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In the beginning, Larry and I played several parties and wedding receptions. These jobs were great but few and far between.
We played the jobs we could get for the first year. We took a little break to have our beautiful baby girl, Trisha. (That’s a beautiful story by itself that we’ll tell in another chapter.)
 A new motel with a restaurant and lounge called The Dutch Inn opened up in Palm Bay. This was a really nice lounge. There was a huge windmill on the front of the building. At night when the windmill was all lit up, you could see it from across the river.
They had a sign out front announcing auditions for bands. Larry informed me that we were going to audition for the job. Ok, now I’m really nervous. Until now, we got the jobs by word of mouth. We really never had to audition before.
We loaded everything in our van and headed up to the Dutch Inn to do the audition. We had family members there for support.
I think we only played about three or four songs and they told us we had the job. They actually hired us to play Tuesday through Thursday and then another band played on the weekend. We were thrilled to be playing there at all. This was our first experience playing in a nightclub. (Well, it was my first experience. Larry had played in clubs before in West Palm Beach.)
They also hired a young man who had a solo act. He played on one of the other nights during the week. This very talented guy, named Walter Reed became a great friend of ours and we will have more stories with Walter later.
We played for the Grand Opening of the Dutch Inn. I can’t believe we were so fortunate to have the right exposure at the right time.
While we played during that first week at the Dutch Inn, the owners of the Royal Motor Lodge came in and heard us. They asked us to play at their small lounge on the weekends. We thought this would work out great since the Dutch Inn only needed us during the week.
Palm Bay
Timeline:
1974 - The city’s first bank and the Dutch Inn Motel (now Days Inn) are built
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