White Animals tripping back into town - Oct. 3

The White Animals

The bio for the band The White Animals on Allmusic.com has a line that reads: "Unlike a lot of bands at the time, the White Animals never took themselves too seriously. They had a good seven-year run, opening for bands like The Kinks, the Ramones and Talking Heads, but they always knew that adulthood and careers [lay] on the horizon."

That's not how Kevin Gray - now Dr. Kevin Gray - remembers it at all.

"That's a little through the retrospectoscope, I would say," he says of the bio description from his home in Dallas, where he has a psychiatry practice. "That's kind of putting a little bow on it.

"I would have loved nothing better than to get in the Irish castle with Steve Lillywhite or Mutt Lange or Jimmy Iovine and spend a couple of months getting the drum sound just right, spend six months mixing the thing instead of six days.

"But it was what it was, and I like to think we were kind of the everyman band in the tradition of the DIY spirit."

Gray says The White Animals had a punk, garage-band attitude, but from the start, the musicians dreamed of being on the radio and MTV and did everything they could think of to get there. They started their own label, put out singles, toured incessantly. While their ultimate goal was never fully realized, along the way they became arguably the biggest frat party/bar band in the region from 1980 to 1987.

At one of their last shows in Chattanooga, the line to get in Yesterday's stretched down Patten Parkway, and the foursome arrived in a stretch limousine. It was that way in Virginia, Nashville, Birmingham, Auburn and Knoxville.

"I like to think we corrupted an entire generation, and that's kind of the best consolation prize in the whole world," Gray says.

"We tried every way in the world, but we couldn't get the big record deal in the sky for many reasons we only dimly understood at the time. There were a lot of things conspiring in radio, at the labels and in music in general."

One thing that was always certain was the love their fans had for them, and it continues today. The band - Gray, Ray Crabtree, Steve Boyd, Rich Parks and "dubmaster" Tim Coats - get together a couple of times a year for private parties and special events. Their show Friday, Oct. 3, at Rhythm & Brews is part of Baylor/McCallie alumni weekend, though it's open to anyone.

While fans have stories of hanging out with the band or of a particularly memorable show, Gray says he has fond memories of playing to a packed crowd at Yesterday's and then racing across the river to a store that would sell them a six-pack of beer "and then hightailing it back to the King's Lodge for a cheeseburger."

"That was pretty damn fun," he says.

"The Hennens [Yesterday's owners] were very good to us along the way. I have a framed picture of that Yesterday's sign upstairs in my office."

Today, Gray is married with a son and daughter. Every now and then one of the kids will stumble across a YouTube video of The White Animals.

"They think it's cool," he says. "They say things like 'Dig the hair and crazy makeup, Dad.'"

Boyd married Gray's wife's good friend and now also lives in Dallas and teaches music. The two see each other regularly. Crabtree and Parks still live in Nashville and play in a '60s cover band.

Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6354.