“While riding on a train goin' west,
I fell asleep for to take my rest.
I dreamed a dream that made me sad,
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had.

With half-damp eyes I stared to the room
Where my friends and I spent many an afternoon,
Where we together weathered many a storm,
Laughin' and singin' till the early hours of the morn.”

Bob Dylan’s Dream, copyright 1963

The song “Bob Dylan’s Dream” transports me back to the Red Herring during my college years. I am a child of the Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times” and those times were 1968-1974 in Champaign-Urbana. My life centered on the Channing-Murray Foundation and its Red Herring coffeehouse along with WPGU Radio.

Soon after arriving at the University of Illinois, I heard intimidating rumors about an unusual place called the Red Herring. Being a fairly straight kid from Evanston I was reticent to submerge myself into the politically radical alternative culture of the campus’ most notorious coffeehouse.

However, I consistently scouted for great local music for my folk music radio program Changes on WPGU. Word reached me about a great trio, the Cary Cohen Ensemble, that would be performing at the Red Herring in the very early spring of 1969. As I had done many times before, I strapped my tape deck and microphones to my bicycle, but this time headed to Oregon and Matthews. Cary Cohen lived up to his billing and to this day, I have never heard anyone who performs Leonard Cohen’s “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” as well as Cary performed his namesake’s song. At the same time, I became enchanted with the Red Herring. All it took was one evening. I never envisioned I’d spend most of my evenings there for the next five years.

Bill Taylor inaugurated the coffeehouse in 1967 as a refuge for those alienated by the university’s prevailing “Greek” culture. In true Unitarian-Universalist tradition, there was no proselytizing or preaching, unlike at other church coffeehouses in town. Taylor was serving his alternative service as a conscientious objector (as did all subsequent Channing-Murray managers until 1974). He acted more as a guiding spirit than a manager, although without his tireless labors the place would have remained a basement rather than a thriving coffeehouse. He even designed the grapevine handbill format that was used on handouts and posters for several years to publicize events. Taylor’s low-key, shy, accepting and loving personality set the tone for the early Red Herring.

Taylor welcomed occasional informal folk music performances in the coffee house. After hearing Cary Cohen and seeing the packed house he attracted I convinced Taylor to make folk music a regular Friday and Saturday event. I booked most weekends for the first year or two. (Most performers were local amateurs, although we had the occasional touring artists such as Utah Phillips.) Since folk music was booming, this as much as anything made the Red Herring the “in” place to be on campus on weekend nights. The Presbyterians at the McKinley Foundation on the other side of campus had their own coffeehouse that dabbled in folk music, but nowhere else in town presented regular folk music.

The fertile folk scene attracted scores of talented performers to the Herring. There’s no need to name them here since they’re all on the several Red Herring record albums. Those albums, the brainchild of Peter Berkow, are now collectors’ items. The albums contain the first recordings of Dan Fogelberg and a quintet of Steve Cowan, Steve Melshenker, Steve Reinwand (now Billy Panda), Mark Hamby and Todd Bradshaw who became The Ship. They released an album on Elektra Records in 1972. The Red Herring albums were an outgrowth of the regular fall and spring folk festivals presented upstairs in the chapel. These ran from the fall of 1969 until at least 1974, although by 1974 interest in folk music was waning.

Peter Berkow also introduced me to Dan Fogelberg, who had wandered in one day in late 1969. Although not immediately enthused with Fogelberg’s Neil Young- flavored style, I acknowledged Fogelberg’s talent and began recording his performances at the Herring. He quickly came into his own. Eventually a performance I recorded at the spring, 1971 Red Herring Folk Festival helped Fogelberg gain local fame and perhaps launch his national career. Fogelberg, Linn Brown, Elliott Delman and Lee Busch performed “Anyway I Love You / Let Me Go” as part of Fogelberg’s long and powerful set. I copied the song onto a tape cartridge at WPGU and prevailed upon the music director to put it in the rock rotation. It became an immediate hit.

During this period the Channing-Murray Foundation’s existence was in jeopardy. A few years earlier the Green Street U-U congregation mortgaged the building in order to build the classroom addition to its church. The University of Illinois coveted the land occupied by Channing-Murray for a parking lot. Some church members sought to sell C-M to the University. Fortunately, the minister at the time, Ed Harris, counseled against this and saved C-M. Harris was very supportive of C-M, but kept a low profile. He proved a wise and trustworthy counselor to those in trouble who sought his help.

The denizens of the coffeehouse decorated it in the counter-culture artifacts of the day, painting Eastern religious symbols, Native American art, psychedelic paintings and the like on the walls. However, the defining statement, supposedly a corruption of Karl Marx, filled the west wall: “The dissaffection of youth is the first malady suffered by decaying empires.” (Steve Cowan remembers this as “the first malady suffered by decaying societies.”) It was unfortunately painted over in the mid-1970s, when youth seemed no longer disaffected.

While the church and Bill Taylor forbid drugs and alcohol on the premises, at any given time about half the population of the coffeehouse was experiencing the effects of one or the other, usually marijuana or hallucinogens. While transactions never were consummated at the Herring, the parking lot was another story. I never joined the world of altered consciousness.

The Red Herring also served as the main alternative culture singles scene on campus and was one of the rare places where gays could at least stick one foot out of the closet. I met the majority of women I dated at the Herring and introduced a few others to the coffeehouse. Interestingly, a few of the women I brought to the Herring became active Unitarians.

The kitchen, which at that time was not legal for selling anything but packaged food and drink, was the hive of the regulars at the Herring. There were about ten of us who took turns volunteering to sell soda pop, coffee, tea, and munchies to the patrons. Bill Taylor decided on the nickel cup of coffee and that price remained until I departed in 1974 and perhaps longer. On weeknights when crowds were sparse we just sat in the kitchen and solved the problems of the world. In the eyes of the current vegetarian restaurant staff nearly everything we served in those days would be considered poison. I spent so much time in the kitchen that when Illinois Bell started offering call-forwarding, I forwarded my home phone to the Red Herring.

“By the old wooden stove where our hats was hung,
Our words were told, our songs were sung,
Where we longed for nothin' and were quite satisfied
Talkin' and a-jokin' about the world outside.” (Bob Dylan)

In 1972 Peter Berkow hatched the idea of starting a concert series upstairs in the chapel. He showed movies to raise seed money and then brought Bob Gibson, who he had befriended in Chicago. Gibson’s concert was a success. Then, just as in a Dr. Seuss story, Berkow handed over the concert series to me and flew the coop.

I christened it the Nonesuch concert series and suddenly found myself booking major national acts. I booked both folk and jazz. The jazz came about thanks to Morgan Usadel who was manager of Discount Records at the time. Usadel, a jazz fanatic, would hear talk of major jazz artists playing Bloomington-Normal and Bloomington, Indiana and looking for a stop in between. Usadel had become a friend because he had convinced Discount Records to sponsor my radio show and other specialty programs on WPGU and subsequently WTWC when I moved there in 1972. The University of Illinois would not present folk and up-and-coming jazz artists on campus, so it fell to me.

My non-profit Nonesuch concerts were not a function of the church or directly sponsored by Channing-Murray. The church rented the sanctuary to me for a pittance and benignly let me run the series as I saw fit. This aided the Red Herring since my concert crowds patronized the coffeehouse downstairs before and after concerts. However, after one over-capacity concert, perhaps it was Herbie Hancock, a reporter for the Courier, one of the local newspapers, complained that such a large crowd was a fire hazard. This prompted a visit from the fire marshall, who promptly closed down the building briefly in 1973. This may have been a blessing in disguise, because new electrical wiring, panic hardware on the doors, exit signs and a new exit door from the chapel were installed. I worked vigorously to raise the money for these improvements, the most crucial of which were completed, often with volunteer labor, within a few weeks. We never again filled the chapel with 225 bodies, even with the new exit door. Another suggestion I made was to improve the kitchen to code so the Herring could sell real food.

One magic moment that occurred at an early Nonesuch concert in the fall of 1972 involved the just formed jazz ensemble Weather Report. In the middle of the performance, the late Joe Zawinul rose from the piano, ascended to the organ that once graced the chapel, and began to play. The entire audience levitated and Zawinul said it was one of the most uplifting moments of his long career.

Nonesuch, in the course of its 18-month existence, presented the following artists at Channing-Murray: Leo Kottke, David Bromberg, Mose Allison, Aztec Two-Step, John Fahey, The Incredible String Band, Herbie Hancock, Bob Gibson, Bill Quateman, Weather Report, Steve Goodman, Larry Coryell, Chick Corea & Return to Forever, McCoy Tyner, and Loudon Wainwright III and probably a few more.

I eventually faded away from attending classes to manage this juggernaut I created, along with running WTWC. Helping with Nonesuch were Tom Tanquary, Trudy Perlman and Evelyn Turner and I couldn’t have done it without them.

The narrative of the Red Herring during the Vietnam period would make a grand Hollywood movie. There were intricacies of the relationships, several marriages and divorces occurred over the years and more random lovemaking sparked by coffeehouse meetings than conceivable (most of it outside the confines of the building, but a considerable number of trysts in the front and rear towers). I think of those who survived and those who vanished, those who found themselves and those who became increasingly lost. I remember those who found God or gods or Scientology or some other savior or discovered Unitarianism. Had I not discovered the Herring perhaps I would have maintained my 4-point U. of I. average and emerged from Champaign-Urbana going a different direction. However, I am thankful I spent those five formative years in that magic basement. I divided my time between the Herring and WPGU, with occasional breaks for classes and writing papers. Like Bruce Springsteen sings: “I learned more from a three-minute record than I ever learned in school.” Perhaps I should say: “I learned more from a three-minute song late on a Saturday evening at the Red Herring than I ever learned at school.” I left Champaign-Urbana in August 1974 for Chicago and a job at WFMT. Although I visited the Red Herring a few times between 1974-76 to give poetry readings, I had no plans of returning.

It is strange then, that I returned to Champaign County in 1986 and remain here. I continue to work for WFMT. I visit the Red Herring occasionally, and although the food is delicious, the vibes are gone. Still I can sense the ghosts of 40 years ago. Perhaps now the slogan should read: “The disaffection of broccoli is the first malady suffered by decaying vegetables.”

“Now many a year has passed and gone,
And many a gamble has been lost and won,
And many a road taken by many a friend,
And each one I've never seen again.

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain,
That we could sit simply in that room again.
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat,
I'd give it all gladly if our lives could be like that.”

Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

This is dedicated to my good friend and fine singer-songwriter, Barow Davidian, who I met at the Red Herring and who died far too young in 1998.