Do you have anything on a D.C. music group from 1969 called the Incredible Fog? I was a teenager who enjoyed attending local dances when they were active. Their one hit was called “When the Sun’s Gone Down,” but it only seemed to get local airplay and they never hit it big nationally, which was a shame because it was a perfectly good song.
— David Berard, Mount Rainier, Md.
What did rock-and-roll do for Jesse Gay, the founder and lead guitarist in the Incredible Fog?
“It probably ruined my life,” Gay told Answer Man.
Gay was joking. What he meant was that being in a rock band spoiled him for anything like a normal job. As a boy, Gay assumed he would go to the Naval Academy then settle into a military career, as his father and grandfather had done. Then he saw the Beatles on “Ed Sullivan” and the trajectory of his life was forever altered.
The Incredible Fog formed in 1966 at Langley High in McLean, Va., where all the members were students, most in the Class of 1970. Gay said he envisioned the band as Northern Virginia’s version of Jefferson Airplane.
“It was at the height of the psychedelic time,” Gay said.
Also in the band were Gay’s sister, singer Miriam (then known as Mimi); Elaine Allen on keyboards; Jon Chase on drums; Jamie Fisher on bass; and Bobby Hall on rhythm guitar. A later incarnation of the band replaced Miriam and Elaine with Brad Lyons on lead vocals and John “Carpie” Carpenter on keyboards.
“They were so far ahead of their time, it wasn’t funny,” said Bud Becker, the local music impresario who signed the band to a contract with his Domestic Sound Production agency in 1969. “They were one of my top bands. They were all lovely kids.”
The Fog had a busy schedule playing at teen centers and high school dances, traveling to gigs in the VW Bus of their equipment manager and sound man, classmate Bill Bramble. They opened for Grin, Nils Lofgren’s band, and performed at an art opening at the Corcoran.
Becker arranged for Dick Weissman, a producer for a subsidiary of ABC Records called Command/Probe, to come down from Manhattan for a showcase of the bands he managed.
“What I remember about the Incredible Fog is that they were very young,” said Weissman, who now lives in Colorado. “I think they were all like 16 and 17 years old.”
They were also very polished, he said, and the only one of Becker’s bands worth a shot.
(Weissman also produced the first album by Fat City, the duo of Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert, later to become half of the Starland Vocal Band.)
The Fog band members went to a studio in New York City to record two songs: “When the Sun’s Gone Down,” written by a friend, Kip Radler, and “Tommy Black,” written by Jesse and Miriam Gay. The session went well.
“The first time we got the record and put it on to listen to it, after about the first second and a half all these violins came in that we really didn’t know were going to be there,” Jesse Gay remembered. “Of course, that was very much the thing at the time.”
The string arrangement was written by Bob James, who went on to a successful career as a smooth jazz pianist and penned the theme for the TV show “Taxi.”
Said drummer Chase: “I’ll never forget the sensation of digging a song on the radio and, after about a minute, realizing it’s your song.”
“When the Sun’s Gone Down” received airplay locally but failed to catch on nationally.
Becker thought the band members’ youth was a handicap. “They couldn’t tour because they had school,” he said. “The record company didn’t want to put the money behind them that they normally would have.”
In 1970, the band took its revamped lineup to Nashville and recorded an album’s worth of material. A single — “Princess of a Fool” backed with “Can You Stand It” — was released on a label called Clark in 1970.
Then it was time for college. The Incredible Fog dissipated.
Today, Miriam lives in Oregon with her husband, with whom she once ran a private investigation business. Elaine Allen produced jingles in Las Vegas, worked with the Capitol Steps in Washington and now lives in France. Hall lives in Burke, Va., and works for the U.S. Postal Service. Fisher’s in Seattle, where he’s an architect and plays in a classic rock band called the Pioneer Squares. Carpenter retired to Colorado after working in sales for a wire manufacturing company. Lyons died in 2017.
Chase never put down his drumsticks. He lives in the Boston area, teaches at Berklee College of Music, runs a recording studio and still gigs.
Jesse Gay is in the business, too. For nearly 20 years he has lived in Playa Tamarindo in Costa Rica, playing bass in a band called PinkyGuaro .
The Incredible Fog reunited in 1990 for their 20th high school reunion and in 2010 for their 40th. They haven’t decided what to do about the 50th. Answer Man says, “Rock on.”
Twitter: @johnkelly
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