"Fire & Water" - Bad Company Tribute

High school is a social wasteland. An uncertain future looms ahead, with farm and factory work no longer providing the dependable livelihoods they once did. Career options don't look promising. Worse yet, doubt and negative self-image undermines the will to act on a longing for intimacy with the opposite sex.

In this bleak landscape hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of young ears pricked to the eternal wavelength of classic rock radio, roughly from 1975 maybe to the end of the millennium, specifically to a song performed by Bad Company called "Ready for Love." They might have grown up in Leeds, England or London, Ky., but they responded to something in the English band's turbo-charged interpretation of African-American blues and the typically English stoicism of its lyrical presentation.

There was a light at the end of the tunnel, they sensed, listening to singer Paul Rodger's soulful wail and guitarist Mick Ralph's surging crescendo of proto-metal histrionics: "Walking down this rocky road/ Wondering where my life is leading to/ Rollin' on to the bitter end/ Finding out along the way/ What it takes to keep love living/ You should know how it feels my friend/ Ooh, I want you to stay""

Scott Board heard it growing up in High Point. From the age of 12, he found reassurance and reason to persevere in the music of Bad Company, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd and other classic rock bands. He knew he had to play music no matter what.

He ended up failing his senior year at Central High School in High Point because of music. "I had two study halls," Board says. "I slept through psychology class because I was out playing until four a.m. Because of rock and roll I didn't get to graduate with my class. I had to take summer classes to get my diploma."

He works in the furniture industry, an aspect of his life he doesn't much care to talk about as they sit discussing their new project, a Bad Company cover band called Fire & Water. He's had day jobs for most of his life, but he's never stopped playing music. This interview is all about the music, and the vicissitudes of day-to-day survival are an unnecessary distraction to that higher calling.

Scott Board, a diminutive man with tight, blond coils spilling out from under a cap emblazoned with the words "Cabo Wabo" possesses an irrepressible enthusiasm, a stage charisma that spills off the stage into the mundane transactions of daily life. Mary Board, a woman with flaxen blond locks who manages the band, is apt to dispense encouragement to her husband. "It's about your love and passion for the music" she'll say.

Fire & Water emerged from the ashes of Dr. Fathead, a classic rock band that covered Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy and early Whitesnake, along with Bad Company. Fans responded with gratitude, coming up after shows for autographs and handshakes, but the reaction from club owners to Dr. Fathead was cold. The band chafed at requests from club owners to add a Kid Rock medley and "Play That Funky Music" to their set. So to avoid selling out, the members of Dr. Fathead decided to take their commitment to deep classic rock to its logical conclusion.

"We wanted to create a product that agencies and clubs would latch onto," Scott Board says. "The best way to do that now is the tribute. We want to keep the integrity of the music."

"A lot of us cut our teeth in the metal scene," he adds, "but our roots are in the deep '70s classic rock, influenced by Paul Rodgers, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, Southern rock - heartfelt music."

There's a raw, dirt-under-the-fingernails quality to Bad Company's music, but Scott Board also points to the virtuosity of the players who recorded those classics: Feel Like Makin'Love, Rock 'n Roll Fantasy,and Shooting Star. He says of the '70s English rock bands that "they all speak really fluently" and throws out the word "class." He's not talking about class in a proletarian Marxian sense; he's talking about perfectionism. And yet, he's describing an aesthetic of craftsmanship, so in a way maybe there is an aspect of economic class to it.

Dr. Fathead formed about four years ago, its members alumni of regional bands such as Cerebus, the Electric Horsemen, Dimage and Bone Cracker. In their last show as Dr. Fathead, they brought a new bass player onstage to play three or four Bad Company covers in each set, and announced their rechristening as Fire & Water. The band will make its proper debut Saturday at the Winston-Salem street festival known as Summer on Trade.

In addition to Scott Board, the band is comprised of guitarist John Jones, drummer Steve Arnold and bass player Bennie Niten.

Before playing their first proper gig, they've already been embraced by Bad Company fans, who flourish in countries as far-flung as France and Japan. The guestbook of www.badcompanytribute.com, a website created for Fire & Water by Mary Board, is filled with enthusiastic comments. Lucy Piller, a Londoner who now lives in Atl - Jordan Green - Staff Writer, YESWeekly