So continuing on in my series of Jeff Sherman “Bucket List” unreleased original music, I’m going to present a new album I’ve put together for you all. If you’ve followed our musical wanderings you already know about our band The Sherman Bros. And though short-lived, that band achieved a notoriety and level of popularity heretofore unknown to my brother Greg and me. I mean, when you’ve spent most of your musical life writing original songs in odd time signatures and covering obscure rock songs of the day, you're used to the fact you’re probably NOT going to have enthusiastic female fans beating a path to your door (we were after all, teenage guys!) And then the Sherman Bros happened! And truth be told, we weren’t really prepared for it! We got kind of spoiled. Started feeling like we’d always have lucrative weekends playing to our ever-growing fanbase. Everything seemed to be falling into place.
pnwbands.com/shermanbrothers.html

When the Hood Canal Bridge went down in a windstorm, we became THE band to spend your Olympic Peninsula weekends listening and drinking to. And in all honesty, we were a very exciting act onstage. We had a natural chemistry together that couldn’t have been artificially arranged. It was a set of little “Zen accidents” if you understand that reference.
jeffreysherman.bandcamp.com/album/sherman-bros-band

Then the Sherms unceremoniously broke up. Greg and I already had in hand contracts for about 6 months of future bookings in some of our favorite venues. Though disappointed, we resolved to carry on and complete the obligations. Plus, he and I had been feeling the pull from the desire to do our own music. We had hoped the great Sherman Bros Band (and everything that entailed) would be a perfect vehicle to bring attention to our own music. Now, we would have to rethink that.

We decided to form a brand new band, one that operated out of the lucrative Seattle market doing (primarily) original material, that could hopefully step us up to the “next level” of band notoriety. We found a couple of outstanding Seattle-area musicians, Rick Lee－a monster bass player & harmony singer－and a talented drummer & vocalist named Paul Buchignani. Calling ourselves "Sherman Jeffries and The Drive," we began woodshedding our new music in my Mom's basement in North Seattle. Right off the bat, we had a very good musical chemistry and both Rick and Paul seemed comfortable with being bandmates that supported the original songs. In fact, they insisted on doing lots of original material. They saw the importance of it in "the big picture” of band development. The Drive always reminded me a little bit of Elvis Costello’s backup band, “The Attractions.”

Long story short, we cut a demo tape of seven songs written by myself and my brother and set about fulfilling SBB's gig commitments. One of the songs we recorded was a little pop ditty I had written about our bass player and his girl problems called “Riki's Got Himself a New Girl.” It is presented here for the first time ever. It had a great hook line, and both Rick and Paul sang backgrounds on it with me. It immediately started getting us attention in Seattle and drew the interest of one of Seattle’s biggest music management concerns, SeaWest Management. There was even talk of us doing an album on a local record label, First American Records. . . but that unfortunately never materialized.

So think of this as that LONG overdue album from The Drive ... 40 years late!

Following the demos, I've included our triumphal return to Port Townsend High School with the new band in 1980, which we videotaped for posterity. As ever, thanks to ever-indulgent PTHS Principal Neil Potthoff for graciously letting us hold a concert in his auditorium, on Friday night May 30th after school. As you can hear, the students appreciated it too!

Finally, included as a whole "bonus live album" is an amateur (cassette) audience recording of the band in performance at Pete's Tavern, Bellingham in 1981. The fidelity isn't great, but the excitement's there.