The Story of the

Kansas City Jammers

Bob Thompson:Kansas City Jammers - the History  

Back in college days at OWU, I teamed up with a classmate, Geoff Greif to start a band, myself on the drums and Geoff on the guitar.  Neither of us were virtuosos but we were willing, and both sure we could attain stardom with the right breaks.   Needing a bass player, and as it turned out, a “face-man”, we turned to a character we knew, Jasey Schnaars.  I say character, because that's what he was and is.  Tall, like a bass player should be, cute, and a girl-magnet.  That aspect was wasted, of course, because he was already attached at the hip to his longtime girl, and future wife, Syd, but what the fans didn't know, we didn't share.  We worked as a trio through college, playing frat parties, dorm parties and bars.  As all self-respecting musicians of the day, we wrote songs, and eventually assembled an assortment of what we considered good tunes.  

Well, as plans often do, ours altered along the way, and we realized our fortunes lay in other directions than music, but the music/performing bug was tough to let go.  So we recorded an album, “Got Good If You Get It”, for posterity more than for stardom.  Sure, we had dreams.    We bought recording time, did the artwork, and had 500 records printed up, to sell to anyone we could interest at OWU, and at gigs around the state.  It was all a hoot, great fun in the making, a fun lifestyle, and good music to boot.  But still no stardom.  At that point we had few illusions about stardom and the band's future.  We loved each other and loved to play, that's all we knew.

After college and after a few more recordings and forays into the Jammers, Geoff and I both ended up moving to Philadelphia.  We continued as friends, playing music, building around us a couple of different groups over the next 5 or six year, but eventually each of us headed our own directions.  We had families, created careers outside of music, and thought we had put the Jammers, and music, except as an occasional giggle, in our past.  But all the while Jasey was out in Delaware, Ohio keeping the dream alive.   He had the family and the career, but he never stopped playing……..or thinking. 

So life went by…….and then…………. 

………….sometime around 2001, I got a call from Jasey.  “Bullet!  Go on Ebay and type in Kansas City Jammers!”  Imagine my surprise to see our old album, our old sold-at-gigs album, on sale from a guy in Salzburg, Austria, being bid on by a guy in Japan, for the princely sum of $105.00, no less!  

The rest is history, as outlined by Jasey.  The upshot is that the Jammers live and have always lived.  We continue to get together, to visit, play and record, and we are making better music than ever, individually and as a group. 

This is the current reincarnation, but not the last. 

Jasey Schnaars: While I was in college in the late sixties and early seventies, I joined two friends in a rock and roll band called The Kansas City Jammers, playing frat parties and college bars in the central Ohio area. 

Early in 1972, we recorded an LP of our own tunes, had five-hundred copies pressed, sold perhaps half of those, and put the rest in various closets while the three of us went about our lives.  

I started my teaching career in the fall of 1972, while guitarist Geoffry Greif went off to graduate school in social work. That year, on a whim, the drummer, Bob Thompson, and I recorded a 45 rpm single, “Sing Me That Rock and Roll,” which, surprisingly, went to number 20 on the local top 40 charts and became something of a regional hit for the not-really-existent Kansas City Jammers. On the strength of our “hit single, the almost-one-hit-wonder Kansas City Jammers re-united, with Geoff flying in from Philadelphia for various gigs and recording sessions, giving us one grand finale to our career in the rock and roll business. Or so we thought.  

The following fall, Bob went off to medical school and the three of us attempted to become responsible adults, still great friends, but no longer in the music business together. 

Two decades or more go by, and the Internet comes into existence, allowing unusual hobbyists from all over the globe to meet and interact with one another, including those folks who collect obscure recordings by “garage bands” of the sixties and seventies.  The first time that we learned that people with such interests had become enamored with the Jammers was when a gentleman from Texas purchased one of our LP’s at a yard sale and then proceeded to call everyone with our last names in every area code in and around the Columbus, Ohio, region, eventually reaching me. He offered to purchase a box of twenty-five Kansas City Jammers records for two-hundred dollars, which I was thrilled to accept.  

Lo and behold, with the advent of Ebay, the price of the 1972 recording of the Kansas City Jammers LP, “Got Good (If You Get It),” shot up. Collectors from as far away as Japan paid over two-hundred dollars per LP. For Geoff and Bob and me, this was fascinating, flattering, and difficult to comprehend.  

In spite of these ridiculously high prices, none of us was prepared to take it seriously when a young record promoter and Internet entrepreneur from New Jersey, Brian Void of Void Records, tracked Geoff down by phone and offered to pay the Jammers two thousand dollars for the rights to re-press and re-release five-hundred copies of “Got Good (If You Get It),” both on vinyl and on CD. Of course, we accepted this lovely offer, (Why would we not?), and were further shocked to see our LP for sale, literally all over the globe, often on web sites involving languages and currencies utterly unknown to us! Having our music available on iTunes and at Amazon.com was also something that I am sure none of us could have imagined possible.  

One could reasonably assume that our story ends here, but apparently that is not the case.

Back in 1972, while the Jammers were basking in the glow of their only top-40 radio success, we recorded what was to be the follow-up single to “Sing Me That Rock and Roll,” as well as enough music to complete what would have been their second LP. But when Bob got into medical school and Geoff returned to graduate school, this second LP was put on the shelf, presumably to never be heard by anyone. But that was 1972. Now, almost forty years later, this second LP is expected to be released by Void records in November of this year.  

Unlike some stories where the Rock and Roll stage was the last hurrah for each of the band members, we have all gone on to highly successful careers in our chosen fields of medicine and academia. Still, Geoff, Bob, and I have continued to stay in touch through the years, playing together when possible.  With the renewed interest in our old recordings, we have worked on preserving and improving the old material and working on new.     

Once upon a time, Bob Seger wrote that “Rock and Roll never forgets.” Apparently, not only does Rock and Roll never forget, Rock and Roll won’t be finished with your career until IT decides that it’s time to call it quits. Go figure. "

Geoff Greif: The Kansas City Jammers

I grew up in Maine, the 4th generation of guitar pickers and lobstermen (and women).  We always had music in the house, from the backwoods crooners who honed their music while clearing forest to the seafarers who came into the family inn, bringing with them the latest nautical chant or women-chasing tune from some far away land.  I had a good ear and, while initially drawn to the accordion, ended up with the guitar because it was easier to play in the back of the horse drawn cart that we commandeered for fall hay rides.  While not a good student in high school in the ‘60s (I was too busy staying up late listening to the pirate rock and roll from off the coast of England – the time difference with Greenwich time was the real culprit), I did well on my SATs and was admitted to OWU as the only applicant from Maine that year (I fulfilled their geographic diversity needs).

Going to college in Ohio enabled me to get away from the hard life of the rock bound coast, the fast winds that whipped off the ocean, and punishing winters. The bucolic, land-locked and flat state of Ohio nurtured my need for climate stability.  When I met Bob at the fraternity house and heard him crack the snare with his seasoned sense of beat, I knew I had found a kindred spirit.  A collision course with the non-elf like Jasey would soon follow.  In Bob and Jasey I found two kindred spirits and singers who knew the difference between Lou Reed and John Reed, between Mick Jagger and Jagermeister, and between Keith Moon and Half Moon Bay (best visited in the spring).

The music came quickly to us.  A faucet opened and the sounds poured out.  It was as if the three of us had been chained to cultural imperatives that no longer held sway. Barriers were being not just torn down but thrown asunder. The campuses across the country, along with our own beloved idyllic Ohio oasis, were being ground down at the heel by the military industrial complex that threw young men into a South Asian furnace of an unjust war. 

Our music picked up the anthem and we performed at the 1969 March on Washington (not music, but we did perform). Fighting against the war and fighting for social justice was a full-time job and made going to college and perfecting our stoop ball game jejune.  Why practice when there are songs to write. Our gigs became a shining testament to the way in which talented (dare I call us that?) and driven (that works) young men whose eyes have been opened can connect with people across all the divides that divide people in divisive ways.

Our first album Got Good (if you get it) but code named Geoff Greif and other two guys (until I was outvoted) became an expected and instant hit.  My parents bought a copy and even my grandmother (bless her heart) said she bought one (I never saw it at the nursing home but she swore she had it someplace).  The rest (groupies, the hit single - “Sing me that (no that) rock and roll", groupies, and the second album) is history.