This is another instalment in the series of articles about bands that Curt Eddy, Jerry Weakley and I were privileged to see and hear during the mid to late 60’s in Lawrence.
Michael Kelly Finnigan was born to John Patrick and Evelyn Kelly Finnigan on April 26, 1945, in Cleveland and was raised in Troy, Ohio. He grew up in a musical family, in which both parents and many relatives sang and played music, in a home where all kinds of popular American Music were heard constantly. Finnigan had some piano lessons in his childhood, but was more interested in the drums, which he started playing at age 11. He returned to playing a little piano in his teens and was part of a band with some high school friends.
At Troy High School, Mike was heavily involved in sports including basketball, track, cross country and intramurals. However, he was a well-rounded student participating in choir, dramatics, thespians, Key Club, Future Teachers of America, Hi-Y, music contest and a member of the Junior Cabinet. In 1963 he graduated and was a highly scouted All American basketball player and captain of the team. That season he led the Trojans to the state Championship and secured a scholarship to the University of Kansas after being offered over 40 scholarships from schools around the country.
At KU he planned to study political science with a minor in history. He joined Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. While focused on basketball, he started spending a lot of hours in KC, listening to the many fine musicians playing Jazz, R&B, and Rock music. Kansas City was a place that offered a good deal of live music in that era, and he soon gave up on his hoop dreams in favor of music. In a 2004 interview, Finnigan said: “I started getting interested in music right away, which no one in the basketball program was thrilled with. Their philosophy was: you show another interest, and you are out. There was talk about redshirting me and I thought maybe this wasn’t what I was supposed to do. So, I dropped out. KU always had a great program and there was no point in someone keeping a scholarship if I wasn’t 100% devoted to it.”
Mike left KU in 1964, and he soon joined a group of college classmates in a band called The Serfs. Mike Finnigan and the Serfs were an R&B oriented band with a little more straight blues and light jazz influences than other bands of the era. They had horns (trumpet, saxophone), but they were not a show band like the Flippers. Their instrumentation was different using congas and vibraphone as well as heavy use of Mike’s Hammond B3 organ.
He and the band relocated to Wichita and became the house band in a local night club. The Serfs was one of few well-known Kansas bands of the era that were not represented by Mid-Continent Productions. The Serfs played more nationally than many of the local bands, but occasionally played local venues like the Red Dog Inn.
Mike played the B3, but he was lucky to have an opportunity to own one. There was a Hammond store in Wichita back then and the man who ran it was a retired musician, who played the Hammond organ, named Bob Hall. Bob took an interest in the 19-year-old who was haunting the store regularly. Mike didn’t have the cash to buy a B3 and Leslie speaker, and he certainly didn’t have any credit, but Bob let Mike put $200 down and agreed to carry the loan himself.
Another leader of the Serfs was Lane Tietgen who was the band’s primary songwriter and guitarist. Lane was born in the Topeka area in 1946. For the next seven years, Mike and Lane traveled the country with The Serfs playing in nightclubs, and later, theaters and other concert venues. The Serfs recorded and released singles “Bread & Water” and “Help Me Somebody” on the Rhythm & Soul label in 1966 which were later released on the Cameo Parkway label. These songs reflected the soul and rhythm and blues orientation of the band early on. The Serfs lineup consisted of:
· Mike Finnigan – organ, piano, vocals
· Lane Tietgen – guitar, bass, vocals
· Larry Faucette – congas
· Richard Margolis – vibraphone
· Mark Underwood – trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone
· Freddy Smith – tenor saxophone, vocals
· Kenny Bloomquist – drums
“Bread & Water”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8tBVShldE0
“Help Me Somebody”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYwo-WbxDf4
Probably because of their national exposure they attracted the attention of major record labels. In 1968, the Serfs became one of the few local Kansas bands of the era that were signed by a major record label - Capitol Records.
The Serfs recorded their only album “Early Bird Café” album in the fall of 1968 at The Record Plant in New York. The famed record producer, Tom Wilson, worked with the Serfs on the album. Wilson was one of the better-known producers in the 60’s and worked with a diverse group of groups/artists like Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Simon & Garfunkel, the Velvet Underground, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Eddie Harris, Nico, Eric Burdon and the Animals, the Blues Project, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. He was Bob Dylan’s producer when Dylan famously made the transition from acoustic folk music to his new electric sound.
The Serfs album presumably reflected the set list at that time and was more musically diverse than the earlier recordings with Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” to Bo Diddley’s “I’m A Man” to Miles Davis “All Blues”. The other songs were original compositions by Lane Tietgen also in different musical styles.
1. Like A Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan) - 6:30
2. Early Bird Cafe - 4:00
3. Little Man - 3:28
4. Evil Days - 4:45
5. You've Been Talking 'Bout Me Baby - 3:40
6. I'm A Man (Ellas McDaniel) - 6:02
7. Leda - 1:51
8. All Blues (Miles Davis) - 8:09
9. Time's Caught Up With You - 2:36
10.Prologue: Mechanical Man - 5:32
Mike was the lead singer on the Tietgen compositions “Evil Days”, “Leda” and “Time’s Caught Up With You” as well as on “I’m A Man” using the arrangement made popular by the Spencer Davis Group featuring Steve Winwood. Lane was lead on Like a Rolling Stone, Little Man, Prologue: Mechanical Man. Mike and Lane sang together on Early Bird Café and Freddy Smith was lead on You’ve Been Talking About Me Baby. The band shows its jazz chops on the Mile Davis instrumental composition All Blues. You have to wonder if Tom Wilson encouraged the band to do Like A Rolling Stone since he was the producer on the Bob Dylan original.
The Early Bird Café album can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KafGsY8cM64
The album was recorded in New York City and it happened that Jimi Hendrix was recording the legendary Electric Ladyland album at the same studio. Hendrix enlisted Mike and two of his band mates to cut the songs “Rainy Day, Dream Away” and “Still Raining, Still Dreaming”. There are several interviews with Mike on YouTube about how the songs were composed and recorded:
Mike married Heather Candace “Candy” Howse in 1969. Mike and Candy would have two children: a daughter, Bridget, and a son, Kelly. Candy went on to become a well-known alcohol and drug addiction intervention counselor and appeared on the TV show “Intervention”.
After the Serfs disbanded in 1971, Mike remained in Wichita recording an album with fellow Wichita native Jerry Hahn in 1970 and also recorded a solo album with Jerry Wood entitled “Crazed Hipsters” in 1972.
Mike and Candy moved to Los Angeles in 1975 where Mike became a much sought after studio and touring musician. He worked with Joe Cocker, Etta James, Sam Moore, Crosby Stills and Nash, Dave Mason, Buddy Guy, The Manhattan Transfer, Taj Mahal, Michael McDonald, Maria Muldaur, Peter Frampton, Cher, Ringo Starr, Leonard Cohen, Tower of Power, Rod Stewart, David Coverdale, Tracy Chapman, Los Lonely Boys, and Bonnie Raitt and many others over the years. In addition, Mike recorded the solo albums “Mike Finnigan” in 1976 and “Black and White” in 1978. He appeared on more than 200 albums during his career.
Upon his death in 2021, Mike was remembered by many of the musicians he worked with over the years. Bonnie Raitt, with whom Finnigan toured and recorded, posted on her Facebook account that she was “rocked to the core” by news of Finnigan’s death, and went on to say, “Mike was one of the most powerful, virtuosic soul/gospel/blues singers and Hammond B3 players you’ll ever be blessed to hear,”. “Respected and emulated by musicians the world over, his legacy of staggering performances across his 60+ years career will stand the test of time. He stopped our show nearly every night. There was simply no one like him.”
Lane Tietgen moved to Northen California shortly after the Serfs broke up and continued his career as a musician and composer while playing in several bands in the San Francisco Bay area. He died in 2020 in Sonoma County, California.