Arrival in Seattle was an awakening for Dabek in that here was a city with a large “hip” community with artists and freaks and people just looking for another way. He bummed around for awhile, crashing at several people’s different “pads” and went to audition for a gig at a club down on 7th and Olive downtown. The club owner Joe Koester thought the music was great and Dabek became the house act for nearly two months during the summer of 1968. It was during that time that his twelve string style emerged and was a prolific time for writing songs and giving audiences something a little different from all the rest. He didn’t earn anything except he could live in the back room of coffee house and could eat a lot of free pizza. The club closed in August due to financial difficulty, and Dabek ended up staying at Judith and Sandy’s place for awhile, played at SkyRiver (went there with a lovely gal named Cathy), lived in a room on Cherry Hill, where he wrote and played until he hooked up with some folks who wanted to promote him and sent him to L.A. to work with an agent in January of 1969.