Inspired by The Kinks, The Beatles, The Animals, The Feelies, and Camper Van Beethoven The Flavour Seals embarked on a mad quest for area recognition in the years 1994-1997. Although featured in the St. Louis Post Dispatch the Seals never fully caught on and disbanded in 1997.
The Flavour Seals were founded by Joe Wachtel, Dan Davinroy, and Stan Whyte. Wachtel and Davinroy were in a band called Ten Speed Indian. This band had lots of potential but personality issues hastened the demise of this quartet. Casey Blick, Ten Speed’s excellent guitarist now fronts another local St. Louis band called Yarn.
Stan Whyte was sought out as lead guitarist by Davinroy and Wachtel. Whyte was well known for his guitar work for Joe Camel and the Caucasians. Wachtel and Davinroy auditioned their original songs for Whyte and he liked it. He had always sought an avenue for showcasing his own original works and he joined the band. The last piece of the puzzle was finding a suitable bass player. As anyone in the music business knows this is a formidable task. After auditioning several bass players, Davinroy ran into Wade Farrar, former front man for The Primitives which spawned his brother Jay’s band Uncle Tupelo. Wade had never played bass but was wanting to perform again so he agreed to give the band a shot.
After a few practices a new quartet was born. The Flavour Seals’ name was coined by Whyte who tried the name on some girls who said they liked it. That was good enough for these boys so the name stuck. The band immediately started gigging at such venues as The Wabash Triangle Café, The Red Sea, The Downtown Abbey, The Great Grizzly Bear, KDHX radio and the Hi-Pointe a host of odd and out of the way venues like the Columbus Club in Millstadt, Illinois and a battle of the bands in Alton, Illinois at a place called T. Willikers.
After three years of Tuesday night opening band slots and fruitless auditions Wade called it quits. He didn’t walk away empty handed though, he met his beautiful wife Angie during this period. Wade and Angie are raising two lovely children.
Whyte managed to procure the services of bassist Bill Beyer. Bill is an excellent musician and greatly enhanced The Flavour Seal sound. A notable performance was captured with Bill on KDHX radio.
Wachtel moved to Steelville, Illinois to pursue a music teaching position with the local school district. He now directs all band activities in that rural area enticing his band students to explore high school band interpretations such as “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath and “Alright Now” by Free. The burden of traveling an hour and 15 minutes to band practice plus the weekday gigs led to the dissolution of the band. Joe and his cute wife Lori are also raising two energetic boys.
Whyte and Beyer continue to play “garage style” with Bill’s son Bill Jr. on drums. Their three piece is called Diamond Head and specializes in playing the surf tunes of the Ventures and or course Kinks numbers. Davinroy is currently writing children’s educational songs while teaming up with Don Reed to showcase his continually growing repertoire of original songs.
Until now because the Flavour Seals are back.