Father/son team proves that age is in the mind
by Mike Gibson
When Scotty Herrell was but little more than a tot, just off his mother's apron strings, father Donnie Herrell noted uncommon rhythmic proclivities in the youngster. Seated in the front seat of the family car, little Scotty often added flourishes of dashboard percussion to the rock and pop songs blaring from the radio.
When his son was 13, Donnie, a weekend musician himself, bought the boy his fateful first drum kit. Now in his early 20s, Scotty, a corn-fed former Maryville College football player, is the rugged rhythmic anchor of 24Seven, a Clinton-based modern rock outfit that features daddy Don on bass.
"We'd drive down the road, and he'd keep perfect time with the radio," boasts the elder half of the father-son team. "I guess you'd say I'm the one that got him into music; it was in him, and I had to get it out."
The Herrells didn't truly make music a family affair until a couple of years ago, when Scotty joined a rock radio cover unit called Copper Seal. When the group found themselves bass-less, they tapped Donnie, refugee from a southern rock and country band, as a fill-in four-stringer. The younger members initially launched a search for a "full-time" bass player; their chemistry with the forty-something father and ironworker was undeniable, however, and after fruitless months, they finally stopped looking.
"I always wanted to play in a real rock and roll band," Donnie Herrell enthuses. "When I played rock songs with my last band, that's when I really came to life. I feel like I can relate to the 'younger generation'—I was young once myself. We're playing a style that belongs to the younger set, but I've come to love it myself."
But Copper Seal was a fated entity; not long after its founding, a blond, lanky lad named Jeff Reagan attended a practice, and by virtue of what he calls "sheer attitude," decided to take an unsolicited turn on the mic. Almost on the spot, the Copper Sealers installed Reagan as their front man and reconfigured themselves as an original rock band—one that regarded its musical mission a 24Seven affair.
"When we heard Jeff sing, it was no audition," Donnie Herrell remembers. "He just stepped in and done his thing. We knew right then he was The Man. His voice is unique. He'd be hard to replace."
Reagan and the Herrells, along with recently departed guitarist Robert Hawkins, have since produced one CD of all-original material, an opus titled, appropriately enough, All Day...All Night. The band's clean but sternly tempered modern rock sound is carried by Reagan's robust vocals, which fall somewhere on that familiar, throaty post-Pearl Jam continuum between STP's Scott Weiland and Creed's Scott Stapp
But unlike most such prefabricated bari-clones, Reagan's vox are marked by an ease of delivery and moments of unforced, natural grit. And while Scotty admits the band is moving towards a brawnier commercial alternative sound (a la the previously mentioned outfits), All Day...All Night... manifests uncommon versatility, an appealingly light touch on tunes like "Eventually" and the cheeky goof "Rasta Man" that sets 24Seven apart from the prosaic grind of most third-generation grunge.
"What we do has been changing," says Scotty. "We're modern rock, I guess, but our sound is getting heavier. We're still pretty versatile, but Jeff's voice is suited to the harder stuff."
24Seven has hopes of releasing its second CD in the none-too-distant future, a project now delayed by the recent abdication of Hawkins (Reagan will play rhythm guitar until the band can fill the slot.) They can be found, in the meantime, pleasantly polluting the air at most of the usually suspected local venues—Prince's Deli, the Longbranch Saloon, McGhee's, et al.
To the casual observer, there's no small irony in the band's latest travail, its search for a suitable stringer—the fact that, through two membership upheavals, 24Seven (nee Copper Seal) has managed to preserve the most pronounced generation gap in local rock. According to 24Seven's elder statesman, however, the enduring nature of the Reagan/double-Herrell partnership is no surprise.
"I'm really not that much older than they are," Donnie says with a laugh. "They're just a whole lot younger than me."
June 8, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 23
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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