Fresh off the previous week’s Cotton Belt Afterparty performance in the 300 Club in Fordyce, Little Rock-based Arkadelics performed for a packed house at RJ’s Sports Grill & Bar on May 3.
The monthly concert installment sponsored by MK Distributors saw the five-piece band play numbers from “Tumbleweed” to “Rainy Night in Georgia” to “Eyesight to the Blind.”
Before the show, Fordyce native, lead male vocalist and rhythm guitar player Bob Wagnon, shared his life-long musical journey.
“I started playing in high school with a little band called Village Green,” he said. “We spent a lot years in the garage. Then I joined ‘Bucksnor’ for the next 27 years. We played the original Cotton Belt Festival with Johnny Cash, then returned 17 years later to play it again.”
Regarding his current musical collaboration, Wagnon elaborated.
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“We’re past the ego stage at this point in life, which is almost always a factor with bands. We are all good friends. We have an exceptional singer, guitar player and drummer. I just feel lucky to be in such a great band and hope to be doing this for the rest of my time,” he said.
Asked how the Arkadelics got together, band founder and bass player Wightman Harris joined the conversation.
“A group of guys from Conway had a quarterly party and I saw Bob there,” Harris said. “I said let’s get together and I started going to his house and talking about organizing something new. Bob said all he ever wanted to do was play music but since his wife passed, his instruments and equipment were just setting in a room untouched. We began kicking around some tunes and the seed was planted. He told me later getting him back into music may have saved his life.
“I had been in a band with our lead guitar player, Dan Sokoloski, so I hollered at him and we started practicing along with drummer, Lance Womack, who I grew up with in Camden. That was a little over three years ago,” Harris said.
Sokoloski talked about his musical journey.
“I was a late bloomer,” Sokoloski said. “I didn’t pick up a guitar until I was 26 or 27. My first band was Bad Attitude out of Little Rock. I played with Big John Miller for a while and played with Gil Franklin on and off for 30 years.
“I grew up in Chicago and moved down here as a teenager. It’s kind of funny because when a lot of people hear my picking they say, ‘You play like you’re not from around here,'” he said.
When asked who all he has played with, drummer Lance “Bugtussle” Womack ran down a short list of notable bands.
“Joe ‘Piano Man’ Johnson, Ronnie Lane of Faces, the Bel Aires, Ponty Bone and the Squeezetones, Michael Burks Blues Band, Fonky Donkey, Shine Eye Band and, most recently, The Camden Panthers,” Womack said.
The fifth member of the quintet, and Wightman’s spouse of 14 years, is Karen Harris. She shared her path to join the Arkadelics.
“As a kid I took piano lessons, but I wasn’t very disciplined and didn’t stick with it,” she said. “I sang in high school choir, then began singing in St. Joseph’s Catholic Church guitar choir in Conway for 25 years. I sang in a couple of bands called the Funky Monkeys and the Delta Radio Blues Band. Wightman and I met playing in a band together. Then we started an acoustic group we called Harrisong before we formed the Arkadelics. I wanted to sing all my life and finally got the chance to pursue it with a bunch of great guys I love.”
Following the previous Saturday’s performance at the Cotton Belt Afterparty, the Harris’ traveled to Hot Springs on April 27 to participate in Arts & the Park Fest for the Hot Springs Area Arts Council. The duo performed an original composition by Wightman titled “Perfect Dance.” They played before a large gathering on Whitley Plaza.
The number received the prestigious “Henry Glover Award” that read, “Special recognition for outstanding lyrical creativity in the category of Americana/Folk Music.”
Asked about the song, Wightman Harris said, “It’s kind of funny. It’s not something I can really take credit for because it just flowed out, more like it came from a higher power. We were out in California and I was setting in the sun. It started coming and in 10 minutes it was done. The inspiration came from a conversation I was following where someone said, ‘Man, that was just the perfect dance.'”
This year saw the fourth presentation of the Henry Glover Award sponsored by the Little Rock Chapter of the Nashville Songwriter’s Association Inc. Harris explained how the award’s namesake was one of the first African-American music executives with a major label. Born in Hot Springs, Glover helped produce a wide variety of notable performers such as Grandpa Jones, The Band, Levon Helm, Muddy Waters and the Zombies.
The Arkadelics played three-hour long sets at RJ’s on May 3.