Sinistar's Unofficial Nantucket Biography

Nantucket began in 1969 when Larry Uzzell, Mark Downing and Tommy Redd formed a band called Stacks of Gold. The Jacksonville, NC youths were still in school then and played mostly R&B cover tunes. In 1971, the band's name was changed to Nantucket Sleighride after the popular album by Mountain, but was then shortened to Nantucket. From there, the band built up a big following while playing all over the Southeast and starting to play original material.

The band was signed to Epic Records and released their first album in 1978. This self-titled debut featured many great songs including "Heartbreaker," "Born In A Honky Tonk" and "Girl, You Blew A Good Thing." While generally being classified as Southern Rock, Nantucket's sound was a mixture of southern fried boogie, traditional R&B and good ol' rock 'n' roll. Their music was fresh, unique and imbued with a sense of humor that added yet another dimension to the band.

Nantucket became a national hit and followed their first album with the exceptional Your Face Or Mine in 1979. This album featured more great tunes such as "Is It Wrong To Rock And Roll," "California" and the title track, but failed to generate as much interest at radio as the first album did.

Following Your Face Or Mine was perhaps Nantucket's best release -- Long Way To The Top. This album found the band with a new bassist (Pee Wee Watson replacing Mike Uzzell who became the band's full time manager) and in top form with songs such as "Time Bomb," "Rugburn," "Tell Me (Doctor Rhythm Method)," "Rock Of The 80's" and a blistering cover of the AC/DC classic, "It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock 'N' Roll)." Despite the excellence of the album and a tour with AC/DC, Nantucket's momentum was lost and this would be the last album for Epic.

A switch to RCA saw the release of No Direction Home and another new bassist (Thumbs Johnson) and a new drummer (Richard Gates) with Pee Wee and Kenny going on to form PKM with Michael Gardner. This album drew practically no attention other than from Nantucket's die hard fans and was the end of their major label era.

One final studio LP, V, was released by Executive Records who also released the excellent Maxx Warrior EP, but basically this was a self-released album. It was cherished by the fans but was never even noticed by the nation at large. Epic later issued a budget line The Best Of Nantucket LP and at some point a live album, Still Live After All These Years, was released.

These days, Nantucket reforms for occassional reunion shows. The last show I was able to catch was at the greatly missed Ziggy's By The Sea in Atlantic Beach in 2001. The show was fantastic! Also, Tommy has been playing with the his southern rock and blues band Boogie Chillins. The best Nantucket site I have found on the Internet is here. They have the best info, show dates and tons of photos! Also info on how to book the band if you happen to need a great band for an upcoming event. There is also now a Nantucket page on MySpace. For info on PKM, try here. I have taken down the message board at least for awhile, but if you would like to look at old posts, please click here!