You’d think following up the retiring Tom Bernard would be a Hard To Handle act to follow. Enter a drummer and more with a lot to say, Dave Gorman, who is back in the area as the Crowes fly, making his presence felt again, this time on the other side of the river, bringing even more IQ to the KQ morning show.

Now that its 20 or more years later, the ex-drummer of the Black Crowes has again hit the local scene, this time in the radio talk show booth, not being the subject of the sound guy in the sound booth.
After being middle age or so in his former band’s gig at the River’s Edge near Somerset, when concerts on either side of the village were more the thing, Dave Gorman now takes his turn on the other side of the river, replacing the longtime stalwart of the KQ morning show, the now retiring Tom Bernard. He already was well into his tenure as the leader of the crew when this other show went on, as in the concert, and Gorman was in back on the skins.
I remember Gorman and his mates whipping through their rock standards with relative ease, and he supplied carefully placed but powerful drum fills to tunes, and leading their intros, like their main standard, the rockin’ out Hard to Handle. When other instruments such as percussion, of a folk style, were added the sound quality suffered. I wrote that in a concert review for the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram, to the degree that the entertainment section editor asked me after it was published if I had reservations about the band and their performance. I responded that they should stick to what they do best, even if that meant making changes in the presentation of certain songs over others in their set list’s order. My recollection was that both styles were given equal treatment, judging by the way the songs were mixed in.
The crowd didn’t seem to care, and they got a good look to make such a judgment, as the concert site was sloped gently toward the stage, which was elevated by about the helght of a basketball hoop. Good thing since the lead singer, Chris Robinson, was somewhat short in stature, and he had all those folk instruments surrounding him. Above what could have been a mosh pit if the band’s sound was harder, the nearly full moon was shrouded in mist, or what was a actually pot smoke, as legalization had been a champion cause of the group long before in gained more traction — this was over 20 years ago. I could smell it on my clothes and thought gee, I sure hope I don’t happen to get stopped on the way home by the heavy law enforcement that included squads with a checkpoint at all nearby points along the state line.
Topics like lighting up were, of course, frequent fodder for the morning show, and one wonders that since the move toward legalization is now more and more popular, will the tack taken by its hosts change at all with the addition of Gorman? And on something like the occasional St. Croix Riverboat party cruises, they’d be straddling the border between Wisconsin and Minnesota, with potential differences in state laws on such matters, as they work their way through one Legislature, or the other, or both. Cruising north toward Stillwater you could light up, but south angling toward Prescott, you couldn’t? Continue on down until Iowa?
A big reason Gorman got this new gig was the fact he has had his own syndicated radio show, which even aired on KQRS for a while. He was very articulate with detailed discussion, and of course had many stories from the road — between songs on a theme and their analysis, his staple. That show had its wraps after midnight, an adjustment from now where you’d usually hit the air before dawn.