In a midwesterner’s garage, minus the snowblower, the Dove Creek band practices its musical craft and harmony on a weekly basis.
The band consists of three members, two of whom are retired, and one, a 1981 graduate of Battle Ground High School, who still owns a small business in the area. The “garage band” plays a wide range of classic country, soft rock, and some 1950s and 1960s hits, as well.
Band member Rick Narhi leads the harmony of three alongside Dave Palodichuk and Phil Badalamenti. All three perform harmonizing vocals, but each has its own unique sound for certain songs. With instruments, Narhi mainly strums a Martin guitar while Badalamenti perfects the keyboard and Palodichuk strums a guitar, as well. The band has also added backing tracks to the songs they perform, providing a full experience beyond just the three of them.
The Dove Creek band performs a wide range of music, mainly pre-1990s, but genres include country, southern rock, soft rock and more.
“It’s good to be a variety band because you never know what venue you’re going to play,” said Palodichuk. “You never know the age groups, and so we try to spread it out.”
The three band members will also focus on a lot of songs that have harmony opportunities.
“We try to focus on the three-part harmony so we’ll do Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver, and we open it as a cappella,” said Narhi. “No music, no nothing, just three voices and then we get into the song, which sounds great.”
For keyboardist Badalamenti, his greatest enjoyment in the three-piece band comes from the simple aspect of just making music. Badalamenti is also a multi-instrumentalist with strong vocals, especially on Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band’s ‘Main Street’ track.
“I’ve played in a lot of different bands over the years, most notably I played for a local man named Clayton Smith, who was a very well-known Elvis impersonator,” Badalamenti said. “I was his keyboardist and music director. And then for nine years, I played with a gentleman named Lyle Bane in Vancouver. Lyle Bane Band, we did a lot of what I call the animal clubs, the Moose, Elks, Eagles, things like that. A few wedding receptions. That was all country music. It was wonderful.”
Palodichuk and Narhi have been playing music together for around 30 years, with Badalamenti joining and helping create the Dove Creek band two years ago. Palodichuk is a local small business owner and a 1981 graduate of Battle Ground High School, where he was a member of the school band.
The Dove Creek band members would love to embark on a local winery music tour next year, as well as other smaller-scale venues. For newer bands, breaking into the scene — even just the local one — can be a challenge.
“There’s a lot of local people and people from Portland that play these venues that have been doing it for years, and it’s like we’re trying to break into it and it’s not easy, you know," said Narhi.
The band hopes to land a couple of gigs per month with enough lead time to sometimes learn a playlist requested by a venue, wedding or whatever the concert may be for.
“We’ll ask them to submit a list to us of the songs they want to hear, and then we’ll pick them up,” Badalamenti said.
To learn more about the Dove Creek band, visit creekydogstudio.com for demos and contact information. They currently rock a song list of over nine hours and counting.
Rick Narhi’s musical background
Narhi, originally from Wisconsin, but his family later moved to Los Angeles, California, comes from popular roots in the 1960s music scene. Narhi moved to Washington over 30 years ago, where he has continued his love for music.
His father, Nigel Pickering, had an active musical career from the 1950s until he died in 2011. Pickering is best known for being a co-founder and songwriter of Spanky And Our Gang. Prior to Spanky And Our Gang, Pickering was a member of the folk trio The Folksters, who appeared on two 1962 episodes of The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson on Nov. 19 and 26.
Spanky And Our Gang is best known for songs such as ‘Lazy Day,’ ‘Sunday Will Never Be The Same,’ and ‘Like To Get To Know You.’ The band was active from 1966 to 1969 and again from 1974 through 1980 and has over 76,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.
“I didn’t meet my dad until I was 19-years old,” Narhi said. “One thing led to another, and I went to the Palomino Club in North Hollywood. They were playing there, and that was back in the Clint Eastwood days and Merle Haggard, you know, people would show up from all over the place. That night, I met Jan-Michael Vincent. I met Brenda Vaccaro. And I started hanging out with my da,d and I became a roadie with Spanky And Our Gang in ‘77.”
Narhi also had a three-month stint as a roadie for Willie Nelson.
“I got to meet Willie and I got to go on this bus and I smoked weed with Willie a couple of times,” Narhi said. “One time on the bus and once behind the stage at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium before he went on stage. My buddy and I were standing there smoking a joint, he came by, Willie had a couple of puffs, and went out on stage.”
Narhi first gained traction with his music after a trip to Hawaii in 1975, where he learned the two chords to ‘A Horse With No Name.’
“And I just started, and I was like a sponge learning how to play,” Narhi said. “I started writing songs off of those two chords. I was influenced by people around me who played guitar and saw the kind of talent that I had because I’d come so far within a year.”
After learning Neil Young’s ‘Heart of Gold,’ Narhi said he played it for Pickering and tried to sound as close to the original as possible. Narhi recalled his father saying, “What do you sound like?”
Through his father, Narhi continued to meet famous musicians, including Linda Ronstadt and, especially, Bernie Leadon, the original bassist of the Eagles.
“Which he turned me on to Jesus Christ back in the ‘80s when I lived in Colorado,” Narhi said of Leadon.
In 1983, Pickering formed a band, and Narhi joined for the recording session in Boulder, Colorado, funded by a computer corporation.
“I spent two years in a recording studio,” Narhi said. “Our producer on the album that we made was called ‘Cashmere,’ which was the name of the band. Our producer was Jim Mason, who did [the band] Firefall, you know, ‘You Are The Woman,’ among other hits. So he produced our album and we got number 99 on the Billboard charts, which I thought, ‘Woah.’”
Narhi later joined his brother Cyrus and his father in Saint Augustine, Florida, for a performance at the Trade Winds, where Pickering would perform solo acts up until 2011.
“That’s the synopsis of it,” Narhi concluded.
