Constable: Rock's roots sprout into Dinosaur Exhibit

If you are old enough, you might have seen these guys playing in emerging progressive bands in the late 1960s at jumping venues such as the Green Gorilla in Des Plaines, The Cellar in Arlington Heights, the Pink Panther in Deerfield or Chicago's Kinetic Playground.

Or maybe you saw them perform jointly in a single band as Dinosaur Exhibit, opening for Steely Dan at Ravinia in 2019.

"We've all been playing professionally for 50-some years," says Quent Lang, 71, the longtime Arlington Heights flute and saxophone player who was a founding member of The Soul Machine, played more than a decade with The Mauds, and now performs with Dinosaur Exhibit.

"I'm sometimes amazed that I can pick this thing up and do what I'm doing," says Jerry Smith, 74, also of Arlington Heights, who started playing bass guitar and singing with The Flock in 1965, and also played with Aura and The Mauds, before leading Dinosaur Exhibit. "I'm a better musician now than I was 50 years ago."

In addition to Smith and Lang, Dinosaur Exhibit features Evanston's Mike Flynn, a songwriter, singer and guitarist for The Mauds; trumpet player and vocalist "Mitch The Lip" Goldman; guitarist Don Lafferty from Nightburners; Jamo Van de Bogert, longtime drummer for The Allman Brothers and Gregg Allman; and revolutionary jazz rock violinist, Jerry Goodman, who played with The Flock, Mahavishnu Orchestra and others, including on albums by Hall & Oates and Styx.

The Flock, The Mauds and Aura put out 15 albums collectively and more than a dozen 45-rpm singles. The Flock's biggest hit was "Clown," featuring Smith's thumping bass line. The Mauds hit the charts with "Hold On," "Knock On Wood," and "Soul Drippin'." Aura was known for its horns. Together these bands pushed the envelopes for rock, jazz, soul and rhythm and blues.

"We take the best of these bands and incorporate it in our show," Smith says of Dinosaur Exhibit, which is playing March 25 and 26 at Hey Nonny, a bistro with a live music stage at 10 S. Vail Ave. in downtown Arlington Heights. For tickets and information, visit heynonny.com. Dinosaur Exhibit pays homage to some of the founding members who no longer are alive, but it is not a tribute band.

"We don't want to be the singalong band," Smith says.

"We're a concert band," Lang says. "Musicians want to create. We are musicians. We keep creating. When people come to see us, they aren't coming to see an oldies act."

Even the old songs are new.

"A lot of the '60s acts, they are living in that two-hour window they had in the '60s and they haven't done anything since," Lang says. "I don't think we've ever played the songs the same twice. That is what brings the people back. You are not seeing the same old thing over and over."

In addition to reworking old hits, they also play new music.

"What we did 50 years ago is cool, but we were kids," Lang says.

And they were kids on the cutting edge of a changing rock scene.

"For us, it really kicked off in Europe," Smith says of The Flock, who appeared at the Grand Gala du Disque in Amsterdam in 1969. "We were avant-garde jazz rock, very progressive."

Playing across Europe and the United States, Smith says it was fun to appear in concerts with Pink Floyd, Santana, The Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, Canned Heat, Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Frank Zappa, Marvin Gaye and more.

But life on tour can grow stale.

Smith met his wife, Mary Lou, when she was working at Mercury Records. They have been married since 1973 and have a son, David; a daughter, Jessica; and four grandkids. He recently retired from his longtime job as director of North American sales for Zildjian, the world's leading maker of cymbals, drumsticks and mallets.

Lang married his wife, Deborah, in 1975. They have daughters, Jennifer Cromer and Jaclyn Little, and five grandchildren. He started his own advertising company, AdMark, and had a hand in helping make Chicago the "jingle capital of the world." Even while working, he found time to play 100 gigs a year. When his daughters saw him play with a band one night, he remembers one of them saying, "Oh my god, Dad, I had no idea that's what you were doing," Lang recalls with a smile.

Lang played the accordion as a boy. "I played that for four years and got tired of polkas," he says. Then he learned the saxophone, flute and clarinet, and plays the saxophone and flute with Dinosaur Exhibit.

"They kill it," Chip Brooks, co-owner of Hey Nonny, says of the band. "It's astonishing that it's so hard-hitting, fresh and energetic. It turns my head around every time they're here."

Some patrons are old enough to have heard a few of the tunes when they first came out, and others are almost like paleontologists unearthing the bones of rock.

"It's an energetic crowd," says Chris Dungan, the venue's other co-owner. "It's such a fun night."

For the musicians, too.

"Some musicians just want to play in the basement. We really enjoy being out in front of people and showing them what we have," Smith says.

"We've done so much," Lang says "Don't lock us into the '60s. It was fun, but we've grown."