NB3

Blame it on Feb.9, 1964. Like many baby boomers, watching the Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show" was a turning point in our youthful lives. The Beatles and other bands in the British Invasion gave us an immediate love for R&B and pop music. We were inspired to take up guitars and drums and sing our hearts out.
My brother Don, our friend Nic Baker and I formed a band based in Nic's Salt Lake City basement. We covered countless songs from such bands as the Kinks, Rolling Stones, the Animals, and (most of all) the Beatles. Over the next two years we started writing our own material—songs we rediscovered in 2003.

During the heady years of 1964-1966, our basement band NB3 (Nic Baker Trio) wrote more than a dozen songs. Fortunately we kept the lyrics and chord progressions (recorded for posterity by Nic, the group's designated typist) in a bright-yellow plastic binder.

On June 22, 1967, the Potter brothers left Salt Lake City, Utah. Around noon on that bright sunny day, Nic walked up the street, his dog's leash in one hand, the yellow binder in the other and gave us the song file. Somewhere deep inside me, I knew this file of Baker/Potter pop songs would someday have a profound effect on my life. Since this was the only written record of our musical odyssey, I always stored these transcripts in a safe place. I was never sure why, but I still kept them.

Throughout my years in high school, then college, then a 28-year career with an international telecommunications company, plus marriage, kids, dogs and day-to-day life, I kept the song folder in trunks or boxes that followed me from state to state. I would occasionally reflect fondly on the songs inside, while subconsciously whistling a familiar melody from long ago. Somewhere in the house (and in the back of my mind) was a treasure neatly packed away and stored in some basement or attic.

Fast forward to December 2003. My career had suddenly ended with a company-wide initiative offering generous volunteer early-retirement packages. What would I do in my spare time that had previously been dictated by a career that followed the principle that "the management clock has no hands"? Immediately, two thoughts came to mind: (1) find that old song folder, and (2) find Nic Baker.

I found the file neatly stashed away in a large box in the garage. I carefully thumbed through the lyrics, which were fast approaching their 40th year. When I told my brother Don about this rediscovery and showed him the lyrics, he commented that their antiquated state made each lyric sheet look like Papyrus.

My great memory and fertile imagination have always compensated for my feeble academic skills. As I combed through the archive of the Baker/Potter catalogue of pop songs written when we were teenagers, all the melodies and harmonies, chord progressions and drum rhythms surfaced. I asked Don if he would be willing to resurrect one of the songs and record it professionally. We'd try to recreate the sound of pop music in 1965. Don agreed, so in a long one-day session in August 2004, we recorded "When I Met You." But we agreed that only if we could achieve the sound we strived for as kids would we record the remainder of the dozen songs. What we found was, we could. As it was, the recording process required 20 months of diligent planning, performing, editing and polishing these sounds that once captured our adolescent imaginations.

The search for Nic was even more difficult. Thanks to the Internet, we found him after 18 months, discovering that he lived just a few hours from us, not halfway around the world as we had begun to believe.

To say that Nic was surprised to hear from us is an understatement. But to learn that we were revisiting all the old songs from our past was, well, shocking! Don and I recruited Nic's musical services for piano accompaniment. We had come full circle, bringing our dreams to life and completing what we had started almost 40 years earlier.

If not for that fateful handoff on June 22, 1967, this project would have never seen the light of day. And the magic of 1965 never would have been reborn.

- Newsweek Magazine - January 30, 2007

Listening to NB3's "Full Circle" CD might give you deja vu. Is it old, circa 1965? Or new?

It's both. The songs are more than 40 years old but only recently recorded. As a British Web site noted, "the CD could easily have fallen off a Byrds or an early Beach Boys album."

That same critic awarded a rating of "4 stars out of 5" and said "the sound of a Rickenbacker 360/12 [guitar] weaves superbly through these lovingly crafted '60s songs, an authentic tribute well done, if a little rough and ready in places." (But is "rough and ready" such a bad thing in rock music?)

Let's flip the sheet music back a few pages to the 1960s. In an e-mail, Chicago-born Jim Potter described his and his brother Don's nomadic childhood, thanks to their father's technical-writing career.

Jim vividly remembered the 1967 day the family moved from Salt Lake City to Virginia. Mere minutes before they left, the teens' pal Nic Baker handed them a yellow plastic binder filled with songs Don and Nic wrote as a band that comprised the three teens.

"Somehow I knew that saving this file [was] important," Jim wrote in the e-mail. He carefully packed it away with "other ancient memorabilia."

These were the songs of his youth -- songs inspired by the culture-rattling 1964 appearance of the Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show." Like countless other youths, the three boys scurried to form a garage band the day after the show aired.

They would write and perform songs as NB3 (Nic Baker Trio) from 1964 to 1966.

Although the three men "dearly love music," none pursued it as a career, Jim said. Don is president of Roanoke's Benefit Strategies. Salemite Jim, now 54, retired from a longtime Verizon management career in December 2003, then devoted himself to creative projects.

These projects led him to unearth those 40-year-old song sheets and to begin searching for Baker. A year and a half later, he found him -- not "somewhere exotic ... or in a witness-protection plan" but in Northern Virginia, Jim said.

Thinking the songs good enough to record, the three men did just that, finding time around Don's and Nic's work schedules. In April, 20 months after they started, they finished recording at Southwest Recording Studios in Roanoke.

The band members had tried to reproduce a "1960s soundscape" by using their old, humble instruments, plus that "dream instrument of our youth," the Rickenbacker, Jim said. Even though all songs were recorded digitally, analog technology was replicated. They "even started and ended the album (CD) with static from an old record ("Introducing the Beatles")," Jim said.

The just-completed NB3 Web site, www.NB3music.com, offers the lead-off song "When I Met You" as a free download single. A CD purchase will include a bonus: a 225-page book Jim wrote. The book focuses on the band but also describes experiences of growing up and "the stresses of a Catholic-school education." His book is 70 percent true; the remainder is embellished, Jim said with a chuckle.

Jim hopes that fellow baby boomers will listen, read and recall happy, exciting times and agree with some Web site comparisons to "British invasion" bands. His grand dream: Someone will be inspired to write a screenplay about the band.

Until then, Nic and Don continue their day jobs, while all three enjoy their individual "noodling" on piano, guitar and drums
- The Roanoke Times-Sept 22, 2006

Flashback to fateful Feb. 9, 1964: The Beatles' first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show."
Need help flashing back? Salemite Jim Potter can take you to that culture-rattling time in a heartbeat-or backbeat. His essay "When I Met You" just won first prize in Newsweek's national contest (posted online Jan.30)The magazine solicited stories of leaps taken by readers in their own lives for its "boomer Life Changes"issue.
Potter said his essay is a synopsis of the 200-plus page story he recently wrote about his Beatles-inspired basement band. But wait, there's more! Forty years - and many moves and changes - after his NB3 band's breakup, he found the archival folder of the trio's original songs. And then he and brother Don Potter tracked down their old bandmate, and finally recorded those old tunes...even replicationg that 1960s Rickenbacker-guitar-weaving, analog sound. Complete with static lifted from a timeworn copy of "Introducing the Beatles," of course.
Jim Potter dreams of getting "all this on the big screen." But until then, check out these two sites: www.NB3music.com doe a free e-copy of "When I Met You," and www.saradavidson.com/Newsweek.htm - The Roanoke Times-Feb 9, 2007

(Salem, VA) -- A three-person band, "NB3," has completed a CD of 12 original songs--after a 40-year hiatus.

The two brothers and a friend in Salt Lake City, Utah, formed NB3 in the mid-60s. Like many "basement bands" at the time, they emulated the sounds of the "British Invasion:" Kinks, Animals, Rolling Stones, and, of course, the Beatles. Their original songs also drew from these influences. The band broke up when the brothers' family moved to Virginia. None pursued a musical career, and the songs were forgotten.

Until 2003, that is. Drummer Jim Potter found the lyrics sheets and chords of eleven songs in an old box stored in his garage. A close look and good memory led him to conclude that the songs really did have merit, having effectively captured the sounds of the day. His brother Don agreed--so they recorded the songs at a local recording studio, Jim on drums, keyboards, and vocals, Don on guitars and vocals.

The third member, Nic Baker, was harder to find, as numerous web searches and e-mails to "Nicholas Bakers" throughout the country were unsuccessful. Although the brothers had concluded he was probably living under a new identity in a witness-protection program, they followed one last lead. Not only did they find Nic, but discovered he also lives in Virginia, less than four hours away.

NB3 has completed the CD, "Full Circle," with 12 original songs including the title track looking back on those days. Other baby boomers have likened the sound to the Hollies and The Beatles. Younger listeners have commented on how much their parents would like the music.

In addition to the CD, Jim wrote a based-on-fact story of the three of them growing up. While the focus is on the band's development and adventures, it also describes such growing-up experiences as middle-of-the-night escapades from home and the police, the stresses of a Catholic-school education, and the exciting innocence of an evening alone with one's first girlfriend.

A contact from Harper Collins encouraged Jim to write a book expanding upon this story. The book is titled, "When I Met You," after one of the CD's songs.

The CD and book are now available as a set at www.NB3music.com and the lead off song "When I Met You" is offered as a free E download single.

- Upstage Magazine

The sound of a Rickenbacker 360/12 weaves superbly through these lovingly crafted 60's songs, an authentic tribute well done, if a little rough and ready in places. Could easily have fallen off a Byrds or early Beach Boys album. - Reviewer: www.theoffbeat.co.uk