The Lewis & Clarke Expedition

The next two bios you're going to read, The Lewis & Clarke Expedition and The Penny Arcade, are the two coolest ones, you know. They definitely help make the Monkees image better. They give them cred, so to speak. Both bands were outside projects and proteges of Michael Nesmith. The Lewis & Clarke Expedition was a country/rock/folk group that along with The Monkees, Sajid Khan, The New Establishment, and Sally Field made up the Colgems roster.

The Lewis & Clarke Expedition was made up of three members of the so called "San Antonio Mafia"; John London played bass, and was Michael Nesmith's best friend and stand-in, Travis Lewis (real name: Michael Martin Murphey) wrote the songs and played guitar, and Boomer Clarke (real name: Owen Castleman) played guitar. Nez knew all three before The Monkees, back in Texas. Rounding out the group was Ken Bloom, who played guitar and keyboards, and Johnny Raines, the drummer.

One could surmise that the Lewis and Clarke Expedition actually began a few years before the Monkees. In the mid 60s, when folk was all the rage, there was a folk ensemble called "The Survivors" which featured Michael Nesmith, Bill Chadwick, Owen Castleman and Michael Martin Murphey, and John London. Mike and Bill would go on to audition for "The Monkees" (only Nez would make it, of course), and the remaining dudes would eventually form The Lewis and Clarke Expedition. Cool.

Since John London, Travis Lewis and Boomer Clarke are mentioned separately on the site, I'll skip their own personal histories and focus more on the history of the band itself. They formed in late 1966 and most likely got their deal on Colgems with a little help from Mike. They played a bunch of clubs on the Strip, and even appeared in the film "For Singles Only". Hmmm. Doesn't ring a bell. All I know is that Travis and Johnny are really hot. Travis looks like Terry Melcher.

The L&C Expedition ended up releasing one album called "The Lewis and Clarke Expedition"(COM/COS-105), which was released in November 1967 and probably sold five copies. An interesting thing about the album is that one of the songs on it is called "(The Lament Of) The Cherokee Reservation Indian, which was the ONE AND ONLY #1 song for Paul Revere and the Raiders in 1971! L&C Expedition covered it FOUR YEARS before the Raiders did! How cool is that? Does anyone know who wrote that song?

Anyway, The Lewis & Clarke Expedition's image was that of five nature loving, rugged, wilderness, wandering guys. Magazines really played up their love of Native American stuff and the Old West. They also wore fringed leather jackets ALL THE TIME.

The L&C/Monkees connection was there from the start, thanks to Nez's friendship with John London, Travis and Boomer. So when The Monkees needed songs for "Pisces", Nez went to the L&C expedition. Travis and Boomer (Mike and Owen) gave him a little song called "What Am I Doing Hangin' Round?" Perhaps you've heard of it.

Nez explains: "I knew Michael (Travis) from Dallas before The Monkees and had remained an acquaintence of his. Watched his songwriting. Thought of him as a good songwriter. One of the things that I felt was honest was country-rock. I wanted to move The Monkees more into that, because I felt like, 'Gee, if we get closer to country music, we'll get closer to the blues, and country blues and so forth'. Michael and Boomer Castleman-- Boomer was his nickname-- were writers at Screen Gems, and they wrote all kinds of really wonderful little songs, and 'Hangin' Round' was just one of them. I think Mike Murphey was more of the architect of that song than Boomer Castleman, but I don't know, they may have written it equally."

Members of the L&C Expedition went on to have various degrees of fame. John London joined Nez's post Monkees country/rock band "The First National Band" and played bass with him for many years. "The First National Band" had a few top forty hits and the critics loved them. Ken Bloom played on a bunch of folk records, as well as records for Mary McCaslin, Bryan Bowers and Julie Andrews. Johnny Raines went on to work with The Dillards (Doug Dillard played banjo on "What Am I Doing Hangin' Round?") and played on David Cassidy's solo albums. Boomer Clarke played on an album by Earl Scruggs and on some of Michael Murphey's solo stuff. But perhaps the biggest success is that of Michael Martin Murphey. He continued to celebrate the Texas country sound in the 70s with critically praised albums "Geronimo's Cadillac" and "Cosmic Cowboy Souvenir", and had a song on the "Urban Cowboy" soundtrack. During his solo career, he had five top forty pop hits, his most famous being "Wildfire", which went gold and went to #3 in 1975. I hear that song ALL THE TIME on TV cos it's on some Singers and Songwriters of the 1970s infomercial. Good stuff, though. Michael did a version of "Hangin' Round" on one of his solo albums. He also appeared on a Bee Gees album in the early 90s, and was a temporary vocalist for REO Speedwagon.

I found a website for Travis Lewis aka Michael Martin Murphey and he still tours and plays up his image as a rugged, Old West sort of guy. What a babe. It seems like all the cool guys come from Texas.