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Do you remember
Whizkey Stik?
Astoria hard rock band inds new
fans nearly four decades later
By ANDREW TONRY
The rediscovery of
seemingly long-lost music
is becoming increasingly
common in the internet age.
Most celebrated, per-
haps, is the saga of Rodri-
guez. The Detroit musi-
cian’s albums, irst released
in the 1970s, gained near
legendary acclaim in South
Africa without his know-
ing. Obfuscated by derelict
management, fans abroad
thought Rodriguez was
dead. He was, in fact, work-
ing construction, having
long since left the music
industry. The reconnection
of Rodriguez to that audi-
ence is chronicled in the
Academy Award-winning
documentary “Searching for
Sugarman.” New fans —
many yet to be born at the
time of the record’s re-re-
lease — quickly followed.
While less epic in scale,
a similar story has roots
Astoria. And though they
never developed legions of
fans, the members of Whiz-
key Stik are ediied just the
same.
“After 36 years I’m
inally getting my album
made,” chuckles Carl Mc-
Laughlin, Whizkey Stik’s
singer, guitarist and princi-
pal songwriter.
It wasn’t for lack of
interest. The progressive,
arching, hard rock four-
some — which included
Mark Bugas on bass, John
Police on drums and Terry
Duoos on Hammond organ
— sniffed success. In 1980
they signed a management
deal and lirted with execu-
tives from Arista Records.
As a newspaper headline
from a 1980 Seaside Signal
reads: “local boys close to
making good.”
Whizkey Stik began in
the mid-’70s. The group
began playing exclusively
covers, performing at high
schools, Christmas parties
and so on.
“After a couple of years
we were like: ‘We aren’t
going to get anywhere if we
don’t start doing original
music,’” McLaughlin says.
“I had all these song ideas,
and we said, ‘Let’s do it!’”
Taking a hiatus from
performing live, the group
decamped to their rehearsal
space — a large outbuilding
atop the hill at 520 40th St.
The front was occupied by
Duoos’ family’s construc-
tion business. In the back,
the band went to work, writ-
ing and recording with reel-
to-reel tape machines. From
those sessions, Whizkey
Stik sent a song to Portland
radio station KGON, which
featured the band on a
compilation album. Shortly
after, the band was included
in another compilation, of
the burgeoning heavy metal
genre.
Whizkey Stik’s con-
tributions to those collec-
tions, presumably, are what
caught the ear of some
totemic music executives.
“After those two (com-
pilations) somehow, Clive
Davis, he had heard about
us and he requested a demo
tape,” says McLaughlin.
“That never happens. Ever.”
The band obliged, and the
tape found its way to John
David Kalodner, another
storied A&R exec, who sent
manager Butch Stone to
see Whiskey Stik perform.
At the time, though, the
band had hardly any local
following.
“In Astoria we felt like
outsiders,” McLaughlin
says. There wasn’t much
In 1980, Astoria hard rock band Whizkey Stik featured, from left, Terry Duoos, Carl McLaughlin, Mark Bugas and John Police. Over
30 years later, the group is inally putting out a record.
of a music scene at the
time, he adds, and no one
was doing what they were
— a Deep Purple-inspired
fusion of psychedelic and
progressive rock plus the
serrated guitars that pre-
saged heavy metal, and the
soaring, melodic vocals of
hair metal. When the group
did play, locally, they ex-
perienced fissures with the
jukebox.
“Disco was all the rage,”
McLaughlin remembers.
“We’d get off the stage, and
the jukebox would kick on
and it’d be disco. It was
like, how do you transition?
It’s hard to compete. People
like to dance. I just felt
out of place.” So, for the
showcase with Kalodner,
the band would perform in
its practice space.
“They lew to Oregon
and we met ‘em at the
airport and we drove all
the way to Astoria and
we auditioned for them,”
McLaughlin says. “It went
really well. It went by really
fast. We played nine origi-
nal songs.”
“There wasn’t a whole
bunch of talk,” McLaugh-
lin adds. “(Stone) was a
pretty quiet guy. We ended
up signing a management
contract.”
But, instead of some
high-proile gigs, a tour or
time in professional studio,
Whizkey Stik received
mostly silence. As Mc-
Laughlin tells it, Stone
was more interested in him
and drummer John Police
than Whizkey Stik at large.
He wanted to use them
for other projects. Having
spent his formative musical
development with the band,
McLaughlin was upset by
the suggestion.
As the management con-
tract bore no fruit, the band
eventually wriggled free of
it. But soon after, life got in
the way.
“Very, very quickly, we
were all married,” Mc-
Laughlin says. “And by ‘83
all but one of us had a kid.
There’s this conceit that
we had almost made it and
then naturally falling into
the lifecycle of the married
person and having children
and all the responsibilities.”
Though the members
continued to convene a few
times a year, just to jam and
have fun, the ambition dried
up. In a sense, Whizkey
Stik was gone, and mostly
forgotten — until a trio of
archivists came knocking.
James R. Beach, Brian
Naron and J.D. Sutton were
in the midst of writing a
book, “Rusted Metal,” a
chronicle of the Northwest’s
heavy metal music, and
they stumbled upon Whiz-
key Stik.
“I thought it was cool
that they were gonna do
a book on the subject and
wanted to know about us,”
McLaughlin says. “I’m a
61-year-old young man
— who woulda thought? I
thought it was really cool.”
The writers came to
Astoria to do an interview
and were taken aback when
they heard Whizkey Stik’s
SUBMITTED PHOTOS
The reunited Whizkey Stik band is made of, from left, Mark Bu-
gas on bass guitar, Carl McLaughlin on lead guitar and vocals,
long-buried demo tapes.
“We played him our
music,” McLaughlin says.
“He was like, ‘Where can
you get a hold of it?’ I said
it’s never been released. He
said: ‘You’re (kidding) me.
We’re going to do some-
thing about that.’”
And so, in tandem with
the release of the book this
September, NW Metalworx
will offer LPs and CDs
from Whizkey Stik. The
album, “On the Level,” is
available in black vinyl
and magenta vinyl as well
as CD. The band plans to
perform at release shows
in Portland and Seattle this
fall, though they will be
without keyboardist Terry
Duoos, who passed away in
March 2012 — before the
music was rediscovered.
“The album has a pretty
signiicant dedication to
him,” McLauglin says.
“And certainly the bio that
I wrote. It stressed a lot of
kudos, gratitude to him.”
Approaching the per-
formances, McLaughlin is
excited and seemingly un-
daunted — he’s been play-
ing and performing, albeit
in other styles, ever since.
As for the record, he’s just
glad it’s inally seeing the
light of day — and that, in
the internet age, it should be
preserved.
“It’s pretty neat to think
that your music really has
the capacity to potentially
last forever,” McLaughlin
says. “Many, many years af-
ter you’re gone it could still
be there somewhere and
hopefully it will be.”
Whizkey Stik will hold a
record signing at 3 p.m. Sept.
17 at Metal Head Records,
located at 1126 Marine Drive
in Astoria.