The Buffum Tool Co. (Champaign-Urbana)

The Buffum Tool Co. were a 1960's folk-rock group made up of students from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.  They played mostly original material with a sound that was heavily influenced by groups such as the Byrds, Love and Buffalo Springfield.

Band members included Phillip Ross, Frank Pytko, Frederick Thady, Donald McCrea Kennedy and Gerry Smith.  An early lineup of the band reportedly included a drummer named Snake Larsen.

The group performed primarily the circuit of bars and small venues throughout Illinois and around the Midwest.  During the "Summer of Love" however the group travelled to San Francisco and spent three weeks performing at the Matrix while crashing in Steve Miller's attic.  There they met bands such as Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape and Quicksilver Messenger Service before returning to Illinois.

Only a few years earlier, the band was playing dances and frat parties on the campus of the University of Illinois.   In those early days the group was known as the Barbarians.

For several months in early 1966, the group was being represented by G & G Enterprises, a booking agency based in Champaign.  Eventually the group was picked up by promoter Ken Adamany and his Wisconsin-based agency.

Around that same time the band decided to change their name.  For a brief period they were known as Our Mothers Children before settling on the Buffum Tool Company.  

By the end of 1966, the group began to perform more in Chicago, Northern Illinois and Wisconsin.  In December of 1966 and into the new year, the group played a number of shows at the Cellar in Arlington Heights.  They also performed at other Chicagoland teen clubs such as the Crimson Cougar.

In late June of 1967, the band opened for the Five Americans on a few dates including Sterling, Illinois and Janesville, Wisconsin.  In July, the band continued to perform in various Wisconsin locations including La Crosse and Appleton. 

By early August, the group headed west for a gig in Colorado.  (Ken Adamany's agency maintained a satellite office in Aspen.)  Inspired however by the mass migration of young people to San Francisco that particular summer, the band left Colorado and headed straight to California.

Within days, thanks to a few key connections, the band was on stage at the Matrix, a Haight-Ashbury nightclub owned in part by Jefferson Airplane's Marty Balin.  For several weeks in August of 1967, the Buffum Tool Co served as the unofficial house band for the venue.  During that period, the group opened for the Sons of Champlin on several occasions.

While in San Francisco, Adamany likely helped arrange for the group to stay at Steve Miller's house.  Miller and Adamany had been in a band together in Wisconsin in the early 1960s.

Miller, who was renting an old Victorian mansion in Haight-Ashbury, had multiple beds set up in his attic and the house served as a gathering point for musicians and friends.  Others living there at the time included Albert King and Boz Scaggs (another former bandmate of Adamany).

The Buffum boys however were eventually asked to leave the house when the group's road manager got involved with someone else's girlfriend.  After that the band slept on the stage of the Matrix before making their way back to the Midwest.

Despite the fact that they wrote a lot of their own material, the Buffum Tool Co never officially released any music.  However they did make some informal recordings.   Phillip Ross, in a 2020 interview with the internet radio show Acid Flashback, shared two of their songs.  According to Ross, they were recorded live in a barn in Janesville, Wisconsin in 1967.  Both songs were written by Gerry Smith.

  

"Hiding In Your Mind" & "Yesterday's Dreams"

  

Sometime after returning from California, Phillip Ross left the band.  He was replaced by singer Brian Cook and bassist Larry Minton.  Both had been members of the Champaign group, Somebody Groovy.

According to comments left by Frank Pytko on the website Hollywood Hangover, the Buffum Tool Co. were the replacement act for Otis Redding after his plane crashed over Lake Monona in Madison, WI on December 10, 1967.   The Madison club where Redding and the Bar-Kays were scheduled to play was the Factory, which was owned by Ken Adamany.  The other group on the original bill was another Adamany group, Rockford's Grim Reapers (which included a young Rick Nielsen).

The Buffum Tool Co continued to perform around the U of I campus into 1968.   In February, they were listed in the Blytham Ltd. roster of bands which suggests they may have parted ways with Adamany at some point.

It is unclear when exactly the band called it quits but it was likely sometime before the end of 1968.

The Hollyood Hangover site includes a comment from Donald McCrea Kennedy which describes the bands last few gigs:  "After four years of gigging, and having decided to hang it up, we played a packed farewell gig at the McKinley YMCA gym {in Champaign], to our throng of adoring fans, and then foolishly played one more gig - a high school dance in Dixon, Illinois, where, afterwards, we had to defend ourselves with mace while fending off an attack from some 30 or so drunken redneck factory workers of that fine town."

The Inner Sanctums (Virden)

The Inner Sanctums were a teenage combo from Macoupin and Sangamon counties in downstate Illinois.  The group released a lone single in 1968 and had a brief moment of national exposure due to their appearance on the television show Happening '68.

The leader of the Inner Sanctums was bass player Dave Hogan from Virden.  Other members of the group included his younger brother, Joe Hogan, on drums; Gene Skeen of Gerard played lead guitar and sang; Mike Bates of Carlinville on rhythm guitar; and Linda Williamson from Auburn played the organ.

The band formed sometime in 1966 when most of the band members were still in high school or younger.  Other than Dave Hogan, who had been taking bass lessons at the time, the boys in the group did not know how to play their instruments when they first started.  Williamson, a former neighbor to the Hogans and the oldest member of the group, however had been playing the piano for six years when she decided to join the combo. 

By November of that year, the Inner Sanctums participated in a “Battle of the Bands” in Divernon, Illinois.  Other contestants included The Syndicates of Chatham and the Vibratones from Carlinville.  No word on who won the contest.

The Inner Sanctums would continue to perform in the area at school dances and other events for more than five years.  By the summer of 1968, the group had a standing gig at the VFW Hall in Gerard on Wednesday nights.

In an August 1967 article in the Jacksonville Journal Courier, the band was described as “having cut several records and have been extremely popular wherever they have performed.”  Despite the claim, it seems unlikely that the band had made any records at this point.

In 1968 however, the band did record a single at the Golden Voice Recording Co. in South Pekin, Illinois.  Released simply as Inner Sanctum on the studio’s house label, Thunder Records, the record included two songs written by guitarist Gene Skeen.

"Can't Make It Without You"  /  "Times Are Getting Better"

 

The group's big break came that same year when  a cousin of the Hogans attended a taping of American Bandstand in California and mentioned the Inner Sanctums to the show’s producers.  Incredibly, the show reached out to the band and asked for a tape which the group happily supplied.

Out of hundreds of submissions, the band was chosen to appear on Happening ‘68, a musical variety show hosted by Mark Lindsay and Paul Revere that aired after American Bandstand on ABC.  (For another Downstate band to appear on the show, see the Mod 4.)

In May of 1968, the band flew to Los Angeles for four days, to tape two episodes of the show.  While in California, the group reportedly met Moby Grape, the Electric Flag, Stevie Wonder and Carol Burnett.

On Saturday afternoon June 1st, 1968 the band's episode aired nationally.  Michael Christian (Peyton Place), Stephen Young (Judd) and Christopher George (Rat Patrol) were the judges for the amateur band contest.  Unfortunately, footage from the episode does not appear to have survived.   

It is unclear what song the Inner Sanctums performed on the show but apparently it went well because they advanced to the next round of the contest and appeared in another episode a few weeks later.

Despite the national exposure and a new single, not much seemed to change for the band.  An article in the Illinois State Register around the time mentioned that a St. Louis firm was going to take over distribution of their record.   If true, the distribution was fairly limited.  Fifty-plus years later, copies of the record remain scarce.

The group eventually simplified their name to just Inner Sanctum for live appearances.  They continued to perform in the Virden area at least until early 1972.

For more on the band including some details about other recordings the band made, see the Golden Voice Recording Co.'s post from 2014.