Bigfellas Origin Story (Part 2)
The Exciting Conclusion To Our Beginning
Posted by Charlie Recksieck
on 2026-09-01
Go ahead and catch up on last week’s Part 1 about the genesis of The Bigfellas.
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Gathering Robin Hood's Merrymen
Over the course of a couple of years, we assembled a community of band members, Magnificent Seven style.
We had a couple of early bass players, Jim was a terrific sport but had a tendency to just stop playing at times.
One night at Dream Street, a toilet of a recurring gig in Ocean Beach (though god bless them for booking us), the band before us had a short black bass player who was clearly having fun being the best musician on the stage.
We talked to him, Tim Hempstead, between their set and ours, had some laughs immediately and got his phone number.
Tim and I were like high school girls for two days after, speculating if it was too soon to call or we should play hard to get.
That foursome was the most Bigfellas of Bigfellas lineups.
The three of us got invited to new Tim's wedding like a week later, when he remarried a woman he previously divorced; they're still together now and doing great.
Sometimes we had guitarist Tom with us and his quiet tube amp and tasteful playing.
Sometimes we didn't.
But our secret weapon was fiddle player and spaceman Don Hickox, or as Shay coined it, "Donnie Bratwurst."
I'd played with Don in one of the worst and most enjoyable
classic rock / Irish band imaginable.
We loved getting Don.
We never knew when we'd get Don but he always elevated things.
If we gave him two months warning about a show down the street, it still probably meant no Don.
If we told him two days before that we were touring to Wisconsin and back, Don was in.
It was at these early shows where we came up with our best gimmick: cooking food onstage for the first time.
Pro tip: Grilled cheese sandwiches require more attention from the keyboard player; hot dogs can cook better unattended.
The End of Bigfellas 1.0
We took a hit when Tim Gadzinski moved to Wisconsin.
It was absolutely the right life move for him and his family, but it upended what the Bigfellas were.
Those were our smallest gigs and only thinking of it now, some of our best gigs.
With Tim in Manitowoc, WI, we needed one last round of shows with Tim.
We muscled out a 2004 tour to Wisconsin and back, despite no public demand for The Bigfellas.
It was a special tour LINK.
This put a punctuation on the 1.0 era.
After that it was time to reshape.
I had to slide over to singing lead vocals.
No gig was too small or too shitty.
We'd play at the "opening of a Coke can," as Shay put it.
Perhaps my favorite Bigfellas all-timer moment was in 2005 when Shay and I played as a duo at The Blarney Stone in Clairemont doing "Take the Long Way Home" cold and never rehearsed.
We had strange gigs, including weird residencies at a hidden from view room at
The Last Call and an
oddball brewery at the UTC mall.
We had funky sit-in situations: sitting in with a legendarily awful local band called Aqua Tribe, forced into weird Irish music situations, playing some wild private parties.
Yeah, we moved on and evolved, found "the Canuck" Shay's term for Canada's favorite son Shawn Randall on guitar.
Shawn was a great guy and always even keeled.
Not sure what I miss most about him; his Hendrix tone, his beermaking, or his George Harrison everything's cool spirit.
Our favorite scene became the Mission Bay Boat & Ski Club.
We discovered friends and collaborators there like Spud Davenport, Christopher Cash (which brought us Bill Maine), Jeff Johnson and lots of bands in the Cathryn Beeks orbit.
God damn, I loved that place: Ping-pong with Troy the bartender, doing coke off a bumper pool table with some former club members in their green room, way too strong drinks from Troy and Lynn, playing a 15 minute cover of Barry Manilow's "Could It Be Magic", Bill and I sleeping it off overnight in our cars.
Yes, it was unglamorous for prestige and pay, but everything you want out of starting a band and having fun.
The Lasting Non-Legacy of The Bigfellas
By 2008 it was time for 2nd recording, but first quality one brought us to Big Rock Studios.
Studio owner, engineer, and guitarist Andy Machin became our real guitarist once Shawn moved to Humboldt.
By the way, for a stoner like Shawn, I still think Humboldt was a little bit "on the nose."
Again, we played anywhere and everywhere.
Despite little glory, we still couldn't split up when Shay moved to Portland twice - we became a two-city band.
That's how it was for about 15 years as we continued.
Shay and I every year joked "THIS is the year of the Bigfellas."
Now he's gone, and the upcoming records might be our best stuff.
But it won't be the Year of the Bigfellas.
The magic year of the Bigfellas surely has already happened, we just didn't know it at the time.
