"The Odd Celebration"

By Aaron Taylor, Drummer

We have been playing music together since 1997, so we have a strong creative connection. We do a lot of improvisation and musical exploration during our shows that require us to listen and play off each other, which I think we do well. We enjoy having an audience that’s open to us taking chances and experiencing the creative process together. For me, VJ was a time of making music with really good friends and it was a ton of fun. 

[I remember] playing the Earth Day Festival at FSU in the late 90s. I have a vivid memory of bringing an old church bell to use during a cover of Pink Floyd’s “High Hopes,” which we had just learned. One of our first big gigs was opening for The Recipe at Gandalf’s. They were pretty well-known, and we were all under 21 at the time so that was a thrill for us. Another memory that sticks out to me is when we played at a bar on Main Street in Frostburg called Mother Cluckers. I think it was only open for a few months. We debuted a new song called "The Odd Celebration," which may have been the strangest song we’d ever written. I’d love to find a recording. We still perform the occasional 10-year reunion and we all remain close.

Velvet Jones performed at local Frostburg venues like Dantes in the mid to late 1990s.

"A Wild Ride"

By Eric Maddy '01, Bass, Lead Guitar

It was a wild ride, and specific memories are a little fuzzy. We played just about anywhere we could set up -- fraternity basements, house parties, campus and local festivals and nearly every bar in town including Gandalf’s/Dante's, Duncan’s, Highway, Repub and the short-lived Mother Cluckers which was in the old Frostburg Library. We even played parties in the fields behind the old Continental Hotel.    

It always had a family feel, including the occasional desire to throw one another out of a moving van. We were all local and had played together off and on since we were 14 or 15. There was also a bit of a family tradition involved. My dad, along with Aaron's and Chris's dads, had played together in the local band -- The Chinese Bandits -- in the 1960s and ’70s. We started performing in bars as Velvet Jones when we were 17 or 18, which meant our parents had to come along as chaperones in the early days.  

The band, back in the day, consisted of Chris Workman on keyboard, Aaron Taylor on drums, Craig Miller on guitar and Eric Maddy on bass.

"Down to My Underwear"

By Chris Workman, Piano/Keyboard, Vocals

I have many great memories of playing in Frostburg, especially the frat parties we’d play in basements with many kegs of beer. Also, we’d play on Main Street at the local bars and clubs -- my favorite being Gandalf's which became Dante’s. We were four locals from LaVale and one who joined later from Frostburg. We were really good and the crowds loved us -- lots of original tunes and great covers. Craig (Miller) and I were the main songwriters. All the guys in the bands had very talented musicianship.

One memory I have is that we were known as the bad ass band from Frostburg. Word got to the people at Sunshine Daydream Campground (West Virginia), and they invited us down to play. They had pretty big bands on the bills that played there like String Cheese Incident, Galactic and others. But the first time we played we were unknown and we opened up the weekend festival on a late Friday afternoon and killed it for an hour to not many people. But the management thought we were amazing and they asked us to play at midnight in the barn for the late-night crazy crowd. We absolutely tore it up for five hours into the wee hours of the morning and at some point, I was down to my underwear. That solidified us at that venue, and they had us back many more times.

The group still gets together when they can. Left to right, George Winters, Craig Miller, Aaron Taylor, Eric Maddy and Chris Workman.