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Artist Donates Canvas To Charity Auction

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STORIES

Bee Keeper

One easy day in Austin, Texas the phone rang. Known these days as Professor Porkchop, Chris McCaa was Rob's piano and organ mentor and he was calling from Shreveport, Louisiana. He said that Michael E. Johnson had called him about filling a vacancy at the keyboards in the international recording and touring band, The Killer Bees. "That's great," Rob beamed, "you made it to the bigtime." The Killer Bees were known far and wide as a hard working reggae band on they managed to stay out on the road.

McCaa went on to say that since he had recently won the MTV Basement Tapes contest with his band, The Insatiables, he really needed to follow that wherever it took him. McCaa continued, "Actually Hometown, I recommended you for the gig. That way when you get tired of the road, you can give it to me!"

Killer Bee band manager and - Rob would later find out - very capable substitute guitar player, Louis Jay Meyers, called the next day and informed Rob Noxious that he had two weeks to learn the songs and depart for a road schedule averaging 35 shows per month.  Little did Rob know he would not only have to learn to bubble and skank, but would soon be required to learn an entirely new language - Jamaican Slang ."

On the road Rob would have to learn to determine whether a fellow traveling bandmember was feeling the joy of irie heights pronounce "eye-ree-ites" or whether he was in the duldrums due to some ras clot, bumba clot, or the ever dreaded blood clot. The latter, as you can imagine, is really going to affect your day.

The band's drummer, Ishael Sealy, was a beaming sort of fellow with a very tick accent mon. Delevered straight from the island of Barbados, Ishael wrote a song everyday - just to stay focused.

"When I boarded the bus," Rob tells us, "I was introduced around with my then music moniker, Rob Noxious." Most everyone chuckled the appropriate understanding of the pun presented them, yet the Barbados-born dready did not laugh.

He looked deadpan at Rob and greeted him warmly, "Welcome aboard, Nop-skee."

The other skankers and rid-dim men on the bus laughed and corrected him, "His name is Noxious!"

The unaffected Ishael smiled and querried, "Nop-skee?"

"Noxious, Rob Noxious," they stressed.

"Robe Nop-skee?" he attemped.

That went back and forth several more times before he uproariously laughed the good laugh.

"At that moment, I and I knew Ishael would be a good ally in this whirlwind one-drop adventure," concluded Rob Noxious Mahoney.

On the subject of dealing with ill natured people, a peaceful man had this to say:

It takes the positive and the negative to make the energy flow, mon.
   --Ishael Sealy

R.I.P. -- Wallace Hammond. Do you have your trombone?

As host of What's The Cover, Rob Mahoney was seen 7 days a week for over two years on the Austin Music Network and KRV-TV. The live two hour cablecast/broadcast, valued by concert and club goers for previews of music events in Austin, was exposure to thousands of bands, uncounted musicians, scores of interesting guests, charitible and for-profit organizations, and some of Austin's best characters.

Thursdays were always a bustling day around the studio. That was the day of the week when area chefs would come to cook on-air for Rob and then feed the entire crew afterwards. "We always seemed to have plenty of help on those days," jokes Rob.

Overall, it was quite a ride -- yielding Rob and his chronies the Austin Music Award for Best Local Television Show. In fact, months after going off the air, What's The Cover garnered the number 2 slot in the Austin Chronicle Music Poll finishing just behind Austin City Limits.

See guests who've appeared on What's The Cover.

A Rob Story - Princely Times

That reminds me of a time I received a call at What's The Cover to attend a taping of the KLRU-produced Austin City Limits. A friend from Louisiana who's wasband played with Toby Keith had an extra ticket for me. That's how you get tickets to these things if you can't wait the 15 months it takes to get them the real way.

I had to attend another event immediately after the AMN television show concluded, so I was a bit late to the studio for the city limits taping. A line of people stretched down the tree-lined university courtyard where the famed "austin skyline" television set is housed. The doors were closed. Anyone who knows anything about City Limits knows that space is limited and your ticket will be given away in moments if you aren't on your mark.

The doorman informed me that no one would be allowed in. Everyone in the line listened carefully to the exchange hoping for cancelations that would mean a seat for them. I tried to reason with the enormous doorman, but it was clear that he had heard this all before many times. It was clear. No one else would be admitted. And even though my seat remained empty - which you can see in the televised show - I never made it into the studio, but there would be other shows for me.

It was, however, a fun consolation when the attentively listening line of would be stand-bys led a chant. Quietly at first, and just by two or three courteous voyeurs. Later, half-dozens of people were chanting, "Let Rob in. Let Rob in. Let Rob in."

Mel Brooks said, "It's good to be king." That seems to hold true even if you don't get into the castle.

See guests who've appeared on What's The Cover.

Family Photo Album -- Mahoney, Staten, White, Allison, Mitchell, Furgurson, Darst, Kilgore, LaTella