Guitarist David Enloe, 50, dies

[Jahfin]

From the Raleigh, NC News & Observer

Fabulous Knobs, from left, Keith Taylor, David Enloe, Jack Cornell, Debra DeMilo and Terry Anderson.

PHOTO COURTESY OF TERRY ANDERSON

By David Menconi, Staff Writer

David Enloe, guitarist for the seminal Triangle bands Fabulous Knobs and The Woods, died early today after a long hospitalization. The cause of death was complications from hepatitis C. He was 50 years old.

"He suffered from liver failure," said Jack Cornell, who played bass alongside Enloe in different bands for 30 years. "He started bleeding about six weeks ago and went in for that, and it went from there. It's very sad."

Enloe and drummer Terry Anderson were both born on Christmas Day 1956 in Southern Pines. They met over music, playing recorders in a fourth-grade class at Raleigh's Powell Elementary. By high school, Enloe and Anderson were putting bands together.

By the late '70s, they had hooked up with Cornell to form the core of the Fabulous Knobs -- one of the most dynamic bands in the Triangle, thanks to lead singer Debra DeMilo. Numerous younger musicians in town found Enloe and the Knobs inspirational.

"He was definitely my guitar hero, the first guy I ever paid close attention to," said Jeff Hart, leader of the Hanks and other local bands. "He was a very fluid guitar player, very sharp technically. Visually, he was just what you would imagine as a rock star -- so cool in how he looked, dressed, played. I know I wasn't the only guitar player who bought a Telecaster because of him."

After the Knobs dissolved in 1984, Enloe, Anderson and Cornell stayed together as the Woodpeckers with Dan Baird from Georgia Satellites. Then Baird left to rejoin the Satellites, so they continued on as the Woods. The Satellites had a hit single with a cover of the Anderson-penned Woodpeckers song "Battleship Chains" in 1987, the same year the Woods released their one album, "It's Like This."

The Woods called it quits in 1993, although they've never stopped playing together in different combinations. In recent years, Enloe lived in Minneapolis with his third wife, Susan Trent. They separated this past spring and he moved back to Raleigh, around the time his mother died.

Cornell said that Enloe was writing songs again and wanted to get another band going. But he had ongoing health issues, and he never could stop drinking.

"He tried to kill it, whatever it was, with alcohol and that just didn't work," said Anderson. "I loved him, but David was self-destructive. There was always a party around him. I've been looking through pictures and he's holding a beer in just about every one. After awhile, it catches up with you."

Survivors include two brothers, Mark and Steve Enloe. Funeral arrangements are still pending at Kennedy Funeral Home in Robbins. Also, Anderson's annual Christmas show at the Pour House in Raleigh will go on as scheduled -- probably as a memorial for Enloe.

[Jahfin]

David Enloe, Jack Cornell & Tim Lee can be seen in this clip backing Marti Jones (aka Mrs. Don Dixon) on a cover of a song by NC's the db's:

YouTube Description Marti Jones does a super-cover of the dB's "Neverland" from St. Louis in 1986. Check out Tim Lee's (of the Windbreakers) great guitar solo towards the end of the song (he's the one playing the light blue guitar).

[Jahfin]

http://blogs.newsobserver.com/beat/index.p...p;tb=1&pb=1

More on David Enloe

If you ever find yourself stuck in a convalescent-type situation, pray that you have a friend as good as Terry Anderson. That's him on the right, in a long-ago picture with his rock/roll brother-in-arms David Enloe -- who passed away Tuesday from liver failure after being laid up for six weeks. Anderson and his other longtime bandmate, Jack Cornell, spent as much time as they could keeping Enloe company during that time. They also put out the call to friends and family to come hang out with him while they could.

Wednesday's paper has a story recounting this, and also Enloe/Anderson/Cornell's shared past in Fabulous Knobs and The Woods. In the course of talking to people who knew Enloe, I got plenty of quotes I couldn't fit into the story. Click through to see further remembrances from various folks (including Don Dixon).

"I almost hate to say this, but I always thought of the Woods and Knobs and all those bands as David's bands. Just like the perception of Cream was that it was Eric Clapton's band. David was just such a fine guitar player, so those bands seemed like his, through the prism of looking at his guitar expertise."

-- Jeff Hart

"I don't think any of those guys got what they deserved, but so few people do. That's not the exception. There are millions of talented people who don't ever quite get enough, but that's just the way it is. There are only a few slots and it takes a lot of luck. The other thing is, being famous or successful can be even worse -- he might've died sooner. Fame is horrible, a true killer, and very few people are suited to it.

"He truly was a great guy, and he was GOOD. A really great player. And he was fun to be on tour with. With Marti (Jones) in Europe one time, he stole her 8mm movie camera and took a bunch of shots of boy's crotches in their underwear dancing around. 'You, uh, had a lot of fun on this tour, I see,' I told her when we got that film developed. You can't have enough of that on the road."

-- Don Dixon

"They had the triangle by the tail. Full-blown rock assault, with David, Keith, Jack and Terry jacking up the audience behind Debra Demilo's Jagger-ish swagger. They brought so many different musical influences to the table. Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, Rolling Stones, Patsy Cline... Their shows were beer-drenched, sweaty tributes to rock and roll."

-- Dick Hodgin

"David's style was pretty wonderful. He did this thing where he used a pick and also his fingers to pull at the strings at the same time, like a banjo. So he had this cool percussive rhythmic thing that was really unique. When I first met David and Terry (Anderson), that's what struck me, the odd way he played...

"The Woods played South By Southwest one year in what looked like a bombed-out building, this giant room, and we were big stars that night. 'Battleship Chains' was out and we launched into that right when the PA blew up. I remember the three of us screaming it unamplified, and the crowd screaming along with us. A memorably bizarre moment."

-- Jack Cornell

"David and I have been playing together ever since junior high. In high school, we jammed along and wished we had a bass player. We put an ad up when we got to college and Jack answered it -- although his handwriting was so bad we thought it said 'Jade Cordero.' But Jack knew Debra (DeMilo) and the four of us had it goin' on. We were a bit outrageous and could pass for punks. Debra would shove the mike down her pants and run around, do crazy stuff. But we were playing industrial-strength soul, like Aretha Franklin. Eventually we started writing our own songs and putting out our own records...

"David was self-destructive, there was always a party around him. I've been looking through old pictures, and he's holding a beer in just about every one. After a while, it catches up with you. He tried to kill it, whatever it was, with alcohol and that just didn't work."

-- Terry Anderson

Comments, Pingbacks:

Comment from: Marti Jones [Visitor]

I still cannot get through a day without some sort of Woods reference coming out of my mouth. Touring with them was a privilege. I could barely sing at night because I laughed all day long. The combination of those three boys was just amazing. David's absence will be difficult. Big loss for all of us, but to Terry and Jack especially. The bond between longtime bandmates is like nothing else. Keep on playin', boys... We love you.

[Jahfin]

http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/796627.html

By David Menconi, Staff Writer

RALEIGH - The weekend before Thanksgiving, Susan Trent looked at everyone gathered in her husband’s room at Capital Nursing and Rehabilitation. The crowd included notables from three decades of local music history — bands including Arrogance, Superchunk, The Right Profile and The Woods.

“It looks like the Brewery in here,” Trent told her husband, David Enloe. The venerable music club on Hillsborough Street would have been a fitting gathering spot for this bunch.

Enloe, the Woods/Fabulous Knobs guitarist, died early Tuesday morning of complications from liver disease, his wife and friends said. He was hospitalized for six weeks this fall, attracting a steady stream of visitors up until the end, some from far away.

Bob Davis is on the road working for R&B singer R. Kelly nowadays. But 25 years ago, Davis was the Woods’ one-man road crew. So he rented a car in Washington, D.C., to drive down for a visit. Davis made it Monday night, just in time.

“A whole family of musicians has show up over the past two weeks, to hug him or hold his hand,” said Terry Anderson, Enloe’s lifelong friend and bandmate. “Guys who were really influenced by David. It’s been kinda refreshing to see how much he meant to people. Everybody loved him and how talented he was, how great his songs were, how fun he was to hang around. It’s been cathartic.”

Enloe and Anderson were both born on Christmas Day 1956 in the same hospital in Southern Pines. They met over music, playing recorders in a fourth-grade class at Raleigh’s Powell Elementary. By high school, Enloe and Anderson were jamming together and wishing they had a bass player.

By the late ‘70s, they had hooked up with bassist Jack Cornell to form the core of the Fabulous Knobs — one of the most dynamic bands in the Triangle, thanks to lead singer Debra DeMilo. Numerous younger musicians in town found Enloe and the Knobs inspirational.

Jeff Hart remembered a version the Knobs did of Smokey Robinson’s 1981 hit “Being With You,” set to the tune from the Rolling Stones’ “Beast of Burden.”

“He was definitely my guitar hero, the first guy I ever paid close attention to,” said Hart, leader of the Hanks and other local bands. “He was a very fluid guitar player, very sharp technically. Visually, he was just what you would imagine as a rock star — so cool in how he looked, dressed, played. I Know I wasn’t the only guitar player who bought a Telecaster because of him.”

After the Fabulous Knobs dissolved in 1984, Enloe, Anderson and Cornell joined up with Dan Baird to form the Woodpeckers.

Then Baird left to rejoin his old band, the Georgia Satellites, so the Woodpeckers continued on as the Woods.

The Satellites had a hit single with a cover of the Anderson-penned Woodpeckers song “Battleship Chains” in 1987, the same year the Woods released their debut album, “It’s Like This.” But that would be the band’s only album.

The Woods had some success as backup band for Marti Jones and Don Dixon (who both recorded Enloe songs for their albums). On their own, however, the band members had one frustrating record-label near-miss after another. The Woods finally called it quits in 1993, although they’ve continued playing together in other bands.

Enloe lived for a time in Los Angeles and worked with blues-rock singer Sass Jordan. Then he lived in Minneapolis for six years with Trent, his third wife, who he first met 20 years earlier when she was tending bar at Cat’s Cradle.

“I’ve known David forever, always had a crush on him,” Trent said. “Me and all the girls. That hair, you kiddin’ me? He was gorgeous! He was a Southerner through and through. We always called each other ‘Robbins’ and ‘Fuquay,’ because he was from Robbins and I’m from Fuquay-Varina. At the Bottom Line in New York one night, I was walking through in my cool black clothes with my hair messed up like we did in the ‘80s. And I hear from across the way, ‘Fuquay!’ ‘Oh my God, Robbins, you totally blew my cool!’”

Unfortunately, Enloe had ongoing health issues. He never could stop drinking, even when his life depended on it. That led to his separation from Trent earlier this year.

Enloe moved back to Raleigh in the spring, around the time his mother died. He was writing songs again and wanted to get another band going in Raleigh, but he fell ill before that could happen.

“David was a classic, good-lookin’, hard-drinkin’, funny guy,” said Dixon. “But there was an underlying sadness, like a lot of funny guys. There was an unfulfilled something in there that you could feel. I think that’s what drove him not to take better care of himself.”

Enloe’s death comes at a particularly trying time for Anderson, whose father is recovering from heart surgery. But Anderson’s annual birthday-party show is still set to happen Christmas night at the Pour House. Since that would have been Enloe’s 51st birthday, too, it’s sure to be an emotional night.

“It will definitely be bittersweet,” said Cornell. “I really wish David could’ve made it to his birthday. Not that he could’ve been at the show, and he was so miserable at the end I wouldn’t wish more of that on him. But it would’ve been nice. It will be both happy and sad for us, especially Terry. But yeah, we’re gonna play.”

Enloe’s survivors include two brothers, Mark and Steve Enloe. Funeral arrangements are still pending at Kennedy Funeral Home in Robbins.

[Jahfin]

Thoughts on David Enloe from local writer Rick Cornell as posted to the blog section of local publication The Independent:

http://www.indyweekblogs.com/scan/tip-o-th...enloe-1956-2007

NC Rock Star: David Enloe, 1956-2007

In the early ’90s—and by many accounts, in years prior—David Enloe and the rest of the Woods owned the Brewery, and they owned Saturday night. Over the next couple of days much will be written about David, who passed away early Tuesday from complications related to liver disease, by those who played alongside him and loved him like a brother. Not having the privilege of knowing David, my perspective comes from out in the crowd.

The Woods were this transplant’s first favorite North Carolina band. Their sound was a Southern-accented mix of Stones, Faces, and more Stones, with a hints of Minneapolis (it’s not for nothing that their It’s Like This was released on Twin/Tone). Sealing the deal, they covered “Can’t Hardly Wait.”

My initial exposure to the Woods came courtesy of a whole bunch of those Brewery shows, and I’d eventually follow them to Chapel Hill’s La Terrazza, a coffee shop on Main Street in Carrboro, that big-ass Mexican restaurant in Cary with the patio stage, and other places that also no longer exist. The Woods guys truly shared the stage; everybody wrote and sang. Still, the spotlight seemed to favor David. He was the most charismatic, the most rock-star. Finding myself behind him and some friends waiting in line for a show at Raleigh’s Rialto one evening, I marveled as he held court by, among other things, doing a Homey the Clown routine–it being the heyday of “In Living Color” and all. I remember thinking to myself, “He’s even a natural frontguy on the sidewalk.”

It’s not completely true that I didn’t know David. I got to meet him a couple years back when the Woods visited my WXDU radio program before a reunion show at Cat’s Cradle. At that station, he commented on an article he’d just read about the Avett Brothers. Turns out that I wrote the article, and when I made a lame joke about it, David was gracious enough to offer a genuine chuckle. Then he and Terry Anderson, Jack Cornell, and Jamie Hoover gathered around one microphone and sang a few Woods songs, and it was suddenly 1990. Wish a tape had been running.

[Jahfin]

From Don Dixon's Myspace blog:

DAVID ENLOE

my friend DAVID ENLOE died this morning...he'd been sick for a while

& wasn't ready to take care of himself yet...

like a lot of talented & smart & funny & creative people, he'd always

had a self-destructive streak ...this one finally got the best of

him...i won't say i completely understood DAVID but i respected his

talent & liked him a lot...there's a small group of people whose

songs i've recorded...MITCH EASTER, JOHN HIATT, DAN PENN &

DAVID..."Cat Out of the Bag" was his...MARTI recorded a song of his

called "I Don't Want Him (Anymore)"...decades later, we still play

both of those songs in concert...

DAVID toured for the better part of a year with MARTI when his band,

The WOODS, was backing her on the road...he played some with me

during that time, too...you can hear him on my live cd from '88, "Chi-

Town Budget Show"...he was always cool...cigarette-smoke-curling-up-

from-the-headstock-of-his-guitar-cool...handsome, great hair, the

perfect bored, wicked grin...he should have been a huge star...

he was a star to me & to most people that were lucky enough to have

seen him play...been his friend...we'll all miss him...we, the lucky

ones that knew him...

[Jahfin]

Local musician Jeff Hart has been working on this site all week and just went online with it today:

http://www.myspace.com/davidenloememorial

[Jahfin]

Here's a brand new YouTube clip that was just posted today. You can tell a lot of love went into this as a lot of folks (musicians and otherwise) have been hit very hard this week by the passing of guitarist David Enloe: