Chords for Jeff Keith of Tesla talks about his Rock Scene

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_ _ _ _ _ [Bb] First concert I went to _ _ was 1978, _ Day on the Green number 3.
Van Halen opened a show.
They were out with their first record.
_ And everybody was like, ah, did you see the guy with the green and white shirt?
This guitar guy was just wailing and stuff.
And I just remember ACDC coming on next going, who in the hell is this?
Man, what a great band.
_ And then Pat Travers, third, and then Foreigner.
It was a Monday, a day like any other day.
I left a small town.
Oh, man, it was great. _ _
And then Aerosmith came out, 78, in their prime of Toxic Twins and all this stuff.
Man, I thought it was the greatest thing, but a lot of people, including my brother,
was like, when Aerosmith opens, we're 14th after whatever it costs.
We're Day on the Green back then.
_ And I thought it was great, man.
_ Tyler and all them guys up there.
And so it was a great experience.
And so, of course, we went home to Georgetown, then drove 19 miles over to Auburn across
the canyon and bought every 8-track tape that ACDC had available, which was like two or three.
This is the first we ever heard of them in 78. _
And he had some great stuff.
Still, one of my very biggest inspirations was Bon Scott.
_ Jeans and tennis shoes, no shirt.
Get that mic and rock it.
And I love that.
That's one of my biggest inspirations.
_ _ And, of course, Steven Tyler and people like that, because it was my first concert.
All that stuff really was instilled in me.
_ _ I still remember like it's yesterday.
_ That's the kind of stuff that still I like to listen to.
Aerosmith, dude, like all this kind of stuff.
One of my all-time favorite bands is _ _ Foghat.
Always will be.
Matter of fact, when people ask me, what are you listening to?
Like last week, I go Foghat, _ you know, early ZZ Top.
_ All that good stuff, man. _
I'm stuck in the 70s, 60s and 70s.
When I was two years old, we moved from Texarkana, Arkansas, where I was born.
And then we moved to Georgetown, California, and my dad played in a band in the corner
of the bar, the saloon at the Georgetown Hotel.
He played guitar with his twin amp, reverb, whatever.
And then _ Wayne Schrader was on piano and Banjo Bob was on banjo.
And so I used to just move the sand that's on the shuffleboard off and then lay on the hardwood
so I didn't have to go over to the room we lived to across the hallway. _
_ And so that started right from the beginning of my eyes opening and stuff.
My dad was in a band. _ _ _
And then once I went to Oklahoma, graduated high school, came back, bought a book to learn
how to play chords because we would have campfires in Georgetown, population 900 and something.
It still is.
And we would get to play our favorite Beatles song, you know, Rolling Stones song or whatever.
_ And so I got a book that taught me the chords.
_ It makes you know we got a little living room band, me and my brother, a couple guys,
and the next thing you know, _ _ these two girls that used to live in Georgetown lived in Sacramento
and they knew Frank and Brian and said, hey, their singer's quick tonight.
They don't even know it.
They're playing The Rock Factory.
If you make it down to Sacramento, we'll get you an audition.
And I did.
And thank goodness I shared the mic with Frank because I knew nothing about microphones.
I was holding it two feet away.
It was whistling and Dixie and all this stuff.
But I came over to share the mic with Frank going,
Your love is driving me crazy.
And Frank heard that.
_ Otherwise, I was dead meat, man.
So thank you, Frank. _ _
And the rest is history.
Now I'm in the band and city kid and next thing you know, we're playing clubs.
And we found a club, the Oasis Ballroom.
_ The owner, Dave Dittman, let us throw our own songs into the top 40 because that's all that was allowed.
_ And then we started going to L.A. to showcase.
_ Come back to the drawing board in Sacramento.
Everybody else would stay down there, move down there, dress like it, walk like them, talk like them, _ write songs like them.
And we'd come back to Sacramento, come to the drawing board and try to say, where's our song?
We put it between Van Halen and Ronnie James Dio and go, what's missing in ours?
Which is quite a bit, which we learned to develop and develop.
But we stayed in Sacramento.
And therefore is why Nikki sits in a loving, joking way, says, hey, when somebody asks him who's Tesla,
because we went on tour with him in 1990 when we made, that's when we ended up making the Five Man Acoustical Jam.
_ But he said Tesla is a bunch of tomato farmers from Sacramento.
We were like, yes.
_ _ _ We were proud to be tomato farmers from Sacramento.
_ A lot of our friends are like, man, ain't he cool?
Just like whenever we come out with the second album, Love Song, and it made the top 10.
And Casey Kasem comes on the TV, and we're all watching.
I remember like it was yesterday, Casey Kasem goes, well, this week, coming in at number seven, or it could be eight,
because Science made seven or eight, or Love Song made seven or eight, one or the other.
Those are only two top 10 singles.
But he said, coming in _ at number seven is a band of nobodies out of nowhere with Love Song.
We were like, all right, Casey Kasem, man, that's our name.
But our friends were like, man, ain't cool.
Man, he called you guys a bunch of nobodies out of nowhere.
We said, well, we are.
We're a bunch of tomato farmers from Sacramento, right? _
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