Back in touch with bandmate

Last week, I was surfing the Web, trying to come up with ideas for this week's column.

I ran across a photo of former Phish vocalist/guitarist Trey Anastasio with a group of people taken at the Vegoose music festival in 2005.

Someone in the group looked familiar to me. I checked out the credit and read the name: Meghan Gohil.

I knew a Meghan Gohil when I lived in Wichita, Kan. He was the guitarist in my first band. We were 15. And he was the best guitarist for his age I had ever seen. Every time we'd go into a music store, he'd pick up a guitar and play. When he was finished, the store employees and customers would applaud.

The last time I saw or heard from Meghan was back in 1985, one year before I left Kansas for good.

Anyway, I decided to e-mail this Meghan Gohil: "This is a strange question," I wrote, "but have you ever lived in Wichita, Kansas? I'm trying to track down a guitarist I knew in high school."

A few minutes later, I got a reply.

"Heck yeah. I've been trying to figure out where you disappeared to."

He's living in Southern California and set up Hollywood Recording Studio in 2001. He's currently working with up-and-coming trip-hop artist Chloe Day. He's also worked with Digable Planets, original Cure drummer Lol Tolhurst (now with Levinhurst) and Robert Randolph.

As I sat there reading his e-mail, all these memories came flooding back.

I remember when Meghan and I first met. My band was looking for a second guitarist and our lead singer knew him. We set up an audition. Meghan was this skinny kid with a full mustache. He arrived, plugged in his guitar and cranked out the lead riff to Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train." Then he pulled out some quick, finger-pull leads and jumped into Black Sabbath's "Iron Man."

Needless to say, he joined the band that day. And twice a week, we'd all get together at his house, at my house or our lead singer's house and practice for a few hours. We'd rearrange songs, we'd play our cover tunes and just hang out.

I especially liked going to Meghan's house to practice because he had a clandestine studio set up. We'd make demo tapes and multi-tracks in a little office room. We'd play back our recordings and think we had it all.

After a couple of lineup changes, we played an outdoor, fund-raising festival and some neighborhood parties.

The last gig we played together was at a pool party. Our set list included The Who's "I Can't Explain," Rush's "Limelight," Judas Priest's "Heading Out to the Highway" and "Living After Midnight," Eric Clapton's "Cocaine" and ZZ Top's "Sharp Dressed Man," just to name a few.

For some reason, we didn't play together again, although I did see him a couple of times afterward. Since then, he graduated from college, played in bands in St. Louis, Mo., and eventually went to work at Clear Channel. "I was the only Hindu working for two Jewish guys promoting a bunch of Christian concerts," Gohil said with a laugh last week when I called him at this studio.

He left Clear Channel in 2000 and set up his recording studio, located smack-dab in the middle of Hollywood.

The cliche goes, "music brings people together."

I couldn't agree more.

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E-mail: scott@desnews.com