Duke Rushmore at the Brewery

Our bass player for my band — Duke Rushmore — put together these two videos from the first set of our gig the other night at the Paper City Brewery in Holyoke. It captures some nice energy of the stage that night, I think.

Peace (and thanks for listening!),
Kevin (the sax player)

Having Some Fun with Duke Rushmore

The other day, the drummer in our band — Duke Rushmore — posted this picture at our website.

the colonel

We all had a good laugh at those huge drum sticks. And then I remembered this tiny toy saxophone that I had in our basement, so I dug it up and added this image to our website.

Kevin Little Sax

If you are in Western Massachusetts this coming weekend, our band is playing at the Three County Fair on Saturday afternoon. (We either start at 2 or 2:30 p.m.). Come say hello and maybe dance your shoes off before heading off to see the racing pigs, the demolition derby or scarfing down a pirogi.

 

Three County Fair Flyer

Peace (in the music),
Kevin

 

Some Duke Rushmore For Your Ears

Duke Rushmore
A member of our band — Duke Rushmore — pulled together a little mixtape (wrong word, right?) from our recent gig. You can take a listen at our new Soundcloud site, and if you are up for it, please come visit our Facebook page and add us as a “like.” We’re trying to get our way to 100 people liking us. Hopefully, the music will help!

🙂

Peace (in the sounds),
Kevin

 

More Duke Rushmore Rock and Roll Music

A bandmate had someone do some filming at a recent show that my band, Duke Rushmore, put on. (That’s me, on the saxophone and hat). The woman singer from my last band came to join us on stage, with her wonderful voice.

First is a medley of Do You Love Me/I Feel Good.

Second is a rocking version of Ohio.

Peace (in the music),
Kevin

 

We Were ‘Picking up the Pieces’

Here is a short clip of my band last night as we tried out the very difficult song (for me, anyway, as the sax player) of Pick up the Pieces by the Average White Band:

 

Peace (in the funk),
Kevin

 

What the Duke Rushmore Band is Up To: The Cover Song Playlist

My band —Duke Rushmore — has been learning a bunch of new songs, working some into our set list (we have a gig next Friday), and it’s fun but difficult to learn new material. Just ask any student, right? Not all of these songs will make it to the final round of being part of our material, but we cast a wide net.

You can check out some of the songs that we are learning with this playlist.

Peace (in the music),
Kevin

Slice of Life: Rocking the House with the Band

Our first gig was a success! My band, Duke Rushmore, had out first outing last night at a brewery in a nearby town, and about 175 people came out to, eh, “sample” fresh beer by the Paper City Brewing Company and listen to some music. We were a bit nervous, given that this would be our first time before a live bar audience (we did play briefly last year at a benefit concert at my school) on St. Patrick’s Day weekend.

But it was fine. No, it was great. We were mostly pretty tight, and the crowd got into it. We were handing out Duke Rushmore tambourines and shakers, and while the place is not designed for dancing, a few folks did cut the rug for a few songs. Most just held their cups and swayed to the music, and we got a lot of a good feedback from people.

I tried to set up my Flip camera, but I could not get it in a good angle. I’m not sure if we can salvage much of the video footage, but one of the bar dudes jumped up on some kegs and filmed a few songs for us, and then loaded it up to YouTube. The first song is my original song, which is really called “Champagne, Whiskey and the Rhythm and Blues Tonight” but we changed it to “Irish Whiskey.” The problem was that we kept forgetting to switch the words, so we had this funny exchange (you can’t see it on the video) between us singers, looking at each other, like, It’s Irish Whiskey, you fool, and then we were both cracking up.

The second song is our encore, which we hadn’t practiced all that much. The singer thought he would forget the words but they came back to him at the right moment.

Peace (in the rock and the roll),
Kevin

PS — that’s me on the saxophone, by the way.