"We auditioned Stevie Ray Vaughn to join Stycks as a favor to Jimmy Vaughn. I could tell he was a natural but we really needed somebody that could play the cover tunes. He was really good but we needed guys that could fit in our style, he was still a little wild. Then a couple of year later we are playing The Cellar and this band called Blackbird comes on and all of a sudden here comes Stevie. Wow. What a change. The guy was an absolute phenom. That was the week before this happened. We were up at Louann's during the day trying to work in the new guitar player that we had just hired and had left all our equipment up there. This was April 1st of 1971. I get a call from a friend of mine telling me that 'Louanns burned down last night'. I tell him 'that's not funny' thinking its a April Fools joke. Turns out it was true."

I was playing with The Roadrunnners at some school and they had a special guest, Scotty McKay. And we backed him up. After the gig, he came over and asked me if I wanted to play a job with him. I thought he was asking about the whole band. He wasn't. To make a long story short, I had borrowed money from my dad to buy a bass guitar as we didn't have a bass in the band. And I was quite literally new to it, but Scotty liked the way I played and ended up leaving the band and playing with Scotty for a long time. As a matter of fact Scotty is the one who got me into the recording studio to do my own stuff. It turned out to be "Summers Coming" which I wrote in the back seat of his car on the way to the studio. We already recorded the A side of the record with a tune called 'Walk On' and needed a B for the release. Two DJs from KLIF heard it, Chuck Dunaway and Bill Enis and they played it for Diamond Records in NYC and they agreed to distribute it. Made it to the Top 50 nationally that year. The next time I walked into KLIF, they said 'You want to be on American Bandstand in Philadelphia?' I says 'sure, I guess...' So I went on the Dick Clark tours.

The first time I saw a show advertised in Dallas Morning News, Bo Diddley was gonna play at Louann's. Because by that time, I had heard that song, "Bo Diddley," and I had heard "Can't Judge A Book by Looking at Its Cover," and "Who Do You Love." And, well, I could recite the name of every song on that album. There was something in my mind about the way that album sounded. It went to the fact that it was on a 78 LP record, which is to say that it was thin. And I didn't feel the pulse. I thought, "There's something else going on in this rhythm that makes it so meaningful." And the more I studied it, the more I realized there is a counterpoint that's being played against what Bo Diddley has played. So, I played the record enough to wear the grooves off of it, but I also discovered in that record that there was a low drum part.

"I really loved working at Louann's, all those bands and people. It was really exciting! We would go in every morning, stack the chairs on the tables, sweep the floors, stock the bars. There were two, one in the front and one in the back. And Ann was really the guiding force behind Louann's. She was inventive. She added the 'To Go' place on the Lovers Lane side. We cooked hamburgers and pizzas, she added a Barbecue pit and we cooked brisket. Ann's sister, My Aunt Stella and her husband came down from Chicago where they had a pizzeria. Uncle Pete was a master pizza maker. He did everything from making the dough from scratch, ground the cheese, sliced the pepperoni. So he taught us how to do everything." Pat Martinkus

"It is somewhat odd to learn more about your parents after their deaths than while they are living, but that is exactly what happened in my case. Indeed, the first inkling of just how exceptional they were occurred at my mother’s 80th birthday party where guests were invited to bring Louann’s memorabilia in lieu of gifts, and a 1947 Newsweek magazine was among the cache. The article inside provided a surprising insight into how multi-dimensional Lou and Ann Bovis were. I say “surprising” because I had no prior knowledge of that article, and it turned out to be just one of many discoveries ahead. Shortly after the death of my mother in 1993, I uncovered a treasure trove of old photos, newspapers, and magazines from the closets and files at her ranch. There were also deeds, contracts, wills, journals, adoption papers, 16mm family movies, scrapbooks, menus, greeting and post cards. Old letters were nestled inside the books of her vast library. Most of it I had never seen before. As I struggled with grief over my mother’s death, each old piece of my parents’ past brought fresh tears along with new respect and admiration." Chelle Bovis Banks