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Dow Thomas

The Power And Light Of Dow Thomas

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Dayton And The World Loses A Comedy Icon

 

Dow Thomas: Comedian & Musician 1953-2012

Sifting through scattered memories, most of which are second hand recollections that occurred before my time, I find myself overwhelmed by a life lived with a manic exuberance. I found out about comedian Dow Thomas’ passing from a friend and regular customer of Wiley’s Comedy Niteclub who called to inform me of the news. I stayed up until around 2:00am poring over the condolences that poured out from all over the country, cascading down from Dow’s Facebook page and other social media outlets. I looked through pictures that I had of Dow, read through transcripts from interviews I had done with him and reflected on conversations that we had had in the past. While many around me knew Dow longer and were closer friends than he and I were, Dow possessed the ability to make you feel that you were the only one in the room. Even during performances where there were a hundred or more people in the room, he made you feel as if you were within his inner circle, that this was an intimate gathering of friends and not just a group of people watching a performance. Even beyond his unerring talent and exuberant imagination, this was his true gift.

Born in Chillicothe and raised in the Akron/Cleveland area, Dow moved to the Dayton area in 1971 to attend Wright State as a theater major, a fitting field of study for someone who had been familiar with the stage for much of his youth. Even though Dow was not a native ofDayton, he embraced the area with the fervor that a lifelong resident should have.

“I didn’t originally come from Dayton. I just kind of adopted the city in 1971. I moved to the area to go to Wright State and I just stayed.” Dow said during one of our conversations. “I ended up living in downtown Dayton. I used to hang out at the Arcade a lot there. I’m a downtown kind of guy.”

Dow Thomas as Cléante in Molière’s Tartuffe

Dow was very active in the drama department while at Wright State, performing in several theater productions, such as Shakespear’s Romeo and Juliet and a pair of Molière’s plays; That Scoundrel Scapin and as Cléante in Tartuffe. In the latter drama, he caught the eye of a fellow student, Rob Haney, which signaled the beginning to a lifelong friendship.

As his hair grew, so did Dow’s creative yearnings. He began playing music around town, playing at venues that are but a mere memory to most Daytonians.

“I started my shows at the Upper Krust on North Main St. for ten dollars a day. I liked being up on North Main because I liked to go to shows and Gilly’s used to be up on North Main and there was also The Tropics and Suttmiller’s, which was fun for me to go see supper club type comedians like Jerry Van Dyke or Pete Barbutti and those kind of guys.”

Even though many venues and stages were opening themselves up to Dow’s music and acting, this was still not enough to contain Dow’s imaginative energies. He started sneaking his oddly skewed humor into his songs and banter with the audience.

A poster from 1972 for the Upper Krust

“I was actually doing comedy in 1972, but at that time there weren’t any comedy clubs, so I was just doing comedy along with music. I would get hired as a musician/entertainer and just add in the comedy in between songs.” Dow reflected. “I would always put on masks and stuff…I just can’t help myself from clowning around. I’d have the gig and eventually I had bands, but when I clowned around, everyone clowned around with me. What was always part of the show was me being stupid. It was what I said in between songs and me ruining songs, like singing like a dog and getting a ‘bark along’ going.”

In those days, you may have seen Dow tooling around town in his hearse, decked out like a Bohemian undertaker, black clad and sporting his ubiquitous top hat, running from gig to gig. He played with Astrid Socrates for seven years (creatively billed as Astrid & Dow) as well as drummer Doug Buchanan Tim McKenzie on lead guitar during yet another incarnation of his ingenuity. He was a featured act at The Trolley Stop, Clancy’s, the Iron Boar and Bogey’s.

Comics don’t need to spend actual time together to feel like brethren or family.  We are constantly accruing that common experience that instantly bonds us all separately and continually.  But, few of us are as pure, kind, original, and superbly funny as Uncle Dow.  I feel forever indebted to him for making it possible for me to ever start and I know that anyone who knew him feels like they, too are some of the luckiest people alive.  Uncle Dow made people laugh, but even more so he made them feel alive and always made them smile. ~Ryan Singer

“I’ll never forget the day Dow Thomas and my path crossed. I was part owner of a night club called Bogey’s onWatervliet Ave. in Dayton when Dow and Jeffro stopped in after buying guitar strings at Ace Music.” Mike Adams reminisced recently. “Things weren’t going very well at the bar and we couldn’t afford a barmaid or a cook so I was working. Dow Thomas ordered two drinks and asked for a menu and ordered a sandwich. Upon serving him he asked who owned the place and I confessed. He asked how things were going and I said not to well. He said he could tell. He asked if I had ever heard of Dow Thomas and I said yes but had never seen him and he told me I was talking to him. He offered to do a show one night a week for free as long as I didn’t interfere with him trying new material. I lost a lot of money owning that bar but memories like this makes the money seem irrelevant.”

Dow also frequently played in a bar onPatterson Road called the Iron Boar and becoming steadfast friends with the owners, Dan and Jodi Lafferty.

“We used to do a Gong Show at the Iron Boar and it was fun because we’d have some guy come up and go, ‘I’m going to do my imitation of a lobster’ and we’d go, ‘Good!’  So he’d put claws on and hop around like a freak…it was just so stupid!” Dow began chuckling to himself on the phone before going on. “I used to do a thing called Punt The Fish and I’d yell out, ‘It’s time to…’ the audience would scream, ‘Punt the Fish!’ I had this rubber fish and audience members would come up and kick this fish and we’d measure it off with toilet paper and the one who kicked it the farthest won. One night I had this woman up on stage and she kicked the fish and it went into the propeller of the ceiling fan and came back and smacked me in the face. Everybody was just laughing and I stood up and screamed, ‘Disqualified!’ It was all just so stupid, but you’ll never be able to have a moment like that ever again.”

In ’91 when I took over Jokers Comedy Café, Dow was running the open mic night.  I’d never heard of Dow and looking at this man in a black trench coat and top hat, I have to admit my first impression was not great-   he’s gonna be dark and sarcastic and egotistical, I thought.  I could not have been more wrong!  Dow loved being on stage and his joy radiated through the crowd. He would have an audience pounding their table to Power & Light, and tossing paper plates across the room as he sang Sail Cats. ~Lisa Grigsby

The comedy began usurping the music and Dan Lafferty began booking ventriloquists, jugglers and other oddball acts to fill out the shows.

“I used to have people like Jay Haverstick, who owned Jay’s Seafood, he would come and see my shows. So would Mike Peters. They would be out late at night and they would just say, ‘Hey! Let’s go and see what crazy Dow is doing!’” Dow said during another conversation. He went on, describing another huge change that was bout to occur in his life. “But there wasn’t a comedy club, so I left forL.A.I gave them (the Lafferty’s) a one year’s notice (laughing) and said, ‘In a year, I’m going toL.A.’ and that’s when we turned it into a comedy club.”

Eventually, the Lafferty’s decided to change not only the whole format of the club to comedy, but the name itself. In an unexplainable instance where someone could legitimately name a comedy club Lafferty’s, Dan decided to use his nickname instead, dubbing the newly restructured club Wiley’s.

Dow, true to his word, eventually left forLa-LaLand, seeking his fame and fortune, both of which proved to be elusive in the land of silicone and sunshine. He found that the venues that were available to him were less than conducive to his creative talents. At one point, he found himself doing sets between bouts at a boxing match and, towards his triumphant return toDayton, he was unceremoniously replaced with disco music at a Newport Beachclub. Yet the comedy scene was heating up nationally and Dow was riding the cusp of this chaotic wave. The shows were not the structured tight sets that we witness now in the clubs, but were given to more improvisational melees and surprise guests.

“There were these guys like Rich Purpura, who was a comedy/magician, and Tim Walko, a guitarist, and they were both fromChicago. We’d do a show, just packing the place, but at the end, we’d just get up there and jam and kept the show going and clown around with each other.” Dow said. “By then, we were just trying to make each other laugh, and that’s what the audience liked. It was kind of like. It was kind of like having the Rat Pack or something. It was that kind of feel, where everybody’s in the groove. Back then I could have Emo Philips come in and do twenty minutes and then I’d get a chance to go to the bathroom. Then maybe Judy Tenuta would come in and do twenty to thirty minutes and then I’d get a chance to go to the bathroom. For me, I thought it should go on all night.”

Rob Haney

Another person that benefitted from the burgeoning comedy scene was Rob Haney, a newly touring comic and future owner of Wiley’s Comedy Niteclub.

“Rob Haney came up to me one time and said, ‘Can I get up and do some time? I just got back from The Comedy Store.’ He had just done some showcasing there…which surprised me because Rob was a bouncer in a bar I used to work at.” Dow recalled that, “When I first met him, he was a doorman at a place called The Bar inWest Carrollton. It was a rough little joint that ended up being Omar’s for a while. It was an old basement bar and the family that owned it was pretty rugged. I actually had guns pulled on me in that bar. I’ve seen him mace guys and throw guys out…he’s a pretty tough guy. He had like shoulder length hair at the time and pretty well built, so it was a different Rob Haney that came up to me with short hair and asked if he could do like twenty minutes and I said, ‘Sure!’ I let him up at the Trolley Stop and I had a gig there like six nights a week…it was crazy.”

Another iconic staple of the Miami Valley that Dow had a huge role in was with his friend Dr. Creep (Barry Hobart) and Shock Theater. The inception of Shock Theater was supposed to be actually scary, as an accompaniment to the B-rated horror flicks that they screened, but the campy ineptness and irrepressible humor of Dr. Creep and the people that worked on the show quickly made the show a campy carnival for all of those late night viewers.

“I ended up getting on just about every television show in Dayton, but I got with Dr. Creep in the late seventies when it was called Saturday Night Dead because they had him on after Saturday Night Live, so it was kind of a neat spot.” Dow went on to say, “So I wrote The Ballad of Dr. Creep and went on there with my girlfriend at the time, Astrid Socrates and also with a bunch of my friends and we did skits.”

Barry Hobart (Dr. Creep) And Dow

“You know, what’s funny about that whole thing is that they became the number one, locally produced television show while I was writing for them. They would go, ‘Okay, we’re showing Dracula: Prince of Darkness’ and we made up the Bat Photo Studio and all of the prints would come out really dark, and customer’s would comment, ‘Wow! These prints are really dark!’ and I’d go, ‘Well, I am Dracula: Prints of Darkness! Sometimes I accidently cut their heads off!’ and I’d hold up a severed head. It was just stupid stuff like that.” With a tinge of regret, Dow added, “Of course, Joe Smith said, ‘No, you can’t do this and you can’t do that.’ He was an integral part of the studio there, so I got censored quite a bit and got into a little bit of trouble. I remember John Riggi and I getting yelled at because we changed the weather map one time. We got up there and started putting a bunch of tornados around Xenia…they were just little magnetized things back in those days. We were hippies in a studio that had rules.”

Dow played some forty different clubs in the MiamiValley the years that he was here and developed a huge fan base locally as well as in other cities that he performed in. In 1997, he moved to Florida with his wife Kay and they took up residence at some of the local clubs near their new home. Even after his departure, Dow was voted Dayton’s Best Comedian for two year’s running. He would still make frequent sojourns to Ohio, usually performing at Wiley’s one to two times a year, creating comedic chaos with his skewed humor and especially with his song Sailcats, in which he would cajole the audience into throwing paper plates in lieu of flattened kittens as the song implied. The staff would usually find the last paper plate stuck in the rafter shortly before Dow’s next scheduled appearance.

Dow Thomas At Dirty Little Secret Sanitarium Show

I contacted Dow in February of 2011 to ask if he would perform at my upcoming Dirty Little Secret Sanitarium show in May. He was eager to do the show because of the variety aspect of the event, but was reluctant in some ways, feeling that it would be a conflict of interests with his Wiley’s appearances. Rob Haney assured him that there would be no conflict and he agreed to do the show. That evening became an impromptu reunion of sorts in honor of Dr. Creep as not only had Dow worked closely with him, but so had some of the other performers slated for that evening. Thomas Nealeigh from FreakShow Deluxe had worked with Dr. Creep as had A. Ghastlee Ghoul. Our emcee for the evening was Dr. Creep’s protégé  Baron Von Pork Shop and some of the members of Team Void had recorded music for Shock Theater’s DVD’s. Dow had a blast at the show and had garnered yet a few more fans for his cult of comedy.

I contacted him again this past December to see if he wanted to be part of the Dirty Little Secrets Sick Of Santa Show and he readily agreed. We spent the rest of the conversation talking about old horror movies and other trivialities. On the night of the show, December 28th, 2011, his wife Kay showed up at the club saying that Dow was really sick and would be unable to perform. Seeing the look on her face and knowing Dow’s penchant for performing, I knew then that it was ore serious than she was letting on. The next evening, Dow arrived at Wiley’s to do his Thursday night set and we could all tell that something was wrong. The current owner, Rob Haney, and other staff and friends finally convinced Dow he needed to seek medical attention. He was admitted toMiamiValleyHospital and, two days later was released. He performed the New Year’s Eve show as well as the shows the following week.

His last show on January 7th, 2012 was astounding. Offstage, he seemed somewhat fragile, but as soon as he was on stage, that glimmer came into his eyes and the casual smirk shown across his face. He performed Sailcats and wheedled the audience into throwing the paper plates once again, daring any one of them to land one of them on his top hat. It was a picture perfect performance where someone actually landed a paper plate onto his top hat. The show ended with a standing ovation for our Uncle Dow, with audience members shouting out their approval and appreciation for Dow’s show.

After the show, Dow was surrounded by family and friends, well wishers and fans. It was the way of Dow: that feeling that you just needed to be near him and everything would be alright. You would be safely ensconced in his world.

Shortly after returning to Akron, Dow was hospitalized. He died January 18th, 2012. The outpouring of condolences and memories was immediate and Dow’s Facebook page became a makeshift memorial for a legion of stunned fans and friends to share their grief as well as their memories.

I think now of the boarded up Upper Crust, the warped wooden floors of the Trolley Stop, the comfortably worn carpet of the Wiley’s stage and I can hear the clank of glasses against the cascading laughter and see Dow with a mischievous gleam in his eyes as he dons a mask and unleashes a dialogue of absurdity in the voice of Lon Chaney. I can see him on stage doing what he did best: fashioning a world without limits, pushing the envelope until it bent and combining chords to nonsensical songs that bring laughter to all who are compelled to bang their glasses on the table and sing along. I see him smile down from the stage wearing a paper plate atop his felted hat, an improvised halo for our imaginative jester.

Read my previous article from 12/2010 – “Dow-Town Dayton”

Maybe You Understand Me Now

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The Philosophy Behind The Dirty Little Secrets Show

May 11, 2011 Show Poster

While, at first glance, this may seem like a very self serving article, insofar as I am the creator of the variety show Dirty Little Secrets and should not write about things I have a vested interest in. I am not, however, using this as a platform to promote the next show (which is on May 11th!) because that would not only be in bad taste and self aggrandizing , but might also be viewed as potentially unethical (…at 8:00pm!). No… instead, this is an article about the impetus for creating the show, the  philosophy behind the show and the hopes of what the show will one day become.

The way in which the idea of the show was formed was of the same fashion in which I do everything: haphazardly. It came to me slowly and was just a jumbled collection of thoughts, most of which was borne out of boredom and irritation. I was getting bored with the desperate attempts that performers and venues alike were going to entertain the masses. It probably hit critical mass when I went to see Trans Siberian Orchestra and, along with 4,263 guitarists and more lasers than the Rebel Alliance, they made it snow inside the arena. While novel in many respects, it was not nearly as useful or needed as it would be, say, in July. The irony was not lost on me as I walked back to my car in the snow, wondering why they didn’t just open up a skylight or something and allow the real snow in for free…and reduce the cost of the tickets. I also was getting bored with the whole “scene” scene.

I was never one for going to a crowded club and having beer spilled on my boots as I witnessed a “Triple Bill Extravaganza Of Epic Proportions” which turned out to be three musical groups from the same genre belting out seemingly the same melodies at a tooth shattering decibel level. The comedy scene consisted of emcee, middle act, headliner and “don’t forget to tip the wait staff!” before being unceremoniously directed to the door. Then there was the entertainment world of the theatres and pavilions and centers, which, to be honest, I would never be able to afford. Even for how high profile their acts are, there is a stringently preformatted, preprocessed feel to them, taking away any sense of danger or wonderment from the event. Straying off topic for the moment…can we please have a moratorium on the obligatory encore? This whole standing up and sitting down thing is too reminiscent of Mass and is also very disingenuous. Like there would be anyone at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert saying to themselves, “My God! I can’t believe they are going to leave without playing Freebird! Stand up! Stand up and applaud people! They may have forgotten it was on their set list!”

I began to look back in fondness at the entertainment of my youth as, growing up, I watched Shock Theater, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and community theater where there was always a real danger in someone forgetting their lines or the stage possibly collapsing (it happened in Hagerstown, Indiana during The Fiddler On The Roof when I was about eight). There are so many things that I like, that you would never be able to find them all in one place. Where could I find good music, comedy, unusual acts, dancing and other more theatrical arts? Nowhere.

At this point, I started using the Wiley’s Comedy Niteclub Facebook page as a litmus test, posting up videos of various things, gauging people’s reactions by comments and views. I would post up random stuff from the Carol Burnett Show, Carson, the Dean Martin Show, older Catskills comedians and various vaudevillian movie clips. The reaction from the subscribers dwarfed the reactions to more modern fare. Maybe there were others that were bored or didn’t like all the frenzied build up and hype that seems to go into modern entertainment. That is when I started talking to others about the idea that was forming…

Lisa Bunny Foo-Foo and Todd The Fox

This is not to make it seem like I discovered something new, like plutonium or the law of gravity or that pair of Oakley sunglasses that I set down three months ago, which were never to be seen again. The idea that I had was simply to bring all the elements that I find entertaining into one big variety show. To be totally honest, I actually spoke to people that I had hoped would take it upon themselves to bring the show to fruition. I mean, the whole purpose of this was to entertain me, which would be pretty hard to do if I actually had to work at it! Sadly, there were no takers and it came down to a put up or shut up proposition and so I took the plunge.

The date of the first show was set for February 16th and now all I had to do was find some performers and the rest was gravy. I made a few calls and booked a few acts and thought to myself, “Is that all there is to it?” Well, my subconscious, who has had some sort of vendetta out on me for years, remained silent, allowing me to blissfully walk into the nonstop whirlwind of promotions, preparations, press releases and scheduling that comes with each show. Had I known what was to go into each show…well, read on…

Our Beautiful Waitresses: Kira, Sarah and Kristina

I had booked a phenomenal jazz singer, Patricia Berg, Geborah, a modern jazz and hip-hop dancer, Henrique Couto, a…um…he’s…well, he has a mustache. He is kind of hard to describe. He’s like what would happen if the spirits of Tiny Tim and Sam Kinison  possessed the body of Weird Al Yankovic and then coerced him to have sex with Judy Tenuta…Henrique would be the spawn of such a union. I also had a comedy troupe from Cincinnati that was supposed to be there, but they bailed at the last minute. I called Jay Madewell, who is a local musician and who was also playing drums that night for Henrique. Madewell suggested that I call Todd the Fox, who, as luck would have it, was available that evening. One of the other essential facets of the show was the selection of the waitresses. I knew I wanted unique, friendly waitresses and I thought it would be neat for them to be able to dress in retro or pin-up clothing. I wanted the waitresses to be the very beautiful face of the show, and model Sarah Walls, dance instructor Kira LaFave and the very versatile Kristina Savage have gone way beyond my expectations. If anything, they are not only the face of the show; they are the heart of the show.

Our Beautiful Waitresses: Lily, Sarah, Kira and Kristina.

Aside from a few technical glitches (don’t trust me around a CD player) the evening went beautifully…and this is where all of the time I had invested in running around, making phone calls and the ensuing chaos was made worthwhile. When the emcee, Vincent Holiday, said, “Goodnight!” and the lights came up…no one left. No one left and there was this energy…people were excited. The performers wanted to talk to the audience and the audience wanted to talk to the artists and to each other. Some of the musicians were taken aback because they were not used to performing in front of a “listening” audience and they had to scale back the act that they were used to performing in front of a rowdy bar crowd. The audience was exposed to forms of music and dance and comedy that they may never would have experienced before because they were usually performed at venues that they may not frequent. The performers were influenced by other performers that they, in turn, may never have shared a stage with. That is when I knew that this was right.

Over the course of several shows, we have had fantastic rock, ballad, R&B, soul and jazz singers, accomplished guitarists, drummers, saxophonists and other sundry musicians. We have had belly dancing, shadowbox dancing and other various forms of dance as well as sideshow performers, comedians and poets. Each show has unintentionally taken on it’s own hue and flavor, dictating for itself what the other acts should be, how it should be promoted and any other special features. For instance, the last show featured shadow dancers, a spoken word artist, a belly dancer, an R&B singer, an improv comedy troupe and Al Holbrook, who is a phenomenal soul/R&B singer and keyboardist. In contrast, the upcoming show will have legendary musician/comedian Dow Thomas, Kaleb Kane and Reverend Tommy Gunn from Hollywood’s FreakShow Deluxe, the lucha surf band Team Void and, rounding out the weirdness, hosts and emcees, A. Ghastlee Ghoul and Baron Von Porkchop, whose Tales of the Macabre television show has marched on in the footsteps of Dr. Creep. The next show will have…hell, I have no clue what the next show will have. It could have zydeco musicians paired up with juggling baboons for all I know…and that’s really the point.

Shadowbox Dancer and Al Holbrook

In an age of homogenized, prepackaged consumables (entertainment included) I think there should still be a danger there. I think that the audience should be should be able to come in to a theatrical setting and be surprised instead of entering with a head full of preconceived notions. I think that everyone who witnesses one of these shows should have a niggling feeling at the base of their skull telling them that, at any moment, all of this could go horribly wrong as it is all done without a net. I think that, when the show is over, the audience and the artists should be able to walk away with swirling images of the moments of unexpected brilliance that that they had witnessed, like when Todd The Fox and Lisa Bunny Foo-Foo took to the stage with a guitar, a suitcase and a washboard and tore the house down. This is all just proving that there is more out there on the desperate horizons of our everyday life that can still not only entertain and audience, but can make that audience feel as if they are part of the show as well, taking them out of the role of voyeur and allowing them to see through that fourth wall, sharing the symbiotic energy with the artists.

In essence, the overall philosophy of the show is this: to create a community. A community between the artists that grace the stage. A community of audience members that find kindred souls with similar interests and, most of all an all encompassing community of everyone involved. Of course, I would like to have a larger audience (which is slightly difficult since the shows are held on Wednesdays) and this is not so I can line my own pockets with more money. I want to be able to pay the performers what they are more than worth. I’d like to give bonuses to the waitresses and be able to create props and such for the show itself, to make it better for the audience. I would also like a larger audience because I feel that the performers I have had deserve a larger audience, and one that is there to take in the experience, not to pound back brew with background music. Maybe I’m just too naively idealistic, but all of this has opened my eyes to the creativity that exists in Dayton and I would love to draw all that creative energy into one place… then it will be a Dirty Little Secret no more…

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Video of the February 16th Show

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Video of the March 16th Show

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Video of the March 23rd Show

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Video of the April 27th Show

Brilliance On The Edge Of Night

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The Passing Of A Community’s Icon

A seven year old boy sits rapt, wrapped in a heavy quilt in a darkened room, the only light coming from the television, which created sporadic flashes of light and shadow against the living room walls. Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff are on the screen, emoting Roger Corman’s interpretation of the Raven. In between scenes of decrepit castle chambers and crypts of the unquiet dead, commercials for King Kwik and other local retailers burst forth in chromatically bright colors in stark contrast to the desaturated dimness of the movie. 

After the vendors are done hawking their wares, a familiar black and white face appears, a gentle smile plastered across his grease painted visage. Dr. Creep launches into a faux interview or an outlandish skit that, by the grace of it’s own unpolished design, seemed funnier. Whether it was spoofing the movie that was playing or reviewing the disco moves of John Revolting, Dr. Creep, in his signature black top hat and cape, would reassure you that this was all make believe, that nothing could hurt you and that the world of horror was a landscape to be explored and not abhorred. 

The nephew of Doug Hobart, a makeup artist and stuntman who had a traveling monster show back in the 1940’s and 50’s called Dr. Traboh’s House of Horrors, Barry Hobart was almost predestined to become Dr. Creep. Hobart was a master control engineer for WKEF-Channel 22 when, in 1971, he suggested a late night hosted horror show to salvage lagging ratings in the late night time slot. After submitting a tape of Dr. Death, the project was well received, yet remained shelved until the following year. On January 1st, 1972, Dr. Death made his television debut on Shock Theatre. Several shows into the series, the woman in charge of makeup got rid of the vampire teeth and changed Hobart’s costume. A name was drawn out of a hat and Dr. Creep was born. 

The comedic aspect of the show was an accident. Props failed, lines were forgotten and effects either didn’t work or went on far longer than intended…which cracked the Creeper up. The whole crew decided to go with the natural flow of things and an organically kitschy comedy of errors ensued from 1972 until 1985. Throughout those years, from being a child all the way into my adult years, I would run into Dr. Creep at various events or in the most unexpected places. I remember going with my mom to the Dairy Queen on Airway Rd. to an autograph signing attended by Dr. Creep, Wolfman Jack and someone who I believe was Elvira, although it could have been one of the other incredibly seductive vampires roaming the countryside at the time. I was at the drive-in on Halloween when they buried Dr. Creep alive as part of a benefit. There was a dusk to dawn showing of B-rated horror films with periodic updates broadcasted by Dr. Creep from beyond the grave. Years later, I was talking to Philip Chakeres, owner of Chakeres’ Theaters, and we got onto the subject of that particular event… 

“You were talking about Dr. Creep earlier. Well Steve, the guy who runs the drive-in there, he can tell you better… he said that one time, this drive-in actually buried Dr. Creep.” Chakeres went on to talk about what those kind of evenings entailed. “I mean, there were all sorts of things done. We used to do that stuff and we would give away Dracula Cocktail, which was just Cream Soda, and then when the movie was over, during the dusk to dawn shows, we’d give out coffee and donuts at dawn. There were some times when we ran dusk to dawn shows where the sun would start rising and the credits were still on the screen. Those were the good old days…” 

The “good old days” also included a lot of local programming, creating local icons that attained their own, more homespun, brand of celebrity. The King Kwik “Brothers” (Mike Tangi), Steve Kirk, Bob Shreve, Ruth Lyons, Bob Braun, Don Wayne, Uncle Al…the list goes on. At the top of that list sat Dr. Creep. With his kind heart and his patented ‘hoo-ha-ha’ laugh, Dr. Creep was probably the most recognizable local television personality in the Tri-sate area. Black grease painted eyes and white face tended to make you stand out in a crowd…and driving around in a hearse would make an impression as well. He also used his celebrity wisely by offering his services for a slew of charities, such as the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Project Smiles as well as a host of many other, smaller, fundraising events. In interviewing John Higgins, a puppeteer who worked on Shock Theater, Hobart’s generous heart was one of the first subjects he brought up. 

“Those years working with Creep on Shock Theatre and Saturday Night Dead were some of the most fun of my working years.  Having fun and making a difference in people’s lives were key values he lived by…and we all shared.  It was always amazing to see how much everyone loved him, particularly the kids.” Higgins went on to reflect on the oddity of the children’s reaction to the Creeper. “The kids absolutely loved Dr. Creep, someone they, by all rights should have been afraid of, with that white face and black eyes…they must have sensed his very kind heart.” 

Dr. Creep and Obieyoyo

On the topic of benefits, John went on to reflect that, “Barry was always soliciting me as puppeteer and director of Night Vision Puppets to do freebie benefits with him for people in need in the community. I’d get Obieyoyo and other characters and appear with Creep and musician friend Garry Pritchett, who appeared a few times on Shock Theatre as the four armed bongo-playing hipster, Octo Rhebop. It was always fun, always for a good cause, and usually never involved any kind of income. That was Barry. He loved helping people, he loved getting friends to help out…and he was fun to work with.” 

Dow Thomas, a comedian and writer for Shock Theatre which, by that time, had become Saturday Night Dead,  had some insight into Hobart’s unerring compassion… 

“The best thing I remember about Barry is that he was always kind. He was a good, I mean serious Christian. He went to church all the time and really cared about people. He did all these benefits and expected nothing in return. Some of them would be long and grueling and he would be hot in that costume, but he would talk to everybody and sign autographs.” Dow added, “He was sincere about it and he has really touched a lot of people’s lives. I think it broke his heart when he lost the show.” 

Even though the films that were shown were creepy and campy, like Curse of Frankenstein or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the movies actually became a secondary feature to the show. Everyone tuned in to see what kind of Gong Show antics Dr. Creep and the crew would brew up this week. From regular characters like Obieyoyo, Duffy the Dog and Freddie Forefinger and His Phalangic Friends to skits featuring Lester Fern’s Disco Dance Studio or the Flamboyant Frankenstein, viewers were always given some of the most deranged and off the wall comedy available on television. 

Dr. Creep And Vampire Friend

“One of the things we did was, I decided to have them tell me what movie they were going to show, and I would write a skit about it. Like, we showed The Valley of the Gwangi, which is about a bunch of cowboys ropin’ and ridin’ dinosaurs and Gwangi is the Tyrannosaurus Rex.” Dow Thomas related. “There’s an old man in it who plays the professor (Laurence Naismith), so I put on my old man mask and a pith helmet and played him, and I’d say things like, ‘I think I have recording of old dinosaur sounds’ and I’d start playing a woman singing and everyone would go, ‘Those aren’t dinosaur sounds! Those are Dinah Shore sounds!’” 

Dow’s recollection of this particular episode brought up one of the other key players in the calamitous comedy of Shock Theatre, John Riggi. Riggi has since gone on to write for such comedies as The Dennis Miller Show, The Dana Carvey Show and, most recently, 30 Rock. 

“I don’t know if you remember, but the first thing they find in The Valley of the Gwangi is a little horse…eohippus I think is what the professor says it is…it’s a prehistoric animal. Well, they put it into their rodeo act and everyone would come to see this little tiny horse…it’s a weird film. So, they would go from the movie to us doing all of this stupid stuff and it all matched.” Dow went on, saying, “There’s one point where one of the Mexicans in the movie says, ‘Hey gringo! I want my little horse back!’ John Riggi played one of the Mexicans in a skit and I had a big sombrero that Wiley (original owner of Wiley’s Comedy Niteclub) had given me and we put it on John’s head, and then we cut to Riggi in this sombrero saying, ‘I want my little horsey back!’ Dr. Creep finally goes, ‘Okay.’ So here’s Dr. Creep on all fours and John Riggi riding on his back around the studio. I mean, just think about what a good sport Dr. Creep was to get down on all fours and have John Riggi ride on his back like he was a horse.” 

There were countless times when the powers that be and the rag tag members of the Shock Theatre brigade locked horns. Sometimes it was a disagreement about a skit’s content, like an incident where they wanted to show a headless Duffy the Dog on an operating table with four sets of feet, one set which would be where his head should have been. Other times it had nothing to do with the crazy house that the show had become, per se, but more to do with the types of personalities that ran the asylum… 

“I remember John Riggi and I getting yelled at because we changed the weather map one time. We got up there and started putting a bunch of tornados around Xenia…they were just little magnetized things back in those days.” To sum up the tensions, Dow simply said, “We were hippies in a studio that had rules.” 

John Higgins, who acted as producer of Shock Theatre as well as its puppeteer, filled in some of the blanks as far as Hobart’s other duties at the station. 

“I love how his friends and colleagues at work almost always called him ‘Creep’…whether Barry was in costume or not.  Anyway, Creep was the person who usually taught the new people how to operate the on-air master control. He was patient, calm, and quite adept at this nerve-racking task…and a great teacher.” Higgins went on to remember an amusing incident. “I remember sitting with him in training early one Sunday morning.  We were running the Jimmy Swaggart religious show, a program Swaggart paid the station to put on the air. Creep  looked at the clock, then said ‘Okay, the tears start in 3 minutes.’  Sure enough, at exactly 22 minutes after the hour, Jimmy Swaggart started crying, asking for contributions from the audience.  Apparently it happened each program at exactly the same time; Creep knew the on-air job so well he could have run the station on-air with his eyes closed.” 

Trilogy of Terror

Over the years, I have run into Barry Hobart in different locations. Sometimes he was in Dr. Creep’s full regalia, other times he was just simply Barry. I never expected him to remember from one meeting to the next, as each one was separated by a chasm of years. We spoke of different things at each meeting, but an underlying sense of connectivity to the community seemed to prevail over each conversation. In recent years, I had heard and read about his failing health and difficulty in keeping up with his related health care bills. The last time I saw him, he was attending a benefit in his honor at Wiley’s Comedy Niteclub. This was one of several benefits held to aid Barry Hobart with his mounting health care bills. Everybody was more than willing to help someone out in their time of need, especially someone who had given so much over the years, even if it was just a moment of laughter, fending off, for a moment, the darkness of this scary movie that we find ourselves extras in. 

That is probably the most important thing that Dr. Creep gave to the community: an alternative to fear. While some may have jumped and cowered with a throw pillow clenched to their face when the voodoo doll came to life in Trilogy of Terror and began chasing Karen Black down the hallway with a knife, soon there would be a respite from the nameless dread, a halo of hilarity to make us feel safe, to make us feel not alone. Barry Hobart was not only an integral part of our community, he created an alternative community populated by people from all walks of life who shared in his skewed embrace of horror shows and campy comedy. 

On the afternoon of Friday, January 14th, 2011, Barry Hobart passed away in a hospice facility. I had just logged onto my computer when I received the phone call telling me of his passing. After I hung up, I held my thoughts in a moment of silence and as I looked upwards, my eyes fell on a photograph of myself and Dr. Creep that was taken at the Wiley’s benefit, which sits upon the top of the armoire that houses my computer. As I looked at it, I became aware of all the other trinkets and other knick-knacks that have collected up there over the years. Books of photographs. A riot helmet from one of my old security jobs. An ashtray full of cigar tubes and bands, the cigars long gone, smoked with some of my closest friends and family. It struck me that all the other items represented momentary epochs in my life. Periods of the past that I have collected totems of so as to remember them clearly. While this may seem silly, the picture of Barry Hobart represents the constants in my life, from the present all the way back to when I was a seven year old boy sitting rapt, wrapped in a heavy quilt in a darkened room…learning a lesson that the darkness can be fended off by the light of one’s compassion. 

Dow-Town Dayton

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Dow Thomas And The Cult Of Comedy

Part horror show hippy, part amusing musician, part imaginative genius. Dow Thomas is truly one of the Dayton originals, having performed comedy locally before there was even a venue dedicated to the genre. He has stepped so far outside of the box, finding himself still in the forefront of comedic inspiration, twisting the mundane into a bizarrely fascinating funhouse that moves so quickly, it’s hard for the average person to keep up. From playing Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love on the banjo to a stirring rendition of Sailcats, which prompts a Rocky Horror-esque melee of paper plate flinging, Dow Thomas is one of the most original and entertaining comedians around.

I was recently able to talk to Dow from his Florida home as he readied himself for his trek North to Dayton. I asked him to describe his unique brand of humor…because I sure as hell couldn’t.

“What I do is I write stupid songs…a lot of stupid songs…and that makes stupid routines that you’re not going to hear them from anybody else because they’re mine.” Dow went on to describe his dedication to creeping his material fresh, “If you write new routines and jokes all the time, they are going to be thirty seconds at the most. You can’t get up there and be Bill Cosby anymore. People have short attention spans, so what I do is write a strings of songs or jokes.”

In the late seventies, Dow showed up on a local television show that aired at various times on Channel 22 which was then titled Saturday Night Dead, a play on words to contrast the show’s spot directly following Saturday Night Live. It featured B-rated horror films and boasted one of the most good-humored hosts by the name of Barry Hobart who played the part of Dr. Creep. Dow, along with his girlfriend at the time, Astrid Socrates, played an original song titled The Ballad of Dr. Creep, which signaled one of the funniest collaborations, along with a host of other comedians, a puppeteer, John Riggi (who went on to write for 30 Rock) and a flamingly gay Frankenstein. Dow has never given up his penchant for the peculiar, having appeared in several movies, most within the genre of the B-rated horror flick. Dow spoke briefly about his most recent foray into film.

“It’s called The Psycho Dish. The director actually has gotten me in a part of another film he’s getting the rights to which is a Civil War movie. They want me to play a legless, one armed guy in a wheelchair. It’s called Bats Out Of Hell. I’ve got a couple of irons in the fire with the acting thing, but they’re all going to be independent films, and you never know where that’s going to go.” In relating what type of roles he has played in the past, a common theme begins to emerge. “I played the Devil in a movie and I played…it’s always like I’m playing some grave robber or something like that. People actually call me up and say, ‘Somebody said that you be great at playing the creepy old man downstairs.’ For me, it just keeps your chops up when you try to do everything.”

Our conversation meandered on for over an hour. Dow related stories about the roots of Dayton’s comedy scene which, at that time, was virtually nonexistent, at least from our modern perspective.

“I didn’t originally come from Dayton. I just kind of adopted the city in 1971. I moved to the area to go to Wright State and I just stayed and I ended up living in downtown Dayton. I started my shows at the Upper Krust on North Main Street for ten dollars a day.” Dow went on reminiscing, saying, “I liked being up on North Main because I liked to go to shows and Gilly’s used to be up on North Main. There was also The Tropics and Suttmiller’s, which was fun for me to go see supper club type comedians like Jerry Van Dyke or Pete Barbutti and those kind of guys.”

In the seventies, comedy was not the mainstream draw that it would soon become in the eighties, so Dow would camouflage his true comedic intentions under the cover of his music. He would get hired in as a musician and then add in little comedy bits here and there until they became his entire set. Back in those days, a set might be five hours, not the tight twenty or the solid hour that has become an industry standard. Dow found himself at many local bars, like The Bar, Clancy’s and the Iron Boar, which was to become legendary Wiley’s Comedy Niteclub.

“We used to do a Gong Show at the Iron Boar and it was fun because we’d have some guy come up and go, ‘I’m going to do my imitation of a lobster’ and we’d go, ‘Good!’ So he’d put claws on and hop around like a freak…it was just so stupid! I used to do a thing called Punt The Fish and I’d yell out, ‘It’s time to…’ the audience would scream, ‘Punt the Fish!’ I had this rubber fish and audience members would come up and kick this fish and we’d measure it off with toilet paper and the one who kicked it the farthest won.” Dow went on to tell about, “One night, I had this woman up on stage and she kicked the fish and it went into the propeller of the ceiling fan and came back and smacked me in the face. Everybody was just laughing and I stood up and screamed, ‘Disqualified!’ It was all just so stupid, but you’ll never be able to have a moment like that ever again.”

Hearing the stories about the way things used to be, it made the current state of comedy seem somewhat stale and staid. It just seemd like there used to be so much more than the emcee, the feature act, the headliner and then, “Thanks a lot! Don’t forget to tip the wait staff!”

“Right!”Dow agreed, before going into another story about the way things were. “There were these guys, Rich Purpura, who was a comedy/magician, and Tim Walko, a guitarist, and they were both from Chicago. We’d do a show, just packing the place, but at the end, we’d just get up there and jam and kept the show going and clown around with each other. By then, we were just trying to make each other laugh, and that’s what the audience liked. It was kind of like. It was kind of like having the Rat Pack or something. It was that kind of feel, where everybody’s in the groove.”

In speaking about the origins of Wiley’s, I asked Dow how he came to have such a following there (that is still quite fervent even to this day), but also how he came to meet the current owner of Wiley’s, comedian Rob Haney.

“Rob came up to me one time and said, ‘Can I get up and do some time? I just got back from The Comedy Store.’ He had just done some showcasing there…which surprised me because Rob was a bouncer in a bar I used to work at…”

I was quick to learn that almost every story that Dow told led into another story, with sequels and prequels thrown in just to keep things interesting. Backtracking, I finally found out about the first time he had met Rob Haney.

“When I first met him, he was a doorman at a place called The Bar in West Carrollton. It was a rough little joint that ended up being Omar’s for a while and then Fricker’s. It was an old basement bar and the family that owned it was pretty rugged. I actually had guns pulled on me in that bar. It was rough and there were a lot of biker guys in there, but I was playing in there for a while.” Dow said, before getting back on tack. “Rob and I started talking at the bar and then, all of a sudden, he realized that when he was at Wright State he had seen me in a theater production and we talked about that for a while. Anyway, at that time, Rob had like shoulder length hair, so it was a different Rob Haney that came up to me some time later with short hair and asked if he could do like a twenty minute set. I said, ‘Sure!’ I let him up onstage at the Trolley Stop…”

And the rest, as they say, is history. Dow appears at Wiley’s two times a year, bringing with him his bag of masks, his banjo, a balanced mix of new material and old favorites. If you have never seen Dow onstage, do yourself a favor and check him out this week at Wiley’s. He will be appearing Thursday, December 16th at 8:00 pm, Friday December 17th at 9:00 pm, Saturday December 18th at 8:00 pm and 10:30 pm and Sunday December 19th at 8:00 pm. Tickets range from $5 to $12. For more information or to make reservations, call (937) 224-JOKE or go online to www.wileyscomedyclub.com.

The Theater Of The Strange

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Comedian Dow Thomas Reminisces About The Dayton Comedy Scene

12/15/10

            It’s very rare for someone to be able to meet any of the people that were instrumental in warping the needle on their moral compass. For example, in the future, the odds are astronomically against my kids ever meeting up with Snooki, the creator of Grand Theft Auto or any or the Real Housewives of Poughkeepsie. I, however, was able to talk with one of the people who were instrumental in changing my vision and giving me the ability to see the world through laughing eyes: Dow Thomas. Dow is a musician, comedian and actor, who was, at one time, a script writer and musician for the notoriously wonderful local program shown on channel 22 and hosted by Dr. Creep called Shock Theater…a show that I was an avid fan of when I was a kid.

I was able to speak with Dow recently from his Floridahome. The first question I asked was whether or not Shock Theater was his introduction into the world of comedy.

“No. I was actually doing comedy in 1972, but at that time there weren’t any comedy clubs, so I was just doing comedy along with my music. I got with Dr. Creep in the late seventies when it was called Saturday Night Dead because they had him on after Saturday Night Live, so it was kind of a neat spot.” Dow reflected on the first time he was on Dr. Creep’s show, saying, “I wrote The Ballad of Dr. Creep and went on there with my girlfriend at the time, Astrid Socrates. I remember some of the early stuff. It was juvenile jokes and stuff, but that was what they (the television station) wanted because they wanted everything clean, stupid and quick.”

If there were no comedy clubs, what venues did he perform in? Dow told me that he would just play in the local bars, places like the Trolley Stop, The Bar and The Iron Boar.

“I would get hired as a musician/entertainer and just add in the comedy in between songs. I would always put on masks and stuff…I just can’t help myself from clowning around. I’d have the gig and eventually I had bands, but when I clowned around, everyone clowned around with me. What was always part of the show was me being stupid.” Dow said. “Sailcats was one of the early comedy songs I wrote which got people to throwing plates at me and that just started it all. We used to sing The Wonderful World of Toilet Paper and we used to TP all the clubs like Clancy’s and the old Wiley’s, which was The Iron Boar originally. But comedy was always a thing with me.”

Since this was predating the eighties comedy boom, I wondered how the comedy scene evolved inDayton. After talking with Dow over an hour, I got a sense of how paradoxically brutal and liberating the process was.

“I was doing The Iron Boar only on Sundays and Wiley had hired me to do it by myself and so I basically got rid of the band…but I still had jam sessions. I was primarily a single act and that’s when I went almost strictly comedy. Back then, I had to do five hours, like from nine to two in the morning, so you had to have a lot of material.” Dow added a couple of memories from the early days ofDaytoncomedy, saying, “We had a comedy night on Tuesdays…and people still bitched about the dollar door charge! It was just crazy. I remember D.L. Stewart came in and did a little bit one night and then wrote an article about the experience.”

Since he had seen the whole evolution of the comedy scene, I wondered whether he felt that it had become too rigid, too structured.

“Yeah…yeah I do. Back then I could have Emo Philips come in and do twenty minutes and then I’d get a chance to go to the bathroom. Then maybe Judy Tenuta would come in and do twenty to thirty minutes…and then I’d get a chance to go to the bathroom.” Dow related that, “For me, I thought it should go on all night because I had been out to the Comedy Store and all of these places. I mean, I had moved out toL.A.in 1983 and I spent a couple of years out there going to different clubs. Back then, nobody closed their bar after the show. A lot of times, we’d all be up doing improv.”

Dow was not a native resident of Dayton, having moved here to attend Wright State, but he quickly adopted the city as his own. He became a habitué of the Arcade, the local bars and the dinner clubs ofDayton. I asked when he had moved from Dayton to his current residence inFlorida.

“Uh…let’s see (yelling to his wife)…Kay! When did we move down here? What year was that? 1997.” Dow the related a funny anecdote. “After we moved, aDaytonnewspaper im

 

mediately voted me the funniest man inDayton…then they did it again the next year. They voted me the funniest man inDaytonfor two straight years and I wasn’t even living there!”

The paper in question used to be called The Dayton Voice…then Impact Weekly…and now it is known as the Dayton City Paper. Maybe we were just still pretending that our Uncle Dow hadn’t left our fair city.

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