Eamon Cronin Keeps It Real

Eamon Cronin Keeps It Real

By Derek K

Eamon’s leather-clad shoulders push the bar door inward and in seconds his friend the bartender is pouring our pints. I’ve come to interview him at one of his regular haunts, an Irish bar with graceful woodwork and no name where he sometimes works the door. It is a chilly night in the East Village section of New York City. He settles onto a stool to talk about one of his favorite subjects, the Harley Rendezvous.

“I met Kemp O’Connell at a swap meet at the Agora Ballroom in 1986,” he begins. His band Midnight Sun played the swap meet and it led to an invitation to play at the Rendezvous that summer. “We met through Steve Witt, the Rendezvous stage manager for years. I didn’t really meet the Potters ‘til shortly before Kemp died… we first really met at Kemp’s funeral,” he recalls.

“That year, flag burning was a huge thing in the country. I remember playing in front of this giant flag behind the stage.” It didn’t take him long to get caught up in the spirit of things – “this kind of place where anything goes, except being an asshole.. as it is today, its personal freedom.” It would mark the beginning of a long relationship between the man and the event and the place. The first pints are quickly emptied as the stories pour out.

Soon, Eamon found himself part of Radio Free Rendezvous, a pirate radio operation that covered the event “24 hours a day.” “We took it on the road, to Sturgis, where we had Wolfman Jack, Robbie Krieger (of The Doors), and Eric Burdon (of The Animals) on the air with us. Once we were drinking Crown Royal with (blues guitarist) Albert Collins til 6 AM – on the air.” Around the same time, Eamon had started a Doors tribute band, Riders on the Storm, and juggled those gigs with Midnight Sun shows.

“We’d do ‘traffic reports’ – someone lost their keys, your mom called, meet your buddy at the security booth, there’s naked girls in Rodeo, that kind of thing.” He recalls ‘Doc from Vermont’ as the one who started the radio project “with some ghetto radio equipment he had, some real frankenstein shit. Then Scott Michaud helped build the next setup, a better signal, and that’s around when Colorado T. Sky got involved.”

By now the pints are disappearing rapidly. Speaking of Sky, he practically sings his respect. “He’s a genius… a warrior in the true definition of warrior, when you have to be hard and soft, light and heavy, an artisan quality where you sometimes have to rip a man’s throat out. I’ve seen him make a room full of bikers break down and cry. Gotta respect a man who has a hinge tattooed on his arm!”

“Sky came on board as a writer for the Express, and Kemp wanted him to read some stuff on the air. My bandmates were on-air staff too… it was real long hours, no sleep, we’d get crazy. It’s epic to this day. I once got off a stage in England, drove to Heathrow, and hopped a plane straight to the U.S., and didn’t stop til I got the Rendezvous.”

He goes on to tell how the FCC eventually shut down the radio “in ’02 I think. Our tech juiced it up too much, the signal was going way out there, and we were swearing and smoking and fucking off. It was supposed to be small, one watt, and we were at five. Old ladies were picking it up in their kitchens and freaking out. But I threaten to return!”

A schooled musician who lives the rock & roll lifestyle full tilt on stage and off, Eamon played the Rendezvous stage with Midnight Sun “a bunch of times” and twice with Riders on the Storm. “And I’ll be back for the 30th, God willing.” Across the years, in addition to performing and radio hosting, he has also served as stage announcer a number of times, including, infamously, as host of the International Contest. “The ‘Vous is special, where freedom reigns. It’s a bunch of people who work hard, want to blow off some fun steam, and do what they feel as long as they keep it real. Frank Zappa summed it up: titties and beer.”

“The facility (Indian Lookout) has grown a lot since then,” he says, as memories of many years flash in his eyes. “I’ve seen so many things,” he says with a laugh. We agreed many of them didn’t need to be put into print. Not yet, anyway.

Around 1996, Eamon made a lasting introduction. He told his friends in Max Creek, a long-running (2006 marks their 35th anniversary) New England rock band who held an annual summer blowout of their own called Camp Creek, about Indian Lookout and the people, by now family to Eamon, who ran it. He had known the band since 1981, often sitting in on drums or taking the microphone for scorching renditions of “One Way Out” or “Tangled Up In Blue.”

‘The Creek’ as he calls them, were having a hard time finding places to hold Camp Creek. The fun-loving, free-spirited party they threw often resulted in being uninvited to venues run by more cautious types. In 1996, “I put my Max Creek family, which I love and adore, with my ‘Vous family” when he introduced their manager at the time to Frank Potter. Camp Creek has resided at the site ever since, and Eamon brings one of his bands to play at Camp Creek every year. 2006 will mark the return of Riders on the Storm to the Camp Creek stage, although if the past is any indication, Eamon will be everywhere.

“Camp Creek at Indian Lookout started out, like it had started before, as a family picnic. They’ve tried to build things up with different acts to get more people to learn about Max Creek and ILCC.” Now going into its 21st year (and its 11th at Indian Lookout) Camp Creek draws thousands of campers and has struck a balance between a crowd that some call ‘hippies’ and the bikers who run the place and keep them safe – a relationship that has become a July tradition. In a way, Eamon represents that balance (though he says he sold his bike years ago “to take care of a crazy Hungarian girl.. long story”) as he never fails to make his presence felt at both events.

As the night wears on, memories are spilled, and he rattles off a number of names of Rendezvous staffers over the years, with many laughs and a few moments of silence for some no longer riding. “They’ve been getting a lot of younger faces in the crowd and staff, which is good, its good to get new blood in there. Keep it going!” By now he looks about ready to hit the stage. Despite the cold March night outside, summer doesn’t seem far off at all.

We raise a final glass when the subject of Frank Potter and his family comes up again. His relationship with the family, he says, was built “out of mutual respect for the Event, the Land, and the Man,” – referring again to Kemp. Eamon barely pauses when asked for his thoughts about the future of the Rendezvous. “They’ll hand it off to the kids eventually, I think, and it’ll go on into the future – and I’ll be there, God willing.”

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