New England Music Scrapbook
The Drive

Back in the 1980s, Boston had an intriguing rock band called the Lines. An early edition of the group, including Pat Dreier, Eric Hafner, Paul Kochanski, Jamie Walker, and Rick Weden, contributed a couple of Walker's originals to the compilation, Live at the Metro (LP, Press-A-Dent, 1982). A bit later, Dreier, Kochanski, and Walker left the Lines; and, with Tony Paolino, they formed a new band, the Drive. The first show by this outfit came in September 1983.

When the Drive opened for the great James Brown at the Channel in March 1984, Tristram Lozaw of Boston Rock said they could be a band to watch. He reported, "They pulled off a rap sequence surprisingly well ... for white boys." Years later, Jamie Walker told Brett Milano of the Boston Phoenix, "During the Drive days I was so heavily into the R&B thing, Prince and the Time. I was thinking, 'I know I'm not black and I don't know how to dance, but I love playing this'." The songs they performed included "One Man Army" and "Somebody's Trying To Tell Me Something." In late April, the band played for 300 inmates of the state prison at Walpole.

In early 1985, the Drive issued a single, "Doin' the Countdown" b/w "She Was a Stranger" (45, Thrust, 1985). The video went into heavy rotation on local station V-66, and it won a monthly competition on the MTV show, The Basement tapes. This video and "Let the Rain Come Down," the followup, brought the Drive to the attention of recording industry executives, though a record deal never materialized. The Drive worked in the studio with producer Maurice Starr. Paul Kochanski said the band played with "big synths and loud rock guitar." The band's progress was slowed, though, when V-66, one of its best promotional outlets, ceased broadcasting.

1985

Over the next couple years, the Drive went through a lot of changes, which were summarized nicely by Jamie Walker. "We've been written off as too much of a mainstream band, but we don't really care about labels. Maybe we once were too polished and safe, but we've evolved into a straight-ahead rock 'n' roll band with a lot of confidence."

In 1988, the Drive issued the album, Journey Is the Reward (LP, Thrust, 1988). Steve Morse reported that the group had become "a straight-ahead, piano-pumping big-beat rock band" and he added that their music came with a "hard-edged charge." Not much later, though, Dreier and Paolino were being drawn away from the band by their domestic responsibilities. Meanwhile, the heads of Kochansky and Walker were being turned by the music of the Replacements and the Georgia Satellites; and they were immersing themselves in the country music of Merle Haggard and particularly Hank Williams.

Dreier and Paolino left the Drive, and in came new members Jim Gambino and Tim Giovanniello. Various drummers rounded out the group.

We can place the Drive in Boston the first week in January 1989. Then they were beckoned to the West Coast for a series of engagements by an LA booking agent. Again, they became involved in talks with record-label executives, though they did not sign a contract. In fact, members of the Drive returned to Boston tremendously disillusioned. "Seeing the mainstream at its most pathetic," said Kochanski, "made us start playing country songs." Band members were listening a lot to a Boston College radio station. Roots-rock and country music were starting to look really good. Interviews from a couple years later show that the influence of Hank Williams and the Rolling Stones* started to loom large. "Each time a good country song comes on," said Jim Gambino, "it has a different story to tell, and that's what we were getting excited about."

The band was playing many out-of-town gigs at the time. Drive members stopped promoting Journey Is the Reward and started writing new material. Recording industry A&R people had been preaching that the Drive needed to develop a more marketable image; so, says Jamie Walker, they asked themselves, "What's the complete opposite of that?" Well, their newfound commitment to the music that influenced rock and roll was a start; but the band needed a new, non-marketable name.

Through a process that seemed to puzzle many observers of Boston's music scene, the Drive transformed into the Swinging Steaks. Evidently they had found what they were looking for. We know from their later history that the new name put big-label A&R reps in a cold, cold sweat. The new sound didn't do a lot for the old fans of the Drive, either. "The initial gigs were revolting to them," said Walker in 1993. "It's only lately they've started coming back."

The early Swinging Steaks played much of the time on acoustic instruments and without a drummer--"acousteak" performances, as they like to say; and band members continued filling Drive engagements through 1990. We ran across an announcement where they were to perform in one show as both the Drive and the Steaks. Eventually, though, the Drive passed out of existence. Long live the Swinging Steaks!

-- Alan Lewis, April 2, 2001

* The Stones, particularly from the era of Beggars Banquet through Exile on Main Street.

The Swinging Steaks continue to flourish. Their newest album, KickSnareHat, is their best work in years. Click --> HERE <-- to read a record review. A full band profile of the Steaks is being contemplated, so you may want to check back later.

The story of the Drive/Swinging Steaks, to my mind, is exceptionally interesting. Yet we might not have been able to give an account here, if Paul Kochanski hadn't kindly helped us understand the general outline.

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