I.C.U.

ICU started around 1986.  Jeff Potts and Joe Potts started playing together, in the fellowship hall of The Long Beach Salvation Army and were joined shortly after by Ron Pack.  Jeff played drums, Joe played lead/rhythm guitar, and Ron played rhythm guitar.  We were all pretty much learning as we went along.  I don’t think Ron even knew barre chords before we started playing and I was still learning to keep a tempo on the drums.  We started making up some songs but we didn’t have a singer so it became a little confusing to everyone when we were going into the chorus or verse or whatever.  Jeff started singing from behind the drums so we could keep our place better – but planned to just do it until we found a singer.

Paul Wolkersdorfer was the next person to join ICU as a bass player.  Paul loved to turn it up and be heard!  After playing around for a few months we recorded ourselves playing a couple of songs (the recordings were soooo bad!  I might post them someday just for fun).  When Jeff heard himself singing he was pretty embarrassed by how bad he sounded.  The guys made him feel better by telling him that he had gotten way better!  Haha…

We kept practicing, usually twice a week for about 4 hours, and we slowly got better.  Since we were all learning a lot about our instruments at the same time as we were learning to play together it was a slow process.  But it was also a lot of fun.

A good friend of ours, Tom Mellott, suggested that we make ICU a business, make a contract with each other, and get official.  Tom agreed to be our manager (Thanks Tom!).  We went through the process of becoming a business and wrote up an agreement that gave clarity to what we would do with any money we earned, who owned what equipment, how agreements would be reached and what we would do when the band broke up (or someone left).  This was all super good advice because, when we finally had to break up, it was a slam dunk how to square up with everyone fairly (disposing of the equipment and etc.).

Somewhere around this time Paul Wolkersdorfer moved away and Kevin Hoss came on as our bass player.  Soon after that we began to really look for places to play.  

At first we mostly played at Salvation Army churches and events since that was the church most of us were connected to. We played at a few Corps (churches) and a few youth events (called Youth Councils in The Salvation Army).  We had a cool crew of young adults at the Long Beach Salvation Army that were super supportive of us (yeah Richard Larson!) as well as pastors that were willing to let us come make a bunch of noise twice a week (a Joyful Noize).

During this time Jeff Potts was singing and playing drums (and writing most of the original music); Joe Potts was playing lead and rhythm guitar and singing BG and some lead vocals (and writing some of the original music); Ron Pack was playing rhythm guitar and singing BG and some lead vocals; and Kevin Hoss was playing bass and singing BG vocals.

One of our early youth councils events was at The Salvation Army Youth Councils in Ventura, CA in (I’m pretty sure) 1987.  There were a lot of youth in the room, it was loud, and we shared the stage with comedian Paul Aldrich.  We only played a couple of songs (we only knew a couple of songs) but ended with our song “Transfused”.  It was the biggest crowd we had played for so far so we were both excited and nervous to play.  We were very well received by the youth – but some of the adults walked out of the room 🙂  There wasn’t a lot of rock music in The Salvation Army back then.

We began playing at a club in Hollywood called “Oasis” that offered free entry to everyone.  They served coffee and snacks, was run by Christian volunteers, and allowed us to be evangelistic in our message.  The club was right of the Hollywood strip so a lot of people would hear the music and wander in.  While we were playing the club would fill up – but when we would stop to talk about Jesus people would get up and start to leave.  So we learned that we needed to make our points pretty quickly in-between songs and then get playing again.

One of the big opportunities we had was to fly to Colorado to play several shows and concerts at the Intermountain Youth Councils in April 1988.  We had never traveled that far with all of our equipment so it was a pretty big deal for us.  We ended up playing, I believe, four times over the course of the weekend with the bonus of playing a concert in a public park in Estes Park, CO.  During our main concert on Saturday night, back up at the camp the youth councils was being held at, we were about halfway through our set list when all the power went off.  It was a super memorable moment because we were singing our song “Stop the World” and we had just started singing the chorus that says “Stop the world, stop the world, stop the world I wanna get off” when the power went out.  So, there in the darkness, we suddenly heard all these voices singing the chorus – over and over – until the light came back on.  It was so cool!  We usually couldn’t even hear the crowd singing at all (in part because we played really loud!).  So entering into an unexpected silence and hearing them sing, and keep singing, was super amazing.

Along the line somewhere, I don’t remember when exactly, we decided that we really needed to either find a singer, or another drummer, so we could have a front man for the band.  Jeff was really hoping for a different singer but, instead, we found a drummer.  Hard hitting Ricky Daverport.  About this time we also found someone willing to be the unsung hero of the band and mix the music for us.  Dave Moore came to all of our practices and shows to become our very low (and by low I mean no) paid sound guy (Thanks Dave!).

We played in Hollywood, at free speech platforms at the local college, at churches and at youth events for the next year and a half or so.  Then, just about the time we were really starting to get better (indivually and as a band) life got a little too busy for everyone as we decided to take some time off.  I think we all knew that we were “nearing the end” (shout out to Better Believe) but we took a few months to think about it.  Then we all met together, I think in Kevin Hoss’ trailer (someone correct me if I’m wrong), and we began the process of dismantling the band.

It was a sad day but God had fulfilled his purpose in bringing us together and we were ready to move on to other great adventures.  Over the relatively short time we were together we were able to minister to thousands of young people and share the gospel.  We gave out tracts and spoke to a lot of youth and teens and had an incredible time in the process.

So if any of you were around when we were playing I would love to hear from you!  Share your memories with us.  Correct me if I said anything wrong in this short history!  Send me pictures that you might have, or scans or whatever!  I would love to add more information to this page.

Meanwhile!  Serve the King and be blessed!