Marty Lee: From Erie Bars To MTV

From my Erie County Fieldhouse blog: https://wp.me/p2YcTi-6Z

If you grew up in Erie, PA in the 1970s, and you used to go see live rock and roll at the local hotspots, it’s likely you heard Marty Lee’s guitar. In fact, if you saw Donnie Iris and the Cruisers play this year, you probably heard that exact guitar – the same one he used to play in smoky bars like Molly B’s and the Gaslight Lounge when he was in bands like The Pulse or Red White & Blueberry.

I bought it [a Les Paul Standard] new in 1975 at the famous Manny’s Music in New York,” he told me during our phone conversation in mid-April. Of course, with my curiosity getting the best of me, I quickly   asked the follow-up question of why he was even in NYC in 1975.

Stupid question.

It wasn’t that the answer was obvious, it was just that I was asking this man, who is arguably the most famous Erie guitarist to play professionally, to recall details of an event that happened 40 years ago – and I was asking him this at 10:30 on a Sunday morning. “Wow, you’re really testing my memory here,” he chuckled in response. “I went there, I think, with Bob Burger, with the intention to buy a guitar … I think.”

Marty was patient with me when I asked these kind of “historical” (and stupid) questions, which were really follow-ups to a number of questions he had already answered via email.

“Of course, that wasn’t my first guitar, and it’s been modified in numerous ways — the pickups, the wiring, the finish, everything — so it’s not just stock. It’s an incredible sounding guitar, and the one you hear on Ah! Leah!”

Today, Marty Lee Hoenes (this is his full name, when he was young he used his stepfather’s last name of Stebell for a while) lives in North Canton, OH with his wife of 28 years and his daughter. His full-time job is as an art director at D&S Creative Communications, and he has his own graphic design business which is 80-90% musician-related work. “I do all of the design work for Donnie Iris and The Cruisers as well as others, of course. And, I’ve been designing all of Michael Stanley’s CD packages for years now,” he told me.

He explained that they moved to North Canton to be closer to his wife’s family, which is much larger than his. “We thought it would benefit my daughter to grow up around as much family as possible. We get back to see my side of the family and our friends in Erie as much as we can,” he explained.

TODAY’S GIGS & STUDIO TECHNIQUES

Of course, in-between being a family man and an art director, he does find time to still strap on that Les Paul and play those signature licks that helped Donnie Iris and The Cruisers gain nationwide notoriety during the 1980s. The band (which includes Erieite, Paul Goll on bass) plays about a dozen shows a year. The members are scattered around the U.S., which means no rehearsing before gigs, but Marty said they still email or text each other almost every day.

And when they do have gigs – and the time – they still try to get into the studio to create new music (this usually happens around the time they have a gig). In fact, they have been recording some new tracks for the past few years at the Ohio-based studio and with the same sound engineer they have used for many years.

“It’s a long process; we don’t write everything beforehand. We write using the studio as the process, that’s always been the case. A song like Love is Like a Rock was recorded with just a drum track, which we looped over and over. We would gradually add a guitar, bass, keyboards, and then finally come up with the lyrics and add vocals. That’s how we’ve recorded probably 98% of our songs. Other bands come into the studio and already have the songs written and rehearsed. We don’t do that.”

In a 1981 article in the Erie Times News, Marty talked about recording “Back On The Streets” and how the band recorded it so fast he even left in some of his guitar “mistakes.” I asked him if he remembered those mistakes or if they are now just part of the song. “They’re definitely the ‘official’ guitar parts now, and I don’t think of them as mistakes. When I was younger, I was something of a perfectionist, but as time goes on I tend to embrace the flaws as simply part of the creative moment.”

A RARE GUITAR

Aside from that ’75 Les Paul, Marty says he’s not much of a collector. He has a couple Gibson Les Pauls, an acoustic, a mandolin passed down to him from his grandfather, and some Strats. He also owns a rare Fernandes guitar that was a Les Paul copy that the company exhibited at the NAMM show in the early 1980s. They were built with Floyd Rose tremolos installed, which was unheard of on a Les Paul at the time. “There was a big dust-up between Floyd Rose and Kramer guitars at that show, and they ended up doing a licensing deal that left Fernandes out of the picture. I bought one of the prototypes as they were packing it up before heading back to Japan. Neil Schon has one, too,” he said.

With today’s more technologically advanced musical equipment, I asked him if there was anything he wished he’d had back in the 1980s that he has now. “It’s more the other way around. I absolutely would love to have my 80’s Echoplex again, because nothing sounds quite like those analog tape delays!”

FAMOUS FANS & UNFORGETTABLE SHOWS

Having played so many gig over the years, I knew I would be stretching the limits of Marty’s memory banks if I asked for specifics from some of those old performances — even the Erie ones. (I was lucky he remembered playing at the Erie County Fieldhouse with Donnie back in Dec. 1981.) Still, I figured there had to be some unforgettable experiences. Hell, they played on the Solid Gold TV show in 1981, and they had videos in rotation on MTV back when they actually played music videos! He must have had some good stories.

One that he shared with me occurred at Legend Valley amphitheater in Thornville, OH where the band was playing on a bill that included Foghat and Journey. There were 40,000 people in attendance.

Prior to the show they were in their trailer backstage when a knock came on the door. When they opened it, Steve Perry was standing there grinning. “Evidently he was a huge fan and was genuinely excited to meet all of us. He was even raving about obscure album tracks of ours,” Marty recalled. “We played our set with Journey standing on the side of the stage watching. A couple days later both bands played in Houston, and the guys from Journey all showed up at the club we were playing to watch us again.”

OK, that would be hard to forget.

But what about Erie gigs with Donnie? They sure played plenty of them back in the ‘80s. I mean everyone remembers that gig at the Peninsula Inn (PI) on the last day it was open. That had to be a highlight, right?

Marty admits that PI gig was memorable, but the one that first comes to his mind is when they played We Love Erie Days on the Public Dock. “I don’t know how many people were there, but the estimate I was given was 10,000+. I just know that the crowd carried all the way up State Street — literally as far as I could see! Having grown up in Erie, I cruised that dock many times, but I’d never seen it look like that, that’s for sure,” he said.

Of course, of the band’s performances in Erie over the last 15 years, most locals remember one show more than others, and it all has to do with Marty. It was a 2002 concert at Rainbow Gardens, and the band was maybe halfway through its set when all of a sudden he collapsed on stage. “The air was hot, the lights were hot, and the ventilation was poor. It wasn’t easy to breathe. Although I wasn’t aware of it, I was at risk at the time [of heart issues], and I guess all of those factors combined into a perfect storm.”

He’d had a heart attack and was rushed to Hamot Medical Center. He credits the doctors and nurses both at the show and at Hamot for saving his life. Since then he hasn’t had any further incidents, and he says he’s “quite healthy” these days.

At a few points in our conversation Marty reminded me that he played in a lot more bands in Erie than just The Pulse and RW&B. Furthermore, he made a point of mentioning a few times during our interview how appreciative he was to play with so many great Erie musicians. He said taking lessons when he was young from guys like Basil Ronzitti and Preston Lindey and then playing in those Erie bands with all those great players helped him become the musician he is today.

To see this Erie music legend play live, check out one of the links below for Donnie Iris and The Cruisers. And, watch for my next blog about my interview with Rick Witkowski of Crack the Sky who talks about the time Marty Lee tried out for CTS and what it was like producing some of the music for The Pulse.