Daily News (Bowling Green, KY)

Music driving force in Tony Lindsey's life
Alicia Carmichael, acarmichael@bgdailynews.com -- 270-783-3234 
 Published: February 7, 2005
Tony Lindsey walked up the steps of Bristow Elementary wearing the first pair of bell bottoms to grace the school. Mitchell Plumlee, a drum-playing seventh-grader, looked up and never forgot what he saw.
"I went home and raised Cain and begged my mom to buy me a pair of bell bottoms," he said.

That was in the 1960s, when Lindsey was poor and one of nine children. Back then, he earned money picking up rocks on a farm. But he longed for the life of a rock 'n' roll star. "At 5, I can remember imitating Elvis on a foot stool," Lindsey said. "So when the British Invasion hit in '64, I was 9" and liked everything about it.

For Lindsey, the Beatles were "kind of like an escape mechanism." "The music was so fresh and different, and the hair was a big deal," he said. So he started dressing the rock star part and found that other kids at school followed suit. Soon, he and Plumlee were fast friends.

"I went into his room and he had all these Rolling Stones and Steppenwolf posters on the wall and I said, 'This guy's cool,' " Plumlee said. The pair often listened to records together. But Lindsey's musical experience was limited to that until his freshman year at Warren East High School. Then, "I decided to join the school band," he said. "I got a snare drum for Christmas that year. My mom scraped together for it." It was the first year for a band at Warren East, "so we weren't any good," Lindsey said. "But we had a good time."

The next year, Plumlee heard Lindsey sing while they were listening to records. He said he thought, "This guy's got something. He's got charisma." Plumlee soon asked Lindsey to audition for a band he was in with Randy Johnson and brothers Jeff and Jerry Brooks. Soon, Lindsey was the band's lead singer and was "very excited" about it.

"At that point in time, I was like, 'This is it. This is the future,' " Lindsey said. Lindsey came up with the name Ty Barc for the band. The group practiced nearly every day. Over the years, the band had many members. "We played high school dances, fraternity parties, anytime, anywhere," he said. "We started writing songs right off the bat and recorded five songs when we were 15 and 16." But after Lindsey graduated from high school, Ty Barc began to fall apart, with "people going in different directions."

Then, "I knew it was time to pursue plan B," Lindsey said. At night he worked at a shoe store. By day he attended International Barber College in Nashville. He'd been cutting his friends' hair since high school and thought he could be a good barber. Still, he stayed in touch with his friends from Ty Barc. And "almost immediately after I got out of school, we started jamming and brought Kyle Frederick into the band," Lindsey said. "And Jeff Brooks and I started writing. That's when we wrote 'Whisper.' "

Things began looking up for Ty Barc. In 1977, the band recorded a nine-song demo that included "Whisper."
At that time, "we were managed by Sound 70, a Nashville company and were booked out of Detroit and a did a lot of road work with different groups - Black Oak Arkansas, Wet Willie, Brownsville Station and Jay Ferguson, to name a few," Lindsey sad. "We were traveling quite a bit, mostly in the south and southeast and 'Whisper' was being played on local radio stations."

On a local radio station, "Whisper" "was the most requested song for six weeks," Lindsey said. "It felt great. At the time, we thought we were ready to go." Still, Lindsey worked some as a hairdresser at salon called Gentleman's Choice here in town. Then things with Ty Barc began to unravel. Band members became impatient with the lack of big-time success, and some moved on to other things.

"We carried through until '79," Lindsey said. "I think we expected we would have made it by then." Looking back on it, Lindsey thinks Ty Barc could have made it with more hard work and persistence. But he believes things in life happen for a reason. After Ty Barc folded and he was in another band - called Hi Fi - that wasn't as successful, he settled into hair dressing.

"I was working six days a week in the salon," he said. And he was enjoying it."It's creativity," he said of hair-dressing. Through it, Lindsey met his wife, Sherry. "She made an appointment to get her hair cut" in 1983, he said. "It was love at first sight."

Around the same time, Lindsey was going to P.J.'s College of Cosmetology, which gave him some of the education he needed to later open the upscale Tony Lindsey and Co. Professional Hair Designs, where he oversees 19 hair dressers, and Lindsey Madison Institute of Cosmetology, which he opened with Mike Madison, his mentor at Gentleman's Choice.

Now, he's looking forward to opening a new Lindsey Institute of Cosmetology this spring. And he's enjoying the success of the SonRhea Foundation, which he started a few years ago to provide music supplies and arts opportunities for school children. The SonRhea Foundation came about from a jam session that Lindsey and his old musician friends, including his Ty Barc buddies, began having annually at his home a few years ago. "I started thinking about how we could get together to do something for the community," he said.

Proceeds from the first Jambodians Holiday Bash, for which tickets were sold, were donated to VH1's Save the Music. But Lindsey didn't like the fact that the money for Save the Music did not stay in southcentral Kentucky, so he organized SonRhea, which is named after his oldest son Zac's middle name.

In the past few years, the Jambodians Bash and SonRhea have been very successful. The Jambodians musicians, including Ty Barc and Grammy winners Curtis Burch, Greg Martin, Bill Lloyd and Sam Bush, have recorded a CD to raise money for SonRhea, which has given thousands of dollars in cash, instruments and other arts help to schools.

On Friday, Lindsey was awarded the Kentucky Music Educators Association Friend of Music Award for his work. The award is the "highest recognition for contributions to our profession," according to a letter to Lindsey from KMEA. Lindsey said he's pleased with the award, but more pleased with what he hopes it will do in terms of getting the word out about SonRhea. He believes the gift of music can stay with a child for a lifetime.

"You don't have to stop playing or singing because you're 80 years old," he said, adding that while he's glad his three sons, Zac, Alex and Luke, like music, he'd support them in anything they loved. Lindsey's friend Lynn O'Keefe, a St. Joseph Catholic School teacher who met Lindsey in 1980, when he first did her hair, said he's a wonderful person. "I have known him to always be sincere and hard-working and true to his beliefs, (especially) a belief in the goodness of everyone," O'Keefe said.

Plumlee said "Tony is the most loyal and forgiving friend anyone on this earth could have. It's hard to put into the words the feelings for someone so true to those he cares for. He epitomizes what Solomon said in the book Proverbs: 'A friend loveth at all times.' " And Lindsey is a friend to many he's never had the opportunity to meet.
"Sometimes I think Tony's got what he's got because he always gives to others," Plumlee said. "I've never known anyone like the dude."

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