Dave Martens began mining Montana’s rock and roll history after hearing a rumor that the iconic garage rock song “Hippy Hippy Shake” had been written in 1959 by a Billings teenager named Chan Romero.
The hit 1959 tune was eventually covered by the Beatles, Davy Jones of the Monkees and the Georgia Satellites. Martens, a musician with the Best Westerns living in Havre, wondered what other gems from Montana’s early rock and roll history he could unearth.
The fact that 1960s Montana even had a rock and roll history was enough to pique his interest, and in 2011 he set to work in earnest, employing his skills as a sonic sleuth and music buff in equal parts.
Martens has since dedicated untold hours to tracking down old recordings from musicians who have aged well into their mid-60s and beyond. He has scoured the state for old reel-to-reels, Montana-made 45s, cassettes, compact discs, and promotional posters. Transferring the textured recording media onto one platform has been a learning process, he said, and he’s enlisted the help of dozens of Montana musicians along the way.
He has made, he estimates, “a million phone calls,” reaching out to rock and roll renegades who are consistently surprised by Martens’ interest in half-century-old rock and roll recordings, some of them released 25 years before Martens was born.
His mission is simple – to ensure that the music isn’t relegated to the dustbin of history – but with the recordings scattered across the state and region, from Kalispell to Sidney, Washington to California, Martens had his work cut out for him.
After more than a half-decade of painstaking work, the result is a compilation of Montana garage rock, called “Long Time Comin’ – Lost Sounds from the Treasure State.” Martens, a 32-year-old speech pathologist in Havre schools, recently released the first double album of early Montana rock and roll, available for purchase online and at a mounting list of record stores across Montana.
According to Martens, “Lost Sounds” is an organization “to preserve, archive, showcase and make accessible the music and associated history of Montana across the decades.”
He intends to put out additional compilations from the 70s, 80s and 90s.
One of the songs he included on “Lost Sounds” is a live recording of Missoula band The Vulcans playing at the Kalispell Teen Center in January 1966, a show brokered by Troy Evans, the actor who appeared in supporting roles in “Twin Peaks,” “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” and “Under Siege.”
Evans, a 1966 graduate of Flathead High School, hired Roy Barker to record the show. The Vulcans played songs by The Wailers, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and Sam the Sham, as well as songs by the prominent Tacoma, Washington garage rock band The Sonics, including their song “The Witch.”
Martens included “The Witch” on “Lost Sounds” upon learning from Chris Bishop, curator of the garage rock website Garage Hangover, that it marked the first time a cover song by The Sonics had ever been recorded. Many more would follow, but the concert at the Kalispell Teen Center was the debut.
After Martens graduated high school in Havre, he worked as a DJ at the radio station at the University of Montana-Northern, and later at KBGA, the independent station on the University of Montana campus in Missoula.
Despite the station’s sprawling catalogue of Montana-made music, Martens couldn’t find any local recordings from earlier than 1996, when the station was launched.
Curious about what else existed in the ethers, he enlisted the help of a few friends and volunteers and set up a Facebook page. Soon, the old records started coming out of the woodwork – records by bands like The Vulcans, The Missing Lynx, Thor and the Thunder Gods, Out of Sight, Einstein Intersection, The Frantics, The Fugitives, and Initial Shock.
Five years ago, Martens’ uncle gave him an Initial Shock 45 – the small, archaic records with the big center holes – and the A-side was titled “You Been A Long Time Comin’,” which inspired the title for the musical project.
He continues to exhume old recordings from Montana’s history, and recently found a trove of rare finds from the radio station KOJM in Havre – a box of old tapes that include a 1957 never-aired interview with Elvis Presley, who was on a railroad tour when he stopped in Havre.
The project also recently earned a shout-out from Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament, who grew up in Big Sandy, Montana, and played in bands around Missoula before co-founding Pearl Jam.
On the band’s Instagram page, Ament wrote about how the cover photo of “‘Long Time Comin’” featured a close friend’s brother, who played in the Missoula band The Chosen Few.
“On ‘Long Time Comin,’ Dave Martens has put my friend’s brother on the cover and finally on acetate, finally releasing all of the long forgotten music being made in Montana garages in the ‘60s. Great work, Dave,” Ament wrote.
The full package consists of two LPs, a CD and a 12-page brochure of copious liner notes, and is available online at http://www.lostsoundsmontana.bigcartel.com/