[music playing] MIKE: Ted s Warehouse was, by far and away, the Mecca.

That s where music was four and five nights a week.

[music playing] BRUCE: We loved playing at Ted's, and we loved Ted.

DAVID: He was a mentor to a lot of people.

STACY: He's the best boss I've ever had.

JOE: He had this vision...

I could open a place and have the best entertainment in the state of Illinois.

It was definitely, definitely a place to go see a band.

[music playing] SUSAN: There would be people who were from town.

There would be college students.

People would come fom Champaign and other areas just to see the bands, cause he would bring them in from everywhere.

[music playing] TYLER: It did feel a lot like a sense of community.

It was like we were all in it together, to have like a great time.

[music playing] JB: A lot of good times, a lot of good music, a lot of things we probably shouldn t talk about.

[music playing] DAVID: Ted was a very friendly guy.

Ted Bertuca... cordial, cordial I would say.

Jovial, and he was a mentor to a lot of people.

My name is David Peontek.

I grew up in Moweaqua, or outside of Moweaqua, Illinois.

Came to college in 1966.

Ted s sister was married to Joe Adduci, known as Pizza Joe and had a pizza store, southeast of the town square.

And next door to that was a bar by the name of the Rendezvous.

Ted had retired from the grocery business in Chicago.

So he moved to Charleston and bought the bar, the Rendezvous, next to Pizza Joe s. They knocked a hole in the wall so they could serve beer through the doorway hole.

I was tending bar at Roc s at the time, and Ted would come in there and we just got to be friends.

A few months later, he recruited me to come work for him at the Rendezvous.

He wanted two things: He wanted to turn the Rendezvous into a college bar.

It presently was mostly railroad workers and local people.

A trickle of business, but he wanted the kind of booming business that Roc s turned into at night.

And sportsman s club.

So I came to work for him.

[music playing] Probably six or eight months later, he said "Come with me, I want to show you something and ask you something".

So we drove over to this large, empty warehouse.

And he said What do you think?

Could we turn this into a college bar?

I said Well, I know carpentry skills and things like that, yeah.

So we went on about a six month renovation, cleaning the thing out, building tables.

He hired Hal Nordin, to design the balconies and structural parts of all that.

Then we put all that together, built the tables out of, I think it was 2x8s.

Ted wanted it to look kinda rough, so I got a log chain off of my motorcycle that I used to lock it up at night and beat the hell out of those tables.

Darn near wore out my arm.

But any wait, then stained them, moved in this big walk-in cooler, built a stage on top of it, so we had the base level, ground level at the entrance.

Then halfway back in the building, it was raised about another three feet, I think it was.

There was a loading dock on the back side.

So that was two levels.

But then we built the balconies, which put two more levels, if not three.

So it had this multi-dimension.

And I had a big following and was a member of the Black Knights at the time, which was mostly, all men actually back from the Vietnam.

We had put the word out through the Black Knights: Hey everybody, come down, bring your friends.

And it was a trickle of people.

[music playing] BRUCE: November 8th of 1973.

It was our first gig at Ted's, and that was not too much after we formed the band.

[music playing] My name s Bruce Horn and I played bass with Timothy P. and Rural Route 3, starting in 1972 and going through about 1990.

[music playing] We didn t now a thing about it until we opened up the back barn doors and took a look at the placement of that stage on the second floor and went... "This is the weirdest place we ve ever played".

And it was really tough on the bartenders because you carried big PA s with you back then, and you always sat them right there at that corner where the bartenders were.

But it was, we were kind of the first hippie country band at that point.

We were playing almost stricktly, traditional country music at that time.

[music playing] We were kind of an experiment there.

It worked.

I noticed we got booked right away back in.

We played there, almost till the end when I quit playing with Tim.

[music playing] Ted took a lot of chances on a lot of people.

A hippie country band, at that time, was so out of the realm of normailty.

For fun, we would go into straight country bars.

We'd play for Buford Pusser's brother, up in Peoria.

And you would walk into those places, and they were gassed.

I mean, all of us had really long hair.

And then we would start playing some Merle Haggard stuff and all of a sudden, everything's cool.

But he would take chances.

He would give a lot of people...

I mean your not going to make a lot of money, playing at Ted's.

Your travel time...

I used to tell everybody, I'd get in the truck at five at night, and get out of it at 5am.

It was a 12-hour day.

But just the fun that you had, and, I think that was what really made it worth it.

Especially when you re in your 20s.

What s better than being able to play music and get paid for it.

And by golly we got free beer.

[music playing] That was one of our stops every time we came back to Illinois.

We d always go to Ted s. We loved playing at Ted s and we loved Ted.

Ted was just a wonderful guy, and so a gal that used to work there got ahold of me on Facebook and said "You know, you were the only band that Ted could take the earplugs out", because we played at pretty much a normal, I call it a normal volume, but just a good night when you were playing at Ted's.

[applause] STACY: Ted had bands three nights a week, maybe even four, but he had of course the townies that always showed up, and a lot of bands would draw a certain kind of crowd, like Timothy P. and Rural Route 3, they d draw a lot of townies and they'd also draw a lot of people who liked country and Tim s style of music.

Eargasm would pull in the heavy-duty rock-and-rollers.

We were classic rock for the most part, and country rock, so we had a cross-section demographic that would come in.

My name is Stacy Doty.

I m from Charleston.

I ve lived here all my life.

Was born and raised about a block and a half from Ted s, before Ted s became Ted s. I started playing at Ted s... with a band called Fire Creek.

I think we only played there once or twice.

That was in the mid-70s.

Then I played in a band called Whiskey Jack, and we had a female singer.

Actually, we had five different ones over a period of seven years.

[music playing] That was quite a popular band.

I really enjoyed that band.

Like I said, we were classic rock and country rock, and we played all the hits from that era, but that was probably when we drew the most.

Ted s had quite a bit of draw almost whoever played there.

I was really amazed at some of the things, some of the audience that would come in there.

I had a lot of friends who played in bands around here over the years, and they would always draw well.

And a lot of the bands from Champaign, that was a big draw, like Appaloosa, Full Moon Concert, they had huge draws, more than we did, but we had the locals and, after a while, a reputation so people would come and hear us.

It was just unique, wonderful place to play.

And I think... musicians and bands, that play a lot of different places, certain places will, will stand out.

That's worked for me and a lot of musicians.

And a lot of people that came there... Ted's was a unique place.

Ted was always sitting, especially on band nights, right there by the door.

I don't think I remember anytime that he wasn't there.

Whether it was during the week, or the weekend.

The stage, as you walked indoors, the stage was up on the second level.

It was a big stage.

They had pool tables in the back, and maybe foosball on the second level.

But it was a large place, it was a great big place.

It took a lot of PA, to cover it.

It had really good accoustics.

I don't think there were any bands that played there, that did not like it.

Up in Champaign they had the Red Lion and a lot of big name acts played there, and Maybels, but down here, there wasn t really a club that had the, I don t want to call it prestige, but a lot of big-name acts, a lot of very, very good bands played there.

Probably what I remember the most, I remember Head East being there, and the place was just totally packed, and that s before Head East became a big-name draw, you know.

MIKE: These are just some of the memories that many of us shared at Ted's Warehouse.

Here is Coal Kitchen, Skeezix.

Here is the article with, Head East.

Sphinx... Cadillac Cowboys.

My name is Mike Ziebka.

I m the owner of Z s Music and Sound here in Charleston, Illinois.

I was another Chicago burb kid that came to Charleston in 1972 to go to Eastern.

I played in bands myself in college and the music scene was pretty good.

Ted s Warehouse was, by far and away, the Mecca.

That s where music was four and five nights a week.

What I can tell you about Ted is he was one of my mentors obviously in the music industry.

He obviously knew I was into music.

I went up there.

So, this dialogue of him coming in, two, three, four times a week... just started talking.

And I told him just how much fun I had going up to his place on a regular basis.

And he thanked me for it.

He would ask me opinion, have you heard this band, or what do you think, would they draw in our club.

A lot of times he would ask me about college bands.

And there were a lot of really, really good college bands, that would pack Ted's to the point of 500, 600 people, over fire capacity, because they would be in fraternities.

So, the fraternities would get their people out.

The sororities would come out, and it was just, pretty much, a fun-filled evening where people could get together, dance, listen to live music, and just have a general good time.

It was interesting because a lot of these small towns would have their own bands and those people would come, and Ted s became a melting pot.

The bands got bigger, better playing, better paying jobs, we had to increase our gear to satisfy them so they wouldn t bring their own PA down.

And it got to the point where we became the house production company.

It was a game-changer in my personal life.

[music playing] Wednesday was always really special, for most of us college students, because, quarter beers, quarter hot dog, and quarter popcorn.

So, you could go up to Ted's for two dollars, listen to live music, for three and half to four hours.

Have dinner, have some drinks, meet your friends, and have a wonderful time.

[music playing] Typically Thursday night for some reason... it appeared to typically be... Ted would bring in like... there was a band called Shadoobee, back in the day.

Evan was the frontman, he was a great heart player.

He would hire three or four horn players from the university jazz band.

And they would have this core band that they would these horn people coming in, and they would just pack the place.

Friday and Saturdays, I would say typically would be the bigger bands, on both of those evenings.

A lot of Champaign bands, and there was a circuit back in that day.

Bands would play somewhere in Chicago, then they would go down to, Scotty's, which would have been in Bloomington.

Then they'd go to Champaign, and play like the Red Lion, and then they would come down here, and play Ted's, and even some went down to, I think it was called Hangar 9 in Carbondale.

So there was this circuit, that a lot of the bands would play, and rotate.

BRUCE: I mean you had people like Cheap Trick play there.

You had a number of acts that came thru there, that went on to national notoriety.

Most of the bands there were top notch KEVIN: We were working and a band called Bruce Hall Band was playing, and REO Speedwagon called and asked Bruce to join their band as their bass player.

And he said "Yes, of course and that night Ted opened up the bar and we partied till daylight.

Hi, my name is Kevin McKee.

I live in Mattoon, grew up in Charleston.

First I was a bouncer.

Had to get flannel shirts, that was part of the dress code, you had to wear flannel shirt with a tie.

So he had plenty of ties.

He goes, "Just come to work with a flannel shirt".

Yeah, walk around, pick up glasses, empty glasses.

Eventually they started letting me bartend, and before I knew it, I was pretty much a regular upstairs.

It was a lot of fun.

I mean, I really enjoyed myself.

There were some hard nights, where you really worked your butt off bartending.

I mean, you were non-stop.

They had like probably six waitresses, working, in the building, so you were constantly getting orders.

Ted was a heck of a guy.

If you were good to him, he was good to you.

For my birthday, I was going to be 21.

He gave me free, 50 free passes, and let me pick the name... what band was going to play that night, cause it was going to fall on a Saturday night.

And I thought, "Working for a guy, to do something like that for ya".

He pretty much gave me a $50 birthday present.

He let me pick the band.

I thought that was pretty cool.

BILL: Ted was a great bar owner to work for, not only if you were an employee, but if you were a band playing in his club.

My name is Bill Pollard, and I was an employee at Ted s from 1985 to 1989.

He hired me as a doorman there and I performed several roles... Doorman.

Sometimes I was behind the bar.

And I just remember thinking it was such a unique place.

There was nothing else like it in Charleston with the second level, and with the band up above, and you could see the bands from the dance floor, and the way he had strategically placed mirrors.

Even the folks at the front door could watch the band because obviously we were looking at them sometimes through the mirrors, so you could see them.

But it was really cool.

(striking of pool balls) When he closed, as long as a manger was there, he would let his staff stay, because we were working all night while everybody else was having fun, so he allowed us stay a little while and have a little fun ourselves, which was really really cool.

He treated everyone so well.

I remember an incident, when I was behind the bar, it was in the 86, 87.

The movie Cocktail was out, so everyboy behind a bar wanted to be like Tom Cruise in Cocktail.

And I was behind the bar one night, the main bar, and I grab a brand new bottle of Jack Daniels, and I pour that drink, and I went to flip it, it did three or four beautiful flips, hit my hand, completed it, then it slid right through my hand, broke all over the floor.

I looked up and I saw Ted at the front door going like that, so I come over there, and he looked at me and said "That was very nice.

Don t ever do that again.

Now go clean that up".

(laughs) ROB: He was a very good businessman.

He knew what his business was.

He knew if he rang up "X" amount of money at the register, then we should have gone thru "X" amount of liquor.

Rob Patterson, worked up at Ted's from October of '88 to about August of '92.

During that time I was, bouncer, assistant manger, manager.

Every Sunday morning, he was in there, him and Mike Lamone, and they would go thru, count the empty bottles, and he would know by how much was rang up, if the bartender was over-pouring or giving away too many free drinks or something like that.

We never fired anybody, but if he thought somebody was giving away too much, he'd move them to a different, the downstairs bar, where he could see them.

He would say, "Hey, put them on the floor, don't have them behind the bar anymore".

So, part of my job as manager, if we were slow, he'd call me down, he'd have me take his truck and drive around town and count how many cars were in the other parking lots and see was it just us that were slow or was the whole town slow... what was going on.

You'd have to write down how many were.

"Oh, they're having a good night, of not so much."

If we'd have a really big night, Ted threw you a little something extra in our paychecks on Mondays or... if something was going on, he'd pull out a bottle or do something.

It used to always be hour after close we could drink and if it was a really big night, he'd let us stick around an extra 15 to 20 minutes.

You know to a college student, that was a lot, you know.

MIKE: He was a very generous man, a very generous man.

And if the band had a really good night, it was not uncommon for him to slap another 200 or 300 bucks, and say thank you.

And so obviously somebody does that to you, that kind of puts that place ahead of some of the others, because you got paid well, and were, respected.

I think that was the big thing, everybody respected Ted.

BILL: I had actually approached Ted and said "Hey Ted, in the two and half years in between high school and attending college, I worked on the trading floor of the Chicago Board of Options exchange.

And I met several people that played in bands, and I said, "They re really really good and they're really big around Chicago.

What if I got a demo tape, would you take a listen to it?

And Ted said Sure, I ll take a listen to it".

[music playing] BILL: At that time, the band s name was Viacuda.

And they changed their lineup a couple years later, became Smash Alley TYLER: He set it up.

He told us about it.

And we were like Alright, alright, alright.

Yeah, we ll go do it".

And once we played Ted s we were like, wow, that place was freaking awesome.

BILL: And I remember the first time they played here, they had over 600 people in Ted s. And again, that was I m sure because of all the word of mouth, the articles in The Daily Eastern News.

After their first show, Ted was obviously very happy with the crowd that came, you know 600 people was a really good crowd, particularly for a first-time band.

Normally after that, they would come down and they would play a Friday and a Saturday night.

[music playing] TYLER: We always knew we were going to have a good time going to Ted s because Ted set the table for it to be that way.

Through those times, there were some gigs at the end of the night where I d settle up on the other side of the desk with the person who was working at the club and there would be two .38 weapons pointed in my direction as the money was being counted, so it was kind of hard to dispute the door count.

(laughing) Ted was not that way.

He was always super, super fantastic and really tried to make going down to Ted s a great experience for all the bands so we d continue to want to do it.

BILL: Then after a couple of shows, they even brought a local radio DJ with them, a fellow named Ralph Rassmussen, who I got to know through those guys.

As Smash Alley and Viacuda played and Ralph came down, he d talked about his weekend in Charleston on his radio show, usually on Mondays.

I can remember one radio show where he talked about, If you re getting ready to make a college choice, you want to go to Eastern Illinois because there s this place down there called Ted s Warehouse, and you know, he was just talking about what a great time he had that weekend coming down with the band, and it was really really cool, and the word got out, and now all of a sudden, all these other Chicago bands wanted to come and play at Ted s. [music playing] TYLER: Once we played down there, a lot of bands from Chicago started coming down.

We brought a lot of bands with us as openers and they went on to headline the club, so we were proud of that.

It was not like an ego thing, "Like we're the best band of all time".

We really enjoyed doing it.

We really enjoyed the fact that because we had so much fun, we were able to bring other bands that were our friends in Chicago, we were able to bring them down to play there, and ultimately they would go on to headline and have fun as we were having fun.

That was something I think our band really felt good about.

I loved how it sounded in there.

Probably because technically it should be a nightmare with the band playing on the second story, it was all wood surfaces, so it sounded good.

And our band was not setting out to play covers, but we did do a lot of covers.

We had a lot, cause we knew playing in college towns, people loved that, so.

I still remember playing Master of Puppets by Metallica and the entire crowd would sing every word, and that s pretty powerful when you re in this tight place that holds, 700 or so people, I'm guessing, and you feel the intense volume of everybody singing like that.

JOE: For me, it was my hometown bar.

It was just somewhere, heard about when I was a kid... it was my dream to play in a band someday there.

My name s Joe Wickham.

I m a drummer.

Played drums with several bands at Ted s. I was senior in high school, 17 years old, and I got a phone call from Ted.

He said, Hey Joey, I ve heard about your band, I know how good you guys were, and I want you to play.

I know you re not old enough to be in here, but if you play, just stay up on stage and if we get raided, just tell them you re working.

And it'll be alright.

And from that night, I could go in there anytime I wanted, see bands, and I got to start playing.

I think we played there one time three nights in one week.

So that was a big thing for me from the minute I graduated high school, Ted s was my second home.

[music playing] Heavy metal.

We played a lot of Iron Maiden, Megadeath, Metallica.

It was a big thing for music.

There was a lot of hairspray, a lot of make-up.

And there was heavy metal as well.

I think, Ted was around a lot of bands.

He had this vision...

I could open a place, and have the best entertainment in the state of Illinois.

It was definitely, definitely a place to go see a band.

(chuckle) You know, and Ted definitely respected that.

You know, there wasn't nearly nothing I couldn't say to him, that I would say to anybody else, but he was also like a dad to me at times.

He'd be like, "Joey you guys had a really good crowd tonight".

I would have thought the crowd was terrible.

Other times, I think he was seeing things that I didn't.

Because he would sit there at that door, and that guy knew every single thing going on, in that two floor nightclub.

He really did.

[music playing] There was a time...

I was in a band, we were called Psychoslam at the time, and there was a band from Carbondale coming to Ted's to play, and before they got there, the drummer and had gotten pulled over.

Something happened, he got arrested.

They had no drummer and showed up to Ted's.

Ted called me up personally, "Joey, hey I got a big favor".

He wanted me to come up there and play with these guys.

I'm pretty sure I knew the music they played and what not.

Paid me $150.

Came to my house, with a couple workers to help me pack my drums up, load them up, take them to his bar.

(chuckle) Believe it or not, the band wanted to hire me.

(chuckle) They think I was better than the original drummer was.

But I tell you what man, he was in my house, helping me get my drums out...

I never will forget that.

JODY PONDER: I walked into Ted s as a roadie, Jody the Roadie for Lugr because Joe Wickham and Bob Hiltabotom, Marty Weatherford, and all these other guys, that drove me to put Latem together.

[music playing] My name s Jody Ponder, a.k.a.

Judy Powder, nice to meetcha!

Latem, we came out playing mostly original, and any cover tunes we did was Slayer, Sacred Richt, Nuclear Assault, Anthrax, Black Sabbath.

This bar had been there for so long, and there were so many great bands that played in there.

To even step on that stage was paramount.

You could see Ted downstairs and you could see everybody around the balcony.

Back then you didn t have to Google or email or text anybody, you just made a phone call and next thing you knew, the whole cornfield ran into the bar.

(laughs) I'm serious, that's what it was like.

Cool...

Being 20, 21 years old, go up there and play two sets, an walk out the building with $200.

You know, it was great.

[music playing] ANDY: It was a three piece power trio, with a Led Zeppliny, heavy metal type lead singer.

The general fair of what we were selling at the time, 80's music, heavy guitar, solos and stuff like that.

[music playing] My name is Andy Baylor.

I'm a musician.

Played guitar, professionally since 1981.

Pete started the band out of Decatur, and it was a three piece, and then they, he added Michael Husler, who he had been in a band with called the Slink Ran Group.

They, in turn, tried to work around the Midwest.

Ted let us play whenever we wanted.

We honed a lot of music on Ted's stage.

See Ted really, really liked our bass player and the singer, Michael Husler and Peter Bailey.

Peter Bailey and Michael Husler.

Because they where Chicagoians.

Ted was a Chicagoian, a southside Chicagoian.

So, they just bonded with that.

He really believed in Michael Husler and Peter Bailey, to the point, to where he invested ten-thousand dollars to buy a P.A.

for Clockwork, for his P.A., and ten grand was a lot of money back then.

That was the major hurdle for bands to get out.

You had to have the sound system, you had to have have the big presence.

Yeah, he believed in that band enough, to invest, money it.

The one thing is we gave him respect.

We nevr played anywhere else in Charleston.

[music playing] [applause] DAVE: My sister was 11 years older than me and she had told me about Ted s forever.

Then when I was probably around 17, I got to go to Ted s and see the experience and see the bands, and I m pretty sure the first band I saw there was Clockwork Orange.

And I was just blown away by everything that happened there, and I was like, "That s it.

That s where I want to be".

Dave Kirkwood.

Lead singer of Cheap Thrills and Joker Express.

Well, Cheap Thrills started out as a trainwreck and we just kind of gathered people in, until we got J.B. Faires.

J.B.: My name is J.B. Faires.

I m a bass player.

Played in a band called Cheap Thrills and then later, Joker Express.

I was the only one in the band from Charleston at the time.

Everyone else, from all the small towns around knew about Ted s and wanted to go see the bands at Ted s, so of course we wanted to be one of those bands that played there.

[music playing] DAVE: Three, four years later of slubbing through, dive holes, I finally got the chance to take our band to Ted s. And we thought we made it.

We thought we were superstars.

I mean, we re playing at Ted s, Eastern Illinois, look at the house is packed, people are getting drunk, having fun, everybody loves everybody.

That was it.

Ted s was it.

Period.

J.B.: Yeah, I mean exhilarating.

It was so much fun.

The light show was always great.

You saw faces here, there.

Lots of room to move around.

We were always jumping around, and thrasing about wildly.

It was nice to have that room to be able to do that.

I even smashed a bass on that stage once.

Somebody even gave me a real cheap, electric bass, to do that with.

"All right, I'll try it."

(chuckle) Big wonk and people at the downstairs bar were looking up going, "What's going on up there".

It was exhilarating to play that stage... to feel like a rockstar, you know.

[music playing] You felt like you were family with Ted.

It was nice to be on his good side.

We just had fun.

And he could be very generous, to the bands,cut us a break, you know, and that kind of thing... when things were going crazy.

I've even seen him, call a cab for people, you know.

And just really watch out for his patrons and people that were coming all the time.

Especially for me and my wife, we were married at Ted s. Having our wedding reception at Ted s, it was a very special kind of thing.

That was where my wife had worked, where I had played for years in the bands.

MICHELLE: My name is Michelle Faires, and I started working in Ted s in about 1992, but I started going to Ted s when I was 17, 1988.

I hung out there from the time I was able to, and then I eventually worked there.

I d been going there forever and he needed a new bartender, so I said "Yeah, I ll do it".

It was great.

I needed a job, so it worked out.

There was one time that a guy stole my tip jar.

I was working the upstairs bar and I had a big pitcher with all my tips in it, and he like, grabbed it and ran, was going down the stairs, and I was a little feisty, so I tackled him, but the bouncers then saw me and Ted was like adamant and very protective like "Are you hurt?

Are you ok?".

And I remember that sticking out because he was very, very fatherly.

You felt safe.

You felt like if there was going to be a problem it was going to get taken care of.

Other bars I ve been to maybe you didn t have quite as much of that.

You just didn t have to worry.

You could go and get drunk, you know you d get a ride home.

SUSAN: It was a great place to work.

My name is Susan Rankins.

I grew up in a small town, Oakland, Illinois, about 16 miles from here.

I started going there for, basically to see the bands.

A bunch of my friends and I would go.

I was in that period when like the hair bands and the long hair.

We d go there to watch the bands every Friday and Saturday night.

I started begging the manager who I knew there to give me a job.

I started out as a waitress, but Ted then moved me to the door, and the door s where I d worked for, basically the duration, random times when he d move me somewhere else.

So I was at the door taking money, giving coupons.

I would card.

He was either pirched on the railing, sitting there or he was carding.

Sometimes he d send the bouncers and he d card.

He would kind of parent people.

If he thought somebody needed a ride, it wouldn t be like beyond him to come to me or he would come to me and say "Take these people home", or one of the other people that worked there.

Because he took care of people, that s what he did.

Because I had the best spot in the house.

Because I was at the door and where I was sitting I could talk to people coming in, see people going out, but I also had the perfect view of the band, so I could see kind of everything.

So I got to enjoy a lot of things about the bands that maybe some of the other waitresses didn t because they were all walking around trying to get beer for people.

So those nights were always just great.

CHARLIE: Our relationship probably wouldn t have grown if it weren t for Ted s. When we met I was living in Champaign, she was living in Mattoon.

So we met at a party and we started getting to know each other at Ted s. MARCY: I m Marcy Woodard.

Back in Ted s days, my name was Marcy Rankin.

CHARLIE: And I m Charlie Woodard.

Hung out at Ted s over many decades.

I roadied for Lugr, for as long as Lugr existed.

I think they broke up, late '89, millenium.

MARCY: We met at a party.

Didn t really talk much.

We just met.

He was coming in as I was leaving.

The next week, he was at Ted s, so we started talking, and we just kept seeing each other at Ted s and got to know each other a little bit.

By the end of the month, we had had our first date.

I had my set of friends that I always went there with, and he had his set of friends, and there were just a lot of the same people there.

Depending on what band was playing, you knew who was going to be there.

Yeah, if I wasn t playing fusball I was on the dance floor.

We liked to hang out down there.

You could see the band pretty good.

JODY THOMAS: I lived in this little town, and I was introduced to Ted s. There was a friend of mine, his name was Rob Canar, and he was the roadie for everybody, all the bands back in the day.

Rob was always trying to get me to go to Ted s. And I d always heard about this metal bar, and this live music bar in Charleston and finally got there, and man never looked back.

We would make pilgrimages from our tiny little town, load up cars of people, drive over there for the night, just to drive back.

My name s Jody Thomas.

I m originally from Strasburg, Illinois.

I went to Eastern back in the day.

I mean, it was the 80s, early 90s, metal had taken over, and that was a place you could go see live rock and roll music.

Ted would welcome you at the door.

He remembered everybody.

He had a knack for remembering people.

And then the people that were there, everybody was fun, they took care of each other and it was just a nice, comfortable place to go, on top of having some of the best music around.

You'd have these different regions, the Springfield bands, the Champaign bands, the Effingham bands, the local bands, that kind of thing.

But you had Secret Society was always on top of my list.

Again, I loved Secret Society.

Clockwork Orange.

Postwar Fords, the Brat Pack was an 80s cover band which was incredible.

Third Stone, which was an amazing local band from Champaign.

Sticky Wicket, Joker Express, can t forget Joker Express.

There was Mickey Finn, there was a band called Mickey Finn, I remember them.

For Ted it was always very personal.

And so we were friends.

I remember one day before I started working there, my car had broken down.

I was halfway between Mattoon and Charleston in the middle of the country, and I don t know why Ted was there, but he drives by and recognizes me, slams on his breaks, gives me a ride, then loaned me the money to pay for my car because I was broke at that point in time, and he was like "Oh, don t worry about it.

You ll pay me back at the bar"... and that kind of thing.

Again, he was genuinely interested in the people he worked with.

All the stars alligned, there was an opening at the bar... Ted let me in.

I m not the biggest guy.

The bigger guys would always get hired on before guys my size, but I think I showed dedication to the place enough that I got it by default.

[music playing] My friend and I took our obligatory, backpacking trip to Europe, whenever your in your twenties.

The day we got back from Europe, Ted just had this massive grin on his face, it was just so good to see him again.

But he came back and after-barred with us at my house.

And so this is me and Gus and Ted sitting on the couch having a drink together.

Whenever they would shut the bar down... there was a roast beef place that stayed open all night long.

And Ted would go with you to the roast beef place, sit around and tell you stories and stuff... at three o'clock in the morning, before he'd go home for bed.

That's just the guy Ted was.

He did that all the time.

STACY: Every night, at the end of the night, he would say, he had the microphone system, he would say "You don t have to go home, but you can t stay here".

That s kind of burned into my brain, because he said it every night.

JODY THOMAS: He d been in the hospital for a few days up in Champaign, and we d had, we were young and had no money at that point in time, so we d take kind of shifts driving up to see him.

It was like a Tuesday or Wednesday, something like that.

And my roomate Scotty, he was another bartender there, and he walked in and was just in complete shock.

Me and my friends were playing Playstation.

He just walked in, pale as a ghost and... "Ted s dead".

Out of nowhere.

We knew he d been sick, but we just had no idea he d been that sick.

And he just kind of looked at us, and shook his head and walked out.

And we all kind of looked around.

I don t remember.

When you re in shock when you get that kind of news.

And I don t remember if I made a couple other calls or something, but we knew that it was true.

Once we realized that it wasn t just a rumor or something like that, we just sat there staring at each other for I don t know how long, seemed like forever.

And I grabbed my keys, I had keys to the place, and went straight up.

That s what I did all the time, was changing the sign.

That s one of the things you did whenever you worked there.

So I climbed up.

If I remember correctly, Ted loved Jack Daniels.

I took a shot of whiskey with me and I changed the sign and I had a shot of whiskey while I was sitting up there by myself with the sign, and cried a little bit and that was it.

[music playing] This was Ted s wake.

Whenever he passed away, it was like people just gravitated toward the place.

We were all there, and it suddenly just turned into this big wake of people drinking and crying, and reminiscing and everything.

So at one point they put all the bartenders up on the stage.

JODY PONDER: Two months before Ted died, I was sitting in a bar called TK Wendall s in Urbana, and he walked up to me and he patted me on the back and said "I thought that was you, Jody".

And I'm like, "Ted!

What s up man?"

And he sat there, and he basically said how happy he was for all those years that we played there, all of us, everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody.

I mean, there was just so many bands that we just had this venue, and it was so great.

It was incredible.

We didn t expect nothing like that.

And it really sucked when it went away.

[music playing] MARCY: There's Ivory Brand.

When I first got onto Facebook, I discovered all these groups that were around and I'm like, "Well, I ll just make one".

I made that group and invited, through my Facebook friends, I invited anyone that I remembered going to Ted s. We invited all our friends that actually went there, and it s a public group, so those friends started inviting their friends into the group.

And I just checked earlier today, and there s over 3500 people in the group now.

A lot of the posts, people will post on there and say, "Who ever saw this band?

", and then memories would start coming up.

I ve seen several posts over the years that people say they met their spouse at Ted s. Or their ex-spouse.

(laughs) KEVIN: It brings back their youth, I think that s the main part.

There s people that met and got married there.

JODY THOMAS: So whenever you had worked there, you would get one of these.

Ah this is great, I got chills, I got goosebumps trying this on.

This has been hanging in my closet for 30 years.

There you go.

MIKE: Some of my lifelong friends right now are people that I used to go there with on a regular basis, and we still keep in touch.

And every now and then a Bill Pollard will walk into the store and say "Do you remember when?"

You're going to find people all over the country right now, that if you mention it, their going to say, "I got a story for ya".

TYLER: I m 55 years old, and I look back at those times, and we were just scraping by, but, at that time we really, really just had fun.

SUSAN: I think it goes to Ted.

Ted was the big part of it because he was there all the time and you became really comfortable with him and it was just at a time where people were just there to have fun.

There wasn't a lot of the things that go on now, and if you wanted to hear a band, and you wanted to have a good time, you went there.

It didn't matter where you were coming from.

And he welcomed everybody.

STACY: I just really consider him one of the very best club owners I've ever worked with.

And I've wokred with a lot of them.

BRUCE: It's really interesting that people still, talk about that place, that's been shut for 25 years.

Because it was quite the deal down there.

J.B.: I wish there was a Ted's again, that could have that kind of thing, for people to go experience live music, because it was amazing.

Just to have that venue.

ROB: You remember that following, and you want to go back, and you can't find that magic anywhere else.

This doesn't seem to exist, where everyone would hang out, everyone would get along.

It was an atmosphere that hasn't been duplicated.

DAVE: That place had a vibe that nobody can touch.

Nobody.

As far as like everybody being on the same vibe and jamming in the same way, nobody can touch it.

That s why it was Ted s. [music playing]