WAMG Interview – Kathy Bratkowski: Director of SOMETHING IN THE WATER – SLIFF 2013

SOMETHING IN THE WATER: A ST. LOUIS ROCKUMENTARY looks at a scene that anyone who was around St. Louis in the ‘70s has to remember as an invigorating period for classic-rock fans. The new documentary looks back at the unique set of circumstances that electrified the music scene here in the late ’60s and early ’70s. The new film by Emmy-winning director Kathy Bratkowski chronicles the advent of free-form radio at stations such as KSHE, the storied concerts at the Mississippi River Festival (MRF) and Superjam, and the area musicians who used St. Louis stages to reach a national audience. Featuring rare interviews, archived MRF concert footage, and photos from the musicians themselves, SOMETHING IN THE WATER is a funny, honest, and unique account of “ground zero for rock and roll,” as told by those who played a major role in the emergence of classic rock in St. Louis. Interviewees include Rich Dalton, Mark Klose, David Grafman, Mark Boatman and Roger Boyd of Head East, Pat and Danny Liston of Mama’s Pride, Steve Scorfina of Pavlov’s Dog, Supe Granda of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Lyle Ward, Ron Elz, Bob Heil, Steve Schankman, and Joe Edwards.

SOMETHING IN THE WATER: A ST. LOUIS ROCKUMENTARY will be screening this Sunday, November 24th, at the Wildey Theater in Edwardsville, Ill. Kathy Bratkowski will be in attendance and will answer questions after the screening. Steve Scorfina of Pavlov’s Dog and some of his fellow bandmates will be performing music after Ms Bratkowski’s Q&A.

For ticket information, visit Cinema St. Louis’ site HERE

http://www.cinemastlouis.org/something-water

For directions to the Wildey Theater, visit their site HERE

http://www.wildeytheatre.com/

Kathy Bratkowski took the time to answer some questions about SOMETHING IN THE WATER for We Are Movie Geeks before it’s screening here.

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman November 19th, 2013.

We Are Movie Geeks: Is this your first feature length documentary?

Kathy Bratkowski: It is.

WAMG:  Has it showed at other film festivals, and if so, what has been the reaction?

KB:  It’s only screened so far at Cinema St. Louis’ Filmmakers Showcase last summer. We’ve entered it in the True/False Film Festival in Columbia and in the Big Sky Film Festival in Montana.

WAMG: What is your background and what did you win your Emmys for?

KB: My Emmys that I have won have been for television programming related to the arts for a show called State of the Arts for a cable company called HEC-TV and they are the producing company for SOMETHING IN THE WATER. State of the Arts is a magazine-style show about the arts in St. Louis and the St. Louis region.

WAMG: Did you grow up listening to KSHE?

KB: I did. Like so many people I went to Mississippi River Festival. I remember seeing some of these bands at different places. I wasn’t someone who went to these places every night though. I’m a little younger to have totally been in the scene and by the time I got to college, it was really sad because it was disco. But I do remember a lot of this. It was a very different time though.

WAMG: I can remember going to the Mississippi River Festival a couple of times myself, I remember seeing The Little River Band and Dave Mason there. I think those were the only two shows I saw there.

KB: I was talking to someone recently about those days and driving across that old bridge. I think the drinking age over in Illinois was 18 or 19 at that time.

WAMG: I think it was actually 21 for men and 19 for women during much of the ‘70s.

KB: I didn’t remember that. That’s so funny!

WAMG: SOMETHING IN THE WATER – where does that title come from?

KB: When you see the film, it’s from a comment that Rich Dalton from KSHE made. He was musing about why our city having this great music scene and why so many great musicians come from here and he said “I don’t know. Maybe it’s something in the water”. We don’t really answer the question as to why this all happened here because I don’t know if you can answer it. There were a lot of different variables that came together to make St. Louis a great place to hear music and to be a musician at that time.

WAMG: Were there people you wanted to interview for SOMETHING IN THE WATER that you couldn’t track down?

KB: I discovered that Facebook is a great place to track down people. I probably should have interviewed (KSHE DJs) Ron Stevens and Joy Grdnic. They were really influential. I did 16 or 17 different interviews and you have to stop somewhere. Steve Rosen is someone I would have liked to have interviewed. He was one of the very early KSHE DJ’s. A few other musicians would have been nice but I think we have a good representation.

WAMG: You interviewed Ron ‘Johnny Rabbit’ Elz. Did the controversy about the other Johnny Rabbit come up?

KB: No, but I do know about that. Rich Dalton was talking about that. Someone else came in and tried to bill themselves as Johnny Rabbit.

WAMG: Yeah, someone could make a whole documentary just about that. What are the differences between how KSHE is run today and how it was run in the ‘70s?

KB: I think it’s hugely different. It’s more of a commercial format and highly formatted. Back then it was free-form radio, it was kind of run by the hippies. By the kids for the kids. They were playing the things they liked and that’s why bands would come here and start their concert tours. The DJs would invite them to the station to talk. They had great radio opportunities here. That doesn’t always happen now. It’s a much more corporate world. What Rich Dalton is doing with his KSHE-HD is very similar to the old KSHE, more a free-form format. You can still get that but it’s not on the standard commercial radio anymore.

WAMG: Do you still attend rock and roll shows?

KB: We do. There was a KSHE event at Jefferson Barracks last year. The Ozark Mountain Daredevils played and I interviewed Mike “Supe” Granda then and it was fun to see them in front of a big crowd like that.

WAMG: What are some of the differences between the concert scene of today compared to that period?

KB: I think the world is more of a different place. There’s much more control over the crowd and stuff like that. It was getting a little excessive at that time. Mississippi River Festival is a case in point. I mean, you could bring in anything. And people did. They brought in tents and barbeque pits and there was pot smoking and drinking. None of that would be done so openly today I don’t think.

WAMG: I can’t recall, was the Mississippi River Festival a free event?

KB: Two dollars!

WAMG: Wow! Yeah, concerts today are so expensive. That’s why I stopped going years ago. Why do you think certain bands, like Mama’s Pride and J.D. Blackfoot, were so popular in St. Louis but not in other cities?

KB: In the documentary we talk about that and it does have a lot to do with KSHE and that station’s influence. Shelly Grafman was the manager for much of the time period that we talk about. During that period, KSHE could make a band. Sammy Hagar, still today, is hugely popular here but not necessarily a lot of other places and that has a lot to do with the fact that KSHE played his music a lot.

WAMG: Do you think KSHE was unique among hard rock stations nationwide or did every city have a KSHE?

KB: Eventually every city had a KSHE. Early on, not necessarily so. That’s discussed in the documentary. Ron Elz went out to San Francisco very early on and heard this album-oriented free-form radio being done by a man named Tom Donahue out there. He’s considered the father of that format and Ron brought it back to St. Louis. KSHE wasn’t making money at the time. The SHE part in the call letters originated because it was supposed to be a women-oriented station and the playing romantic music and that sort of stuff in the early ‘60s and that wasn’t going anywhere and so Ron Elz tried this new format. KSHE was really one of the first, and eventually it caught on everywhere.

WAMG: Where did you unearth all of the archive footage?

KB: It was really great because KSHE has an online museum. They have tons of photos and interviews with musicians. Anything they own they owned they let us use. Photographers opened up their collections for us. There’s a guy named Bill Parsons who photographed a lot of the concerts at that time. He gave us lots of stuff. And Mississippi River Festival, through a man named Lyle Ward, who’s also in the film, and SIU (Southern Illinois University – on whose campus Mississippi River Festival was held) allowed us to use two documentaries they had shot at the time as well as hundreds of photos from their exhibit. There’s also a guy name John Nieman who wrote a book about KSHE (KSHE and 40 Years of Rock in St. Louis). He lives in Chicago but he gave us some photographs from his book. So people were just super-generous with their materials.

WAMG: I’m not surprised. It seems like a topic ripe for documenting now that we’re all getting in our 50s and have such fond memories of all of this stuff.

KB: Yeah, I think people are in the mood to look back at all of that. People who were teenagers at the time and so many have described the film as really evocative and something that brings back a lot of memories.

WAMG: And it’s so St. Louis! Would you like to make another documentary feature? What is your next project?

KB: I don’t know. I do a lot of freelance work for HEC-TV so I’m always producing things but it tends to be more about visual art and some popular music but not always. I’m thinking about doing something that is sort of an outgrowth of this project on my own. So, we’ll see.

WAMG: The screening of SOMETHING IN THE WATER is at the Wiley Theater this Sunday.

KB:  Yes, and Steve Scorfina, who was with Pavlo’s Dogs is going to perform a set of music right after the Q&A and he’ll be joined by Mike Saffron, who was the drummer in the original Pavlo’s Dogs and also some members of Steve’s current band.

WAMG: Great. Good luck with the screening and all of your future projects.

KB:  Thank you.