Playing classic rock oldies in college town bars has been Jerry Sprague’s bread and butter for more than three decades.
The son of a musician, Sprague was singing and playing guitar with high school friends when life took an unexpected turn. At the age of 16, he found himself with a child on the way. By 22, he was a single father with two kids, and it seemed that his days as a musician might be over.
Gradually, as he recounts in his memoir I Love This Song, Sprague got back into music, hopping from bar to bar in Midwest college towns. As his sons grew up, they joined him in a band they called Jerry and the Juveniles, and as Sprague explains, the boys really were juveniles.
“Here I am with my 16 and 14-year-old boys playing Sunday nights,” he explained. “And their stepmom going ‘you can’t let those boys stay out past midnight,’ and eventually, that rule just went away.”
Mostly, though, Sprague has been a solo act. To explain how he built his career, he tells the story of how he became a regularly featured act at a bar in Bowling Green, Ohio. He asked the owner what his slowest night was, which turned out to be Mondays. Asking only for the cash from a $1 cover charge, he built a following there, and nobody complained when the cover charge was doubled. Within a month or so, he was making $400 on Monday nights.
For Sprague, the college town circuit turned into his way of life. With near daily shows, he estimates he’s performed more than 8,000 times. He’d play in Ann Arbor on Tuesdays, East Lansing on Wednesdays and Kalamazoo on Thursdays. Fridays and Saturdays could be anywhere.
Even now, at the age of 70, Sprague can be found playing at Harper’s in East Lansing on Wednesday nights, singing for the kids and grandkids of his longtime fans from Michigan State.
He says he started writing down his life story in 2009. The forced idleness of the COVID-19 pandemic made it possible for him to finish the book in the Caribbean.
“I was on my boat in St. Croix and just floating there,” Sprague continued. “I would wake up at 4 a.m. in the morning and I sometimes would write 1,800 words. I just had the time, that’s really what it was.”
Sprague calls his memoir I Love This Song because he hears somebody in the audience say that about a lot of the hits he covers.
Sprague did take a shot at making a go of it with his own songs, this time forming a band with three grandsons. He called that group simply The Spragues. They appeared live on WKAR’s former show Current State ten years ago. The Spragues opened for acts like The Guess Who and Bret Michaels of the band Poison, and even headlined at The Ark in Ann Arbor.
While the band was well received, Sprague figures his audience just wants the guy who covers Sweet Caroline at their favorite bar.
“You know, I’m in a box,” he concluded. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get out of that box. I’m not complaining about it. It would have been cool if I had become that rock star guy, but do you know any rock stars that have become rock stars after the age of 40?”
Emerging music stardom may be reserved for the young, but there’s something to be said for longevity like Jerry Sprague’s, and he covers it all in the pages of I Love This Song.
