Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.
Sometimes you have to play the long game. I’ve been trying for years to get the story of local 1960s girl group the Same. My interview requests didn’t lead anywhere, and I couldn’t track down much info about their only release—the 1967 single “Sunshine, Flowers and Rain”—or about the women who’d created it.
Thankfully, Chicago musician and producer Tony Stram (a former member of long-ago Secret History subject Gabriel Bondage) had worked with several members of the Same on other projects. In March 2023 he helped launch a Facebook page for the Same and began posting photos and “lost” songs, which are arguably truer to the group’s sound than the two they released (more on that later). The page now has a few hundred followers, and as its audience has grown, it’s become a gallery of memories from fans who saw and loved the band.
I hope this Facebook page is the first step toward the Same taking their place among more celebrated midwest girl groups such as the Daughters of Eve and the Pleasure Seekers. Just as important, as far as I’m concerned, this summer it helped me finally arrange an interview with a member of the Same: Judith Selman Zawojewski, known as Judi Selman during her time as the band’s lead guitarist.
Zawojewski was one of a group of ten teenage girls from the northwest suburbs who went to see the Beatles on Saturday, September 5, 1964, at the International Amphitheatre at Halsted and 42nd. “We had second-row seats!” she recalls. “We were over on the John Lennon side of the protruding rectangular stage.”
Several of those girls attended Wheeling High School, where they had lunch together every day and schemed about how they could meet the Beatles. “Someone came up with the idea that if we formed an all-girl band and made it,” Zawojewski says, “they would want to meet us! After a huge amount of laughing, we started to consider the idea seriously, and each volunteered to learn a particular instrument.”
The Same would play together in various lineups from fall 1964 till the end of 1968. For the first four or five months, the band consisted of Zawojewski, bassist Vicki Selman (Zawojewski’s sister), lead singer Vicki Hubly, rhythm guitarist Linda Becker (now known as Shannon Wolfe), and drummer Pat Trampf (now Pat Bickoff). “Not one of the original five of us knew how to play our instruments when we started,” says Zawojewski, “and the singer had only sung in the shower.”
In those days it was common for the Beatles to inspire American kids to form DIY bands—even the Alice Cooper Band started out in high school as a bewigged Beatles parody act called the Earwigs. Because the Beatles wore matching outfits, the Same did too, with help from a sewing-minded friend of Hubly’s who went by Judy Pressure. Even the name “the Same” had to do with their desire to tread in their idols’ footsteps.
“When we started telling people about what we were doing, a lot of people told us we should not be doing boy rock, but instead do covers like Dusty Springfield and the Silkie,” Zawojewski says. “But we wanted to play the ‘same’ songs as the boy bands. So conversations about the name of the band kept returning to ‘the Same,’ at first with a lot of laughing and finally as the selected name.”
The Silkie were an English folk-pop group with a woman singer, and their only hit was the Beatles cover “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” in 1965. Zawojewski and her sister Vicki learned guitar by taking folk-music lessons, but once the Same started covering three-chord garage-rock anthems, they needed something with a little more bite than their nylon-string acoustic guitars from Sears.
The sisters’ prayers were answered when their father went back to the Sears catalog to pick out electric instruments for them. “My Silvertone lead guitar was a blue sparkly solid-body,” Zawojewski recalls. “My second guitar was a cherry ES-335 Gibson, just like Warren Rogers in the Shadows of Knight used. He helped us so often—coming to practice, suggesting songs, showing us how to play parts, and recording us.”
The members of the Same learned a lot from guys in other bands who came to their rehearsals, but Zawojewski also put in a ton of work on her own. “I took about six months of private lessons to bolster my lead playing,” she says. “I would sit by the record player and play a lick over and over again to pick it out and learn it, then practice it. I didn’t know much theory, although I had played piano and flute in elementary school.”
Vicki Selman got a Höfner violin bass (like Sir Paul’s, natch), but Zawojewski knew they needed better amps. “By this time Jerry McGeorge and Joe Kelley were in the Shadows of Knight, and the two of them accompanied us to a big music store in the Loop and negotiated with them for Vicki’s and my amp,” she says. “Because of their help, we knew to buy Fender Bandmasters and Bassman amps.”
The Same’s first gig was in spring 1965 at Recreation Park in Arlington Heights. “We played only one 45-minute set after practicing three-chord songs (mostly key of E and A) for four months—each of us learning from scratch!” Zawojewski says. This was also the only show played by the Same’s founding lineup.
Eighth-grader Debbie Reiss, who’d later attend Arlington High School, was in the audience at that gig, and she pestered the members of the Same to let her play one of their guitars. Reiss had already been taking lessons for longer, and she impressed them with her chops. “She was way better at her instrument than any of us,” Zawojewski recalls. Eventually Reiss got her hands on a Rickenbacker 12-string electric guitar.
“Then someone got a call about soloist drummer Donna Smolak, who had recently graduated from Sacred Heart of Mary High School in Rolling Meadows and owned a car,” Zawojewski says. “Hubly and I talked and talked, and we decided to audition Debbie and Donna at the same time at Hubly’s house. We were thrilled to have two seasoned players. So we followed up by inviting Linda Becker and Pat Trampf to not be in the band.”
With more accomplished members aboard, one of whom had already graduated, the Same started getting more serious. They’d each been wearing their own favorite “mod” clothes for gigs, but they quickly stepped up to having band outfits—lime-green skirts with sweaters at first, then black-and-white herringbone suits.
“Smolak was always very motivated to ‘make it’ as a band, but that type of dream was hard to pursue with four of us in high school,” Zawojewski says. “We rotated practice between Reiss’s in Arlington Heights, Hubly’s in Mount Prospect, and Vicki and my Prospect Heights house. While we usually practiced in the basement, once in a while we’d do a garage practice at Reiss’s or Hubly’s.” Their parents let them rehearse one night per week, when they had to end by nine, but didn’t put any limits on weekends. So the Same typically practiced Friday nights, then all day Saturday or Sunday (if not both). They aimed for at least 15 hours per week.
“It was a lot of fun, because as we would go to see the boy bands, we would tell them we had an all-girl band,” Zawojewski says. “Then they would want to come to our practices—and it was cool, because they were always surprised that we were pretty good by then.” Among the boys who taught songs to the Same was Ted Nugent, then a student at Saint Viator High School. He taught them the blues number “Bald Headed Woman” (popularized by the Kinks and the Who), and the Chicago version of his band the Amboy Dukes would sometimes borrow the Same’s equipment.
The Same gigged steadily on their own and landed some prime opening slots, including for Buffalo Springfield at the New Place in Algonquin and for Jerry Lee Lewis at Alpine Valley Music Theatre in Wisconsin. They also shared stages with lots of local garage-rock royalty—the Ides of March, the Cryan’ Shames, the Buckinghams, and of course their friends the Shadows of Knight.
“At first, we were overwhelmed with the number of jobs we were getting, so Mr. Hubly became our manager,” Zawojewski says. “Our parents insisted we always have a chaperone with us, and they also required us to keep our grades up! We were approached by Stature Productions, who were also managing the Ides of March. Mr. Hubly talked to the other parents and Smolak (who was ‘of age’) about the proposal they had.”
Smolak and the band’s parents entered into a management contract with the agency, which led to a referral to a new suburban label called Barrington Recordings. Founded in 1967, the label seems to have released just a handful of singles over a couple years—as Zawojewski recalls, it was a small family operation. William Simonini was its president, and his sister Rita was a songwriter and singer—she recorded for the label under the name Just Rita and performed in the musical Hair when it came to Chicago in 1969. She’d soon play a bigger role with the Same, as would the family’s younger brother, Charles Simonini. “Chuck became our roadie, driving the van we purchased, schlepping and setting up our equipment,” says Zawojewski.
The Same made several recordings for Barrington (many now posted on Facebook by Stram), but the grown-ups in the room never deemed them “ready for release,” as Zawojewski remembers. “We were told that we really needed to get our recording done in LA,” she says. “We were very excited to go, and we planned to record ‘Sunshine, Flowers and Rain,’ written for us by a classmate of Reiss’s, Roger Carroll. We asked if we should bring our guitars, but were told that the exact same guitars would be rented there.”
This turned out to be a lie, and Zawojewski still vividly remembers what actually happened in that studio—how the Same ended up not even playing on their own single. “When we walked in, we were shocked to see all sorts of studio musicians,” she says. “There were violins, piano, two guitars, bass, drums, and a lot of other people around. We asked about the guitars that they were going to rent for us, and we were told we wouldn’t be playing the music. We were whisked away to another room to learn some song that they had decided we should learn and record!” That song was “If You Love Me (Really Love Me),” an English version of a ballad cowritten by Edith Piaf in 1950.
“We objected a little, saying this wasn’t one of our songs, and nothing like what we really did,” Zawojewski says. “They fast-talked us about how we were so fortunate to have so-and-so arranging this song for us, that it would be a hit, and said we had to learn it. We were high school girls, and these were all older ‘businessmen’ who ‘knew’ the industry, so what could we say? We did what they asked. After that song was recorded, they had us learn a new arrangement of ‘Sunshine, Flowers and Rain.’ We were devastated that studio musicians would be playing the music. Our version was much more in a folk-rock style.”
The members of the Same recorded only vocals. Reiss, who strictly played guitar and never sang backup, was stuck just watching the sessions.
I’ve heard countless variations on this sexist story, but when Zawojewski shared this one, I literally face-palmed. The single version of “Sunshine, Flowers and Rain” has a lot of charm, to be fair, and the song’s strong hook and the Same’s vocal harmonies assert themselves clearly despite the “professional” players and heavy string arrangements. But it’s hard not to wonder what might have been. The demos Stram has posted—where the actual band blazes through covers of the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and Jimi Hendrix as well as strong originals such as Smolak’s thumping “Oh How I Love You”—show what a powerful rockin’ unit the Same were.
The band’s trip to Los Angeles sounds like it was more fun than their studio experience. “All of our expenses were paid, including for Smolak’s mom, who agreed to chaperone us—none of the other parents wanted to go,” Zawojewski says. “We spent a lot of time walking up and down the Sunset Strip. Four of us weren’t old enough to go into any of the clubs, but just hearing the music outside was really exciting.”
They also heard a familiar song coming from a basement studio, so they went down the stairs and peered in. “It was the Beach Boys!” Zawojewski says. “Mike [Love] came to the door to wave us away, but Brian [Wilson] came up behind him and started talking to us. He asked us to sing, so right there in the alley, Hubly belted out ‘Someone to Love,’ and Donna, Vicki Selman, and I sang out the a cappella harmonies. He wanted a card, which had Donna’s phone number. Rumor has it he called on a trip to Chicago, but the Same had broken up by then.”
The summer of 1968 was a fateful one for the Same. Hubly and Zawojewski graduated that June, and Hubly, who wanted to pursue music, joined Champaign-based band Fat Water (an upcoming Secret History subject). Zawojewski didn’t want to abandon music, but she also wanted to go to college.
“I decided to attend Northwestern University because it was local and I could attend practices and do weekend gigs while at school,” she says. “I commuted from my Prospect Heights home and continued in the Same.”
To replace Hubly, the Same invited Rita Simonini to sing with them. “We called Hubly from one of our practices to let her hear how we sounded with Simonini, and she started to cry—she missed us,” Zawojewski says. “Shortly thereafter, Hubly was back in the band. Simonini was cool about it all, because she thought it should be the five of us who were already in the Same, and she loved that we were doing some of her songs.”
Graduation wasn’t the only life change that got in the way of the band. “In December 1968, I ended up ‘expecting’ and marrying my boyfriend,” Zawojewski says. “I assured everyone I was going to quit school and keep the band as a top priority, but Smolak left. I remember crying but also understood her decision.”
Smolak joined all-woman band the Chips, and Hubly returned to Fat Water. Selman retired from music. After Reiss graduated high school, she moved to Los Angeles, took up the drums, and joined another all-woman band. She later spent 25 years working at an animal sanctuary.
Zawojewski dropped out of college, then returned about a year later, graduating in 1973 and becoming a middle school math teacher. “The ironic thing is that now, 2023, all but me are ‘retired’ from bands,” she says. “I’m still making music.”
She started playing again around the time she finished college, gigging at ski lodges and singles-club dances with a band called Coochie for seven years. Her subsequent projects have included Grand Junction and the duo Chip Bridgeman & Judi Z, and when she lived in Pittsburgh for a few years she was in an acoustic blues trio called Quilt.
After Zawojewski returned to Chicago in 2003, Smolak recruited her for a group that Stram and his colleague Rick Peterson were putting together to provide backing for singer-songwriter Rachel Katzman, which they called the Studio 39 Band. Smolak, Zawojewski, and Peterson then started surf-rock outfit Dix Risquo & the Cellmates, and after Peterson died the women kept playing together in Straight Ethyl, whose lineup eventually included Char O’Neil from the Chips. Straight Ethyl broke up during the pandemic after a run of more than 15 years, but Zawojewski has kept making music. Her group Eastchester Sunset has an album nearly finished.
The Same reunited in 1999 to play a single show: a reunion for regulars of a beloved Arlington Heights venue called the Cellar, where famous UK groups such as the Who and the Yardbirds had played. The Cellar was also a hotbed for local bands, among them the Mauds and the Shadows of Knight, and members of both appeared at the reunion. The Same were the only group with their original lineup intact, but not everybody made it to the stage. Hubly was unwell and couldn’t sing.
“We did a four-person performance,” says Zawojewski. “I sang the songs, but everyone else played their old parts and it worked out very well. I ended up twisting my already bum knee while onstage and had to hobble off. I went to the ER, got crutches, and returned to the venue later that night.”
This fan has been encouraging the Same to put out a career retrospective LP to collect all their unissued recordings—it’d be a way to finally show the world what a kick-ass group of righteous women they were. If you’re on the same page, drop them a line via Facebook and tell them you want to hear that music too!
The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived here.
