of existence, courtesy of Whittemore’s electronics background, the studio’s services expanded into instrument and amplifier repairs, as well as composing lead sheets and providing copyright services to musicians. The studio soon transformed into an ASCAP-certified music publisher.
In those days, most U.S. radio stations weren’t part of the corporate “McDonalds of Radio” work ethic of today’s digitally-driven, broadcast behemoths. Radio stations, outside of the ever-growing, nationally-owned outlets and networks, were local “mom and pop” operations that gave unsigned and vanity-press local bands and indie-regional labels, such as 700 West, airplay. Soon, those affordable demo services of 700 West expanded into producing mastered singles and albums for not only hard rock acts, but in the country, gospel, jazz, and bluegrass genres.
Courtesy of Whittemore’s association with ASCAP, while the bands didn’t get rich, they certainly didn’t get cheated out of their royalty checks. Whittemore — as did Tom Carson of the Lazy Eggs, he, the later musician owner-operator of Detroit, Michigan’s scene-hub Fiddlers Music; itself a multipurpose retail, repair and recording studio — also served as a sometimes musician on the studio’s recordings. In the case of Jay Wilfong’s catalog: Whittemore provides the synthesizer on Primevil’s lone effort, as well as for Wilfong’s next band, the blues-rock concern Buccaneer, which also recorded at 700 West.
Sadly, as the U.S. radio industry began to deregulate and consolidate, those “mom and pops” once offering airplay to local and regional bands were swallowed by the corporate broadcasters that only dealt with national-to-internationally distributed record labels and their A&R reps. Then the computer — with industry-specific software designed for organizing playlists and commercial traffic logs — was introduced to the broadcasting industry. The end result: jocks — the warhorses who knew the music, as well as the local music scenes of their respective markets — were removed from the once “free form” programming chain. Radio formats and their related playlists were now tightly programmed via computer terminals by out-of-area consultants: executive “suits” that left their consulted markets’ local artists, recordings studios and independent labels without a local or regional broadcast outlet to promote their wares. Then the Ronald Reagan-era recession of the 1980s arrived, triggered by the energy crisis of 1979 that resulted from the Iranian Revolution disrupting the world’s oil supply and that, in turn triggered a rise in employment and inflation rates.
First, we had Richard Nixon. Then, we got Ronald Reagan. Yeah, the freewheeling rock ’n’ roll excesses of the 1970s, was over.
So, by 1983 — as it was for Tom Carson’s Fiddlers Music in Detroit and other indie studios across the U.S., such as Richard Bowen’s new wave/punk scene supporting Circle Sound Studios in San Diego (of A.I.Rs ’60s Doors-clone, the Source) — it was all over for 700 West. The regional clubs that welcomed the unknown and unsigned searching for an artistic break could no longer afford to pay bands. In addition to recording studios, clubs and medium-sized venues that held anywhere from 500 to 1,500 fans (the perfect sizes for burgeoning talent), as well as the bands themselves, and retail outlets that once carried vanity-press and indie-labeled music, folded. The unsigned local and Midwestern U.S. bands that once flocked to 700 West, evaporated.
Today, copies of the original catalog issued by 700 West are coveted by collectors of progressive rock of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In fact, if one comes across a January 5, 1974-issued copy of Smokin’ Bats at Campton’s by Primevil in the online marketplace or brick-and-mortar vintage vinyl outlets, be prepared to pay between $250 to $350 U.S dollars.
As is the case with any limited, private press album of the era: Primevil found itself victimized by the overseas pirating industry in 1986 by a long-forgotten impress. The most widely-distributed pirate-version — a 2006 needle drop of the album-to-compact disc — appeared in the marketplace, issued by the bane of the Jimi Hendrix Estate’s existence: the controversial British-based impress, Radioactive. The first-ever, official vinyl reissue pressed from the original 700 West master tapes appeared in 2013 courtesy of the Greece-based reissues label, Anazitisi Records.
The QWERTY warriors of Anazitisi’s marketing department got it right with their liner notes critical-comparing for the uninitiated.
Yes, if you’re a fan of Black Sabbath — and their slug-driven offspring of Captain Beyond, Leadhound, and Sir Lord Baltimore — then you’ll adore the bluesy, dual-heavy guitars of founder Jay Wilfong (the oldest at twenty) and Larry Lucas, as backed by the pulsing rhythms supplied by bassist Mark Sipe and drummer Mel Cupp (the youngest at fifteen) driving the stoner-rock lyrics of vocalist Dave Campton (yes, the one of the title).
This writer will take it a step further: the marketing department forgot to mention occasional crunches of Joe Walsh’s old band, the James Gang, permeating from the grooves (or nickel-collated plastic).
In April 2022, due to popular demand, Anazitisi repressed their previous 2013 reissue as a 300-count limited vinyl, 180gr, clear/transparent version sleeved in a laminated matt cover, including a four-page booklet complete with a band biography, photos, and extended liner notes.
In December 2023, Cleopatra Records of Los Angeles issued the first, official compact disc pressing in the U.S, followed by a January 2024 collectors-vinyl version.
The Knights of Day + The Temperance Union = The Poverty Programme
The evil begins . . . in the rural 1950s of Willow Branch, a small farming community in Central Indiana, west of Indianapolis comprised of 100 people — which made for Primevil’s later, easy touring to the Ohio State cities of Cincinnati, Dayton, and Columbus to the east (the lands of like-minded, self-sustaining 1970s rockers with Jim Gustafson’s Poobah and Eric Moore’s the Godz), and the southern cities in Louisville and Lexington in the State of Kentucky. Fueled by an interest in the Beatles and taking up the guitar at the age of thirteen, founder Jay Wilfong, as with most musicians of the progressive rock-era, was self-taught, figuring out licks from his stack of rock 45 rpm singles — along with heavy inspirational doses of Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck.
Jay Wilfong’s first band out of his bedroom studio was the “British” Westminster 5, which made it as far as a junior high school talent show. His next band, the Condemned, had their “big gig” on the roof of a concession stand at Camp Crockett summer camp. Then, at the age of fifteen in 1967, Wilfong left the Knights of Day to form his most professional band to date.
The Poverty Programme came together in the summer of 1967, formed by Eastern Hancock and Warren Central High School students in New Palestine, Indiana — with its roots in the Temperance Union: a band in which Dan Modlin played alongside Jay Wilfong’s soon-to-be longtime drumming cohort, Jerry DeRome.
Well-versed with all things Cream, the Who and harder-edged pop-rock of the 1960s, the Poverty Programme easily booked frat and sorority house parties on the campuses of Indiana and Purdue University. Wilfong’s warriors eventually won a “Battle of the Bands” contest — which offered a recording session as a prize. Recording an unreleased side, “Two Years Ahead of My Time,” featuring a three/four-time pattern with a Beatlesque East Indian sound that was fairly progressive for the time, the band shopped it to labels, one of which was Mercury. Unfortunately, none were interested in the admirable accomplishments of the Poverty Programme.
The Poverty Programme — which included Dave Scott on rhythm guitar, and Steve Benefiel on organ, alongside Wilfong on lead guitar and Modlin on bass — played often at local area high school basketball and football games, as well as regular gigs at a popular teen hangout in Shelbyville known as Skateland. Then there were those gigs at The Weekender Club inside the Indianapolis Holiday Inn, at Raccoon Lake State Park, and many frat parties at Indiana University, in addition to sectional and regional basketball games in Rushville at the Rush County Community Building (remembering basketball in Indiana — like football in Texas — is a loved community event).
While not exactly a “progressive rock” act, the garage rockin’ Poverty Programme was oft billed as such, due their use of strobe lights, smoke bombs and photographer’s flash powder stage effects (so did drummer Rick Stever’s the Detroit Vibrations as they succumbed to Frijid Pink) as they churned out their takes on Cream, Jimi Hendrix, and the Who.
After the demise of the Poverty Programme, Dan Modlin and Dave Scott formed a retrospective, acoustic duo that recorded an album, The Train Don’t Stop Here Anymore, also at 700 West.
Meanwhile: Jay Wilfong decided make things a ‘ittle bit more ‘eavy and not so ‘umble. But he was going to need a little help. . . .
The Bat Smoker of Mockingbird Hill Park
Those Beach Boys and Beatles album brought into the Indianapolis, Indiana, home by Joe, his older, country music guitar playing brother, served Dave Campton well, as did his parents, who took the brothers to see country acts at Mockingbird Hill Park in the town of Anderson.
While Jay Wilfong perfected his craft in the Poverty Programme, his future bandmates Dave Campton and Mel Cupp, influenced by the heavier side of rock with the likes of Cactus and Led Zeppelin, put together their first band, Ezra, in 1969 with a vocalist/guitarist named Steve Adams.
The duo would later meet friends Larry Lucas and Mark Sipe; the latter knew Jay Wilfong. At the burgeoning band’s first rehearsal in the back of a sandwich shop where Wilfong worked, Mel Cupp, then a guitarist, took over the drum stool when the long-forgotten drummer chosen, failed to show.
Serving Up the Primevil
The new decade’s arrival of the Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin-inspired Primevil out of the ashes of the Poverty Programme began with Jay Wilfong’s chance meeting on a school bus with his future bassist, Mark Sipe.
While many blogs and websites committed to preserving the garage and progressive rock of the era have speculated the origins of the album’s unconventional title, “Bats” isn’t a euphemism for drugs: the title references the actually killing of bats. The true story: It was at the Campton family farm in 1971 when Wilfong first met Dave Campton and Mel Cupp by way of Mark Sipe. In the barn’s hay loft, the two were trying to, as they called it, “smoke bats” with wooden 2x4s — as makeshift baseball bats.
Primevil quickly headed into the studio — for a failed attempt Ohmit Recording. As with 700 West, Indianapolis recording engineer Les Ohmit operated the facility as a recording studio for recording radio commercials, but wanted to record rock bands and start his own label.
The end result of those out-of-the-band’s-pocket sessions with Ohmit was the 1972 release of “Too Dead to Live” b/w “Fantasies,” the band’s first 7”/45-rpm. The 500-pressed record’s failure was chalked up to Ohmit “hating rock music” while forcing the band to use the studio’s equipment and not their own gear, plugging directly into the console instead of mic’ing the amps in a recording technique more typical for hard rock bands. (Prior to the 45 sessions, the band privately-recorded a 10-inch acetate demo of cover tunes, one of which exists in the Campton family archives.)
Luckily, Maurice “Moe” Whittemore’s — which many Indiana musicians consider to be their “George Martin” — came to the rescue with his 700 West imprint. It was his abilities as an accomplished progressive jazz musician and composer that improved Primevil’s sound on the 1000-press release of Smokin’ Bats at Campton’s. As with their Ohmit recordings, the album was self-financed by the band; so were their earliest gigs, as they rented out the local armory (April 1974 poster, below) and an empty, old furniture store they the turned into a faux-venue called J.Q Hoggs. Fellow regional and local bands were invited to appear.
The oh-so-very-metal album cover of Smokin’ Bats came courtesy of Nancy Scott, the graphic-designer wife of Jay Wilfong’s ex-Poverty Programme mate, Dave Scott. The band’s name came courtesy of Dave Campton’s close friend, Susan Cole. The evil lyrics, well, at least 99% of them, were courtesy of bassist Mark Sipe.
As result of Whittemore’s regional reputation, the album experienced positive press, quickly.
The Greenfield Daily Reporter published favorable articles in March and April of 1974, while The Indianapolis Star ran an article in May. Local retailers, such as the popular outlet, Karma Records, carried the album, and the area’s dominate, progressive rock station, WNAP “The Buzzard” 93.1 FM, programmed Primevil into rotation (in existence from 1968, the station change formats and adopted the WIBC call sign in 1986).
The biggest gig of the band’s career — just after the release of Smokin’ Bats at Campton’s — occurred on May 25, 1974, at Indianapolis’ prestigious Busch Stadium. Through a last-minute booking negotiated by WNAP disc jockey Mike Griffin with the promoter, Karma Showcase Productions (tied to the record chain carrying the album), Primevil undercarded the Climax Blues Band, Muddy Waters, and ZZ Top.
Unfortunately, the status of opening a rock festival with over 5,800 attendees didn’t improve the band’s fortunes to the level of their regional contemporaries, such as the nationally-rising Cheap Trick, REO Speedwagon, Starcastle, and Styx.
Plans to record a second Primevil album were scuttled by financial and creative issues. After the successful ZZ Top show, band infighting over being “more selective” with booking live dates on larger concerts as an opening act vs. playing covers on the club circuit with more frequency to pay the bills, caused the band’s break up. Primevil — sans Wilfong — continued with a Hammond B-3 player by the name of Dave Lawless, moving the band from blues metal into a heavier Deep Purple-cum-Uriah Heep-styled concern.
The Evil Continues . . .
The new and improved Primevil — with Dave Campton and Larry Lucas at the helm, and Mel Cupp still on the drum stool — went through three more rosters. The band greeted 1975 with a fifth version of the band, fronted by the short-lived Jeff Stephenson taking over for Dave Campton.
Campton’s return later that year inspired a name change to NightOwl — still featuring the core of Dave Campton, Larry Lucas, and Mel Cupp. As with Primevil: the revamped concern went through three more roster changes until its demise sometime in the late 1970s.
Well, not really . . . because musicians don’t die hard . . . they reinvent themselves. In the case of Dave Campton, Larry Lucas, and Mel Cupp: by the early 1980s, with yet, more new members in the fold, NightOwl transformed into Killerwatt . . . and that’s where that trail, ends.
Ahoy! Avast Ye Mateys!
By 1980 Jay Wilfong returned to the local stages of Indianapolis — as well as receiving airplay on the city’s WFBQ “Rockin’ Stereo” 94.7 FM — with the mysterious, progressive, blues-rock concern, Buccaneer.
The eponymous album was, an admittedly late-to-the-game, lyrically ambitious concept album left over from the ’70s adorned in artwork based around an Elizabethan-era tale — as told in the album’s double-panel, gatefold liner notes (and album’s vocal introductory track) — regarding a band of pirates aboard a feared Spanish Galleon, “The Anna Bonney,” terrorizing the seas. The lead “character” of this power trio of not-so merry adventurers, William Bonney — itself an alias of an infamous American Old West outlaw, Billy the Kid — was actually Jay Wilfong on lead guitar and vocals. Years later . . . it’s learned the feared bassist, Lord Vendetta, is one, Gary Dunn. Wilfong’s former Poverty Programme drummer, Jerry DeRome, provides the crazed backbeat as Madjack.
Yes, that Beatlesque teen band from the late ’60s, to a degree . . . went metal: very heavy metal.
The metallic, swashbucklin’ trio entered Jay Wilfong’s old stomping grounds at 700 West to record their lone album via his vanity-private press, Blunderbuss Records — tying into the album’s pirate concept. In addition to the album — issued in two distinct pressings with slightly different covers in brown and black, as well as cassettes — two 7”/45-rpm singles were issued: “Follow Me” b/w “Won’t Bow My Head” and “Sharkbait” b/w “Wasted Nights” — with “Follow Me” appearing on the album released in the winter of 1980.
Those singles were included as a bonus feature to the second, “black pressing,” along with a bumper sticker and “key” treasure map insert. Both albums came complete with lyrics and liner notes on their two-sided dust jackets. While it may be an obscure failure from the long, forgotten days of concept albums and their sometimes gaudy packaging, Buccaneer’s lone album is, none the less, an ambitious sight to behold — one on par with any conceptual gatefold pressed by a major label. The only thing missing were the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelinesque die-cuts in the cover, a Warholian zipper peelin’ back a banana, or a Jethro Tullesque Thick as Brick-styled newspaper fold out.
As with Primevil dissolving in the wake of the biggest gig of their career opening for ZZ Top: Buccaneer sank under the weight of an ill-advised, overly-ambitious marketing campaign that deployed joint retail, radio and television advertising, complete with contests offering a chance “for a trip to search for buried treasure,” along with tee-shirt and bumper sticker swag. The band’s self-financed promotional crusade was an innovated, pre-concert hype machine — one not seen since the days of Elektra Records’ Jobraith glam-rock debacle and Rhinoceros “super group” boondoggle — for the band’s two-night introduction at the Indianapolis Convention Center on February 26, 1981.
The final, portside blows to the feared Anna Bonney — itself an actual set re-created on stage (recalling Motorhead and their “Bomber” lighting rig and with KISS and their tank turret-drum riser during their “Creatures of the Night” era), complete with “firing cannons” intended to fire, but failing — was the fact that only a mere two-thousand seats were sold for the first show: a quarter of the venue’s capacity. That audience then witnessed one prop and pyrotechnical flaw after the next in a disaster that mimicked Spinal Tap’s “Stonehenge” and “Rock n’ Roll Creation” non-spectacles. The second planned show — due to low sales and technical issues — was cancelled.
Buccaneer’s failure is a shame because, if you’re a fan of the stripped-down power trio riffing of the Wales-bred Budgie and you’d rather not the prog-rock flights of fancy from Wilfong’s fellow, Midwestern-bred Starcastle or Styx, there are dirty-blues doubloons to discover in the nautical grooves of Wilfong’s adventurous, high seas rock opera. Today, you can easily discover Buccaneer on hard and digital media by way of reissues on Limited Records and Timed Records (1993 and 1994) and the German-based Soundvision (2013).
After the Evil . . .
There was life after Buccaneer: Jay Wilfong, along with Dave Scott from the Poverty Programme — remembering Wilfong’s always creative entrepreneurial spirit — continued to operate Programme Audio: a specialty studio-label the duo incorporated in the late 1970s to release country and bluegrass-styled artists into the 1980s.
Dan Modlin and Dave Scott of the Poverty Programme continued to grace Midwest stages as late as 2022 as the country rock/Americana act Modlin and Scott.
As of 2019, Larry Lucas and Mel Cupp continue to play together, locally across Indiana.
Sadly, just as Cleopatra Records began preparations for the first, official U.S. compact disc and vinyl reissues of Smokin’ Bats at Campton’s released in December 2023 and January 2024, Dave Campton, born on October 3, 1953, passed away from a short battle from an unspecified illness on September 27, 2023, at the age of 70.
To date — amid his successes in various industries — Jay Wilfong recorded several independent efforts as Dr. Fong & Friends.
Today’s rock press continues to tribute the band: In 2007, Primevil’s contributions to the genre in were noted in a British-published Classic Rock Magazine article titled, “The Lost Pioneers of Heavy Metal,” as well as in a 2021 Louder Magazine piece, “Revolution: The story of the lost pioneers of heavy metal.”
END
Music:
Primevil — Smokin’ Bats at Campton’s (Official You Tube via RouteNote)
Primevil — “Too Dead to Live” (You Tube)
Buccaneer — Buccaneer (Full album plus both singles/Official You Tube via CD Baby)
Sources:
Thanks to the following publications that afforded this opportunity to create the most-compressive, one-rock-shopping on the life and career of Jay Wilfong — as well as the fellow members of the garage-rock outfit the Poverty Programme, and proto-metalers Primevil and their respective, musical offspring.
Anazitisi Records
Cleopatra Records
Hinsey Brown Funeral Services
Indiana Musicpedia
Indiana Rock History
It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine
Mediated Signals
The Self Portrait Gospel
700 West
Starstruck Farms
The Wilson Post
All 45-rpm and album images/Discogs.
700 West images/700 West Tribute Site.
Poverty Programme history and photos/Dan Modlin.
Primevil, NightOwl, and Killerwatt history and photos/Dave Campton.