The Pawnbrokers Story

1967 was a banner year for the Fargo/Moorhead-based Pawnbrokers. Things were definitely at their peak. Mike Naylor (vocals, guitars, keyboards and harmonica), Kent Richey (drums, vocals, keyboards), Steve Hanson (guitars, vocals, drums), and Blake English (bass, vocals) had released their first 45 record, “Someday,” which was riding high on the local charts, toured with Bobby Vee as his backup band, shared billing with The Box Tops in December at Bismarck, ND, and played an unheard of two performances at the Detroit Lakes Pavilion in the same summer. They were one of the first Fargo bands to incorporate a light show into their act as well as utilizing two lead guitars and a drummer with a double bass drum set-up. They were also the first Fargo band to stray away from the top 40 format of the day and use album cuts of less fame along with their own material. With all of these wonderful things going on, one would think that they would be destined for great things. As often is the case, fate had other plans.

Blake graduated from Minneapolis Southwest High School in 1965 with little musical experience. One of his high school chums was Bob Folschow, an original member of the Castaways (of “Liar, Liar” fame). Blake enrolled at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, where he met fellow freshmen Kent Richey (Brainerd, MN) and Mike Naylor (Bemidji, MN) who were attempting to start up a rock group. Assembling the group wasn’t as difficult as getting the conservative college administration, that allowed no dancing on campus and frowned on attendance at such events as well as rock’n’roll music in general, to condone their actions. They did it in spite of the conflict and even practiced in the wrestling room in the basement of the Concordia College fieldhouse for a time. Mike convinced Blake that his current destiny was to be a bass player and taught him how to play the bass guitar. “We were unnamed in the beginning while we were looking for another guitar player-vocalist who would have a little higher register to add more harmony to the selections we wanted to do and, looking around campus, we found no one that would fit the bill,” said Blake. “We got wind of a guy over at Moorhead State by the name of Steve Hanson (Crosby, MN), so we checked him out and he fit in perfectly. He was a good guitar player and his voice would allow us to expand the sound and do some “Beatle” tunes. After Steve joined us, we became the PAWNBROKERS. Mike likes to tell everyone it was because we were always getting our stuff out of hock, but we picked the name after seeing the movie of the same name and also because no other group had it for a name that we knew about.”

“At this time the most notable philosophy behind the Pawnbrokers was that we were not just another party band playing fraternity parties but, instead, a well organized, well rehearsed professional group. We would keep the on stage tuning to a minimum with no fooling around between songs. In other words, we wanted to be professional on stage with little dead air space between selections. We were being paid and both the crowd and the club owners deserved their money’s worth.”

“Mike and Kent, both excellent musicians were strongly influenced by Bob Dylan, the Stones, the Byrds, the Lovin’ Spoonful, and the Beatles at this time,” continued Blake. “Mike picked up on Roger McGuinn’s 12-string sound and we turned in memorable performances on: “Chimes of Freedom” “Feel a Whole Lot Better” and “Tambourine Man” as well as “Norwegian Wood.” Because of Mike’s ability to get a Jagger-type vocal, we did a lot of early Rolling Stones’ songs such as: “Last Time” “Talkin’ ‘bout You” “Off the Hook” and “Spider and the Fly,” said Blake. “The memory of doing “Paint It Black” still gives me a rush. One song by the Byrds we did that we never heard another band attempt was “Eight Miles High.” It was a song we could pull off and just about everyone listening noticed.”