I've got to tell you a story. It's almost true. I may exaggerate some, but the general facts are accurate. It started a couple of years ago when Charlie Brechtel and his clan, including Berry Wardlaw arrived at the Bikernet Interplanetary headquarters in Wilmington, California. Charlie is the magnificent leader of the only reputable Biker Blues Band on the planet. He's played with most of the greats including BB King and Deacon Jones, but he loves to ride, so his songs are all about being a biker.
I'm drifting some, but we've all experienced this small world of the American Biker and how tough it is to stay true to the Code of the West and make a living. Charlie started the Bikers' Inner Circle web site to promote his band and cute, half- naked girls, and that's what brought him to Bikernet. He wanted to interview me in hopes that I would talk about his band and Bikers' Inner Circle on Bikernet. He needed gigs.
We had a few shots of Jack, produced a hell of an interview and we talked about biker-related television. I told him how much we needed a motorcycle talk show and he buzzed with enthusiasm. The next thing I remembered, he cut a deal with Woody, of Buffalo Chip fame, in Sturgis and kicked off Sturgis Rider Live. Every time we met we kicked around ideas and he kept pushing me to host one of these shows. “I'm not a stand- up comic,” I said over and over, but he persisted.
The next thing I know we set a date, January of '08, and I discovered that he knew and interviewed Bill Hayes, the most articulate outlaw on the planet. Bill wrote the history of the Booze Fighters book, a sage description of the outlaw spirit through one club from 1947 until today. Bill is a member and his girlfriend, a professional editor and a Columbia grad, Jennifer Thomas, is his partner in all things literate. We started kicking ideas around and in short order we had graphed two show itineraries, line-ups with motorcycle builder stars like Gard Hollinger and Chopper Dave, Charlie's band, Deacon Jones, kings of motorcycle legislation, skits, techs, you name it and Playboy models.
Here's the personal aspect of this fiasco. Bill, Jennifer and I spent a couple of weeks preparing for the show, while Charlie loaded his band equipment in a van and coerced the band and two models to make a 300-mile midnight run to Los Angeles. Thursday night it hit me like a freight train that this production was coming together, under my nose, in less than 24 hours. I couldn't sleep. I don't like cameras or giving speeches.
At 5:00 a.m. the next morning, I sat bolt upright in bed drenched in a cold sweat. I scrambled out of out of the sack, splashed Jack Daniels in my face, snorted coffee and answered the door. Bill and Jennifer were parked out front in a mid '70s hearse. We went to work, clearing the shop, finishing the Assalt Weapan as a prop for a photo shoot, with Felicia Crowton, a Playboy model, who was flying into Long Beach at noon. Charlie, his band and two more models were scheduled to arrive at 9:00 a.m., which turned, into noon. Jeremiah rolled in at 11:00, an hour late. He was scheduled to pick up Felicia at the airport, but she missed her plane and didn't arrive until the early evening. We were all on scattered time zones. Nothing went as planned and Jerry Southworth set up a still-photo studio in the back of the shop and shot girls until midnight.
As pandemonium attacked the Bikernet Headquarters, Jeremiah and I became the ever-vigilant construction crew, motorcycle repairmen, security, and prop builders. Charlie hauled a fake 50-caliber machine gun and banderoles of ammo from the DAM Ranch in the Gold Country so Jerry could mirror the bomber girl on the Assalt Weapon from fender with a live model. His enthusiasm was on overload and he didn't bring a tripod for the mock weapon.
Jeremiah and I scrounged around the shop for parts and pieces and ended up hacking a Softail swingarm and making it work. This reminded me of an interview with a Roger Korman movie star.
“I was the star,” she said, her tits bubbling out of her top, “but between shoots I had to help move the lights.”
I was the host, and Jeremiah the co-host, but we were the grips, writers, security guards and janitors, too. Felicia, the world- famous MILF from Playboy was cool and so were the other girls, but I was too busy sweeping the shop to pay much attention.
This is the first in a wild series of shoots from that weekend and you can see excerpts of the show on Sturgis Rider Live and In the Bikernet Studios. And hang on. Two more Sturgis Rider Live Girls will be indoctrinated into the Girls of Bikernet ranks in the near future. Hell, you might see Sturgis Rider Live, Hosted by Bandit from Bikernet.com on the Discovery Channel or SpeedVision. Ya never know.
