PHOTO BY VANCE HEFLIN
life
ROBINSON'S RAMBLINGS
Gary Hunt, Mike Fleming, Forrest Rose, Greg Hunt, Mike Henderson
The Road From Hell To Nashville ONE COLUMBIA BAND’S THREE LUMINARIES.
BY JOHN DRAKE ROBINSON
I
t was a time when the biggest
closet or Shakespeare’s dirty socks. For
threat to your life on Columbia’s
good reason. The building was old, even
immediately looked up at the ceiling and
bar scene was hanging over your
back in the Age of Aquarius. It had been
wondered which implement of death
head. But darn, it was a fun music
Every time I entered Ford’s Theater, I
an auto showroom, and to dress up its
would lose its grip on the aging concrete
venue and well worth the risk to see some
dull bomb shelter interior, Ford’s Theater
ceiling and crush the woman I was
future Nashville stars.
imported ten dozen pointy heavy weapons
working up the courage to meet.
Before it became the Fieldhouse, even
of mass destruction — disguised as pool
But five nights a month, hundreds of
before a young Mizzou music major
tables and dentist chairs, lawn mowers
20-somethings jammed into this ragged
named Cheryl Crow played gigs there
and motorcycles gleaned from garages and
nightclub to hear a gaggle of house
when it was called Bullwinkle’s, the bar
trash heaps — to hang from the ceiling.
musicians who called themselves the
was named Ford’s Theater. Back then
The items were just waiting for a good
Mid-Missouri Hellband. Not sure how
the place smelled ancient, like King Tut’s
chance to mash somebody.
many of the band members sold their souls INSIDE COLUMBIA OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 37
