The End Is Here!

[Pep]

Congratulations on a great run and kudos for knowing when to hang it up. Looks like you guys had a lot of fun with it! What is that blue bass with the white pick guard in the first photo?

It’s a Stu Hamm Urge I. It’s a 32” scale and plays great.

 

[Pep]

Best of luck to you.. that was an amazing run.. keeping a band together is a challenge.

I’m curious about this comment.. since you were doing covers.

“Add to that two new members, one of which treated this as a cover band, and we have a recipe
for disaster”.

We were a tribute, not a cover band, and I assume you know the difference.

 

[Pep]

looks like a stu hamm...

It is and there’s a long story behind it.

 

[Pep]

Up here (NE) we Do have Chicago fanatics. Is that what you meant by not a cover band? (because it's either original or cover) It's too bad that bit of history is getting lost. I expect the non fanatic wasn't in the horn section. As a high school trumpet player we did a few numbers in stage band and I can still play the solo in Make Me Smile, use it as a warmup etude...(goes up to C# briefly) but I despise Color my World. it's always out of tune... I notice a few trombone players in your photos and one compact, sturdy trumpet player, and the sax player seems to have gone through changes too...

Well you somewhat cirrect. The difference between a cover band and a tribute band is a cover band does a variety of music and takes liberties with the tunes, while a tribute band focuses on one artist and uses every effort to make sound exactly like the original. We actually had nearly 2 full hours of nothing but Chicago tunes.
I gave up my bass duties in the fall of 2024 to focus on nothing but vocals. The bassist we used last year was lazy and made little to zero effort put in the work.
The trumpet player hired another bassist and having him to hire a bassist was a huge mistake. The new one is an upright jazz player who has played bass guitar but not frequently. He reads so he played off charts, but really didn’t learn any of the material an$ it showed. He was okay at rehearsal but on the gig last week he was playing his own things and it threw everyone else off.

 

[Pep]

It's sad in a certain way, but I imagine you have a lot of great memories from this period. 16 and 1/2 years is a lot of time, I suppose you have strong relationship with all the band members.
Any new musical project in mind?

Perhaps a 5 piece with a couple of the band members doing danceable covers and making sure when people come to see us the don’t hear the same old thing thst every other band in town plays. We want them to remember that our material selection is different.

 

[Bass Viking]

All good things must come to an end but don't be sad that it's over, be happy that it was.

 

[drpepper]

Aww man…best wishes to your guitarist and everyone close to him. That’s a heartbreaking thing to go through.

And while it sounds like you had a great run, it’s tough to see everything you put together along the way come to an end that way. I’d never played any Chicago tunes until about a year and a half ago. I've the chance to do a few shows featuring Chicago songs with a great vocalist, a top notch sax player, and our keyboard player covering the other horn parts. Learning and performing those songs was an absolute blast. I can only imagine how a horn section as you've had would take that up a notch.

We've kept a few of those tunes in our regular rotation since, while they're still fun (for everyone except the keyboard player), it’s definitely lacking the feel.

I hope somehow you’re able to keep at least part of what you built alive in some form that doesn’t mean letting all of it go.