Tunes And Lyrics To Mend Many Lives -- Group Hopes Album Can Help Alcoholics Walk The 12 Steps

I used to pal around with old Jack Daniels. And me and Johnny Walker were great friends. But these good old boys just left me in the gutter. And this is where our good old friendship ends.

- From the song, "Another Friend of Bill's," lyrics by Mary Jean King and music by Ira Fein.

Set those lyrics to a country-Western beat and you've got a catchy tune only a recovering alcoholic could fully appreciate.

That's what Mary Jean King, who wrote the lyrics; Ira Fein, who composed the music, and the four other members of their Seattle recovery band, the Monday Night Meeting, had in mind.

"A lot of recovery is painful work," observed King, a 32-year-old legal secretary by day and an actress, lyricist and singer by night.

"We think there's room or a time for some celebration for having come through everything," King said. "We want to do an album of singable songs - something people can sing along with to celebrate their recovery."

MONDAY-NIGHT SUPPORT

King suggested forming a recovery band about 1 1/2 years ago at a meeting of Adult Children of Alcoholics, a support group for people involved in the traditional 12 steps to recovery for alcoholics, drug addicts and others.

Recovering addicts can also be workaholics, the malady King was fleeing from when she abandoned New York City in 1990 for a more laid-back life in Seattle.

Also at the adult children of alcoholics meeting was 43-year-old Fein, another New York transplant and guitarist.

"It's funny, I had thought, wouldn't it be wonderful to do music with the 12-step recovery themes," Fein said. "And that's when we (he and King) met."

A professed Jewish Christian, Fein is a former cantor, who once directed a Jewish Orthodox folk rock band and now is choir director for the Unity Church of Truth in the Denny Regrade.

Since the idea was hatched at a Monday session of adult children of alcoholics, the band was named Monday Night Meeting.

Their signature song is "Another Friend of Bill's," a reference to "Bill Wilson," founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Why a predominantly country-Western style? "Because country music specifically talks about drinking and having relationships with booze," said the band's drummer, Norma (Rosie) Wigutoff, who works as a children's photographer.

Other band members include Pat Herold, a photo-developer, on bass; Crispin Faget, a blood-bank laboratory technician, on lead guitar, and Chris Welch, a University of Washington student and pianist for St. Anne Catholic Church on Queen Anne and Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church in Magnolia, who is their keyboard player.

The group, which rehearses each week at Wigutoff's Lake City home, made a demonstration tape in August and hopes to cut an album that could be sold through recovery catalogs and at recovery conferences. A Nashville recording firm has indicated some interest, King said.

MUSIC WITH A MESSAGE

The band has played a couple of jam nights at a Tukwila country dance bar and appeared at sessions of Arts Anonymous, a support group for artists. Band members say they want to play at nonalcoholic bars and treatment centers.

"We have a message we want to deliver to people in recovery," Wigutoff said. "As far as we know, there's no one doing this anywhere in the country."

The band will perform early next year at the Creative Recovery Festival, which will showcase works of artists in recovery. The festival will be at 7 p.m. Feb. 29 in St. Paul's United Church of Christ, 6512 12th Ave. N.W.

King and Fein also have collaborated on lullabies, and Fein has set the recovery "Serenity Prayer" to music.

Of the lullabies, King observed, "If we can heal the child within and say it's OK, we'll be better off - all of us."

King said she and Fein wrote the words and music for "A Friend of Bill's" in about 15 minutes. "We knew we didn't write that one. God wrote that," King said.

Fein said he began writing religious-theme music as a 19-year-old exchange student to Israel. He composes on the guitar and on the keyboard.

"If I feel something deeply, I can translate that into music," Fein said. "That's a gift I've been given."

Anyone wishing to obtain a copy of the demonstration tape or more information about the group can write to Monday Night Meeting, PO Box 9952, Seattle 98109.