Loose Change

In 1979, on a rooftop in Milwaukie Oregon, Loose Change was born. Grant Remington and Earl Diment were getting together so Grant could train Earl as a Chimney Sweep. As their businesses grew and a friendship developed, they discovered they both were old “folkies”. Both played the guitar and Earl also blew a mean harmonica. Eventually they became a duo, “Desmond and Duff”, named after a whiskey they were drinking at the time. Their most forgettable song was “Amazing Grace” played on rubber chickens. Our motto was, “We’re to old to be embarrassed by whatever we do!” 

Earl’s chimney sweeping business was in Gladstone and Milwaukie mostly and it was there that one of his customers was Randy Lakey. They hit it off and discovered they too had the same musical tastes.

By this time Grant had moved on and was working in Public Access Television where he met Dale Turnbull and they were both producers for a weekly live music program called “Everything’s Copacetic.” Earl and Randy were playing together in a band called “Geronimo’s Cadillac” and performed on the show. At one of our next practices, all four of us got together and Randy asked if we knew “The Weight”? We did and it became one of our signature tunes, usually the opening song of our set.

We became “Poetic License” because we took it every chance we could. For about five years, we played as a four piece with a drummer sitting in every once and a while, but never one that fit in. Dale’s day job was a cabinetmaker at the time and he got a job through the manager of the Public Access TV station to build and install some cabinets for a friend of a friend. That turned out to be Mickey Knapp who just happened to play drums. Serendipity.

Randy was a grade schoolteacher and one of the subjects he taught on the side was guitar. His star pupil was Derek Doggett who had moved back to Redland from Medford where he was a Rock and Roll GOD! He started hanging with the band and found the old farts had something going. This was in 1989 and we have being at it ever since.