Hey, this is Paul Martin and Ray the Roadie with the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. Oh, oh, oh, excuse me. It's Christmas week.

It is. It's Christmas and everybody is festive dining their apparel. Yes.

Yeah. So what's going on? Have you been a good boy all year, Paul? I've been an excellent. I've been excellent.

Santa's bringing me lots of good stuff. Awesome. How about you? I know you have been very good.

I believe I have, except there is a bag of charcoal briquettes sitting at the end of my driveway. I'm not sure what that's all about. Yeah, well, it happens.

It does. It does. So what's on tap for Christmas week? This week we have the band Sundance for our holiday pleasure.

Very nice. They've been around for a long time. They've been around for almost 40 years and about 40 years.

And they're a horn band. Another horn band. There we go.

Horn bands rock. Yes, they do. And let's get to it and see what they have to say for themselves.

We talked with Jim and Henry and Angela, and let's see what they have to say. Let's go. Hey, everybody.

We're here in beautiful downtown Joliet, Illinois, at the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66 in the Inner Sanctum. We're here with the band Sundance. We have Jim, Angela, and Henry.

How are you guys doing today? Doing good. Great. Thanks.

We're doing good. We just did a gig last night, so we're kind of a little shot today, but we're feeling good, though. Good.

Excellent. Excellent. Excellent.

Where'd you play last night? We did a party over at Oak Brook Hills, Hilton, Christmas party for the Chamber of Commerce. Parties are fun to do, aren't they? Uh-huh. They're the ones that are paying these days.

That's right. That's right. That's right.

Well, it's good to see you guys. So tell us a little bit about the band. First of all, let's start with how you got started.

Well, I started the band in 1980. So this summer, it'll be 40 years. And going back into the 70s, I was like anybody else.

I was just a horn player in a band. And I got to a point where I was getting tired of being told what I was going to make and what I was going to play and this and that. I always thought I knew everything.

I was very stubborn, very pig-headed. So my wife at the time said to me, well, you know, what you should do is since you think you know everything, why don't you just start your own band? And I'm like, I never thought of that. So myself and one of our ex-members, Chris Eastwood, who now plays with the band La Cara, happened to be over at the time.

I said, Jim, let's do it. We'll pull what money we have and see what we can get. So we bought a real cheap, sure vocal master PA.

We talked to some other members of bands we played with, including Joe Richards, who was a bass player from the Hounds. We got him. Then we got a buddy of mine, Tom, and another buddy, JP, Jimmy Pierce, who's playing a lot of jazz gigs today.

And we said, let's see what we can do with this. We put it together. We started rehearsing.

We did about three jobs the first year. And then we hooked up with a sound module, who was a wedding consultant firm. And they said, hey, you guys got a cool sound.

They said, you probably could do real well in this market. And we said, man, can we make some money? Because we're all broke. And we were all broke at the time.

And he said, yeah, I think so. At that time, we were talking $400 or $500 a night. And that was a lot of money coming from when you were making nothing.

So we did it. And the next year, we went right up to about 80, 85 jobs. So we hit the mother load.

And the biggest reason was, at that time in the wedding market, most bands did not have horns. We had two horn players. So the Blues Brothers movie came out the year before.

And right away, we said, well, let's learn all these tunes. They sound like fun party tunes. So we said, OK.

So we probably learned maybe 12, 14 Blues Brothers tunes, any one we could do, since none of us really could sing well. And today, to this day, we still don't. So we said, OK, let's do that.

And we did them. And when we put them on tape and clients came to see it, the movie's still being fresh in everybody's mind. They said, oh, my god, I got to have this band.

They're playing all these cool tunes. And we rode that wave maybe for a decade, at least a decade. The 80s, the early 80s, was a great time for bands as it was.

A lot of places to play, a lot of clubs. Every club had a band, late 70s anyway. You could go and see a band on a Monday night.

You'd go see Off-Broadway and see a Cheap Trick somewhere on Wednesday night. Absolutely. I mean, back in those days, I remember Sticks playing at Moraine Valley College.

I saw them at Triton College. Rufus played my high school prom. I went to Argo High School and graduated in 73.

I know Henry opened up for them at a gig of the band he played with. So we grew up seeing all these people. Ides of March, I'd seen them a million times when they were starting out.

And it was the impetus to have a band and to want to play. They're all our influences to this day. Well, we wanted a band and wanted to do what they're doing.

Of course, the band Chicago was another big influence. It's part of the reason why I went to DePaul because I had stars in my eyes. I figured, hey man, this is where these guys went to school.

I think I'm going to go there and who knows. Yeah, something might rub off. Well, yeah.

Well, unfortunately it didn't because I'm still here. But you'd be surprised how many musicians were at that school with that same thought in their mind that they were going to find that magic potion. And the cool thing about that was the band Chicago would come back to DePaul and they put a concert on.

We never even knew this was going to happen. We'd be in the lunchroom having lunch and we always had different bands play once a week. One day it was Chicago.

No kidding. And they just played. They played about four songs.

I'm sitting there eating my lunch, doing my homework, and they're setting up about 10 feet in front of me. I'm like, holy cow. And this is when they were at the top of the charts.

It's like 77, 76 when this all happened. So that's all cool. That's what always the impetus for having my own band and trying to do fun music, cool music.

And so now you've taken it to this, right? Now you've had some different member changes along the way, right? Well, you know, you're right. It's tough to keep a band going as you know yourself. People come and go all the time.

And sometimes they come back, sometimes they don't. Some of your friendships, wives, I mean, husbands, whatever you want to call it. Significant others.

It's significant others. It all comes and goes through the band. And unfortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the band kind of runs your life.

Your life is centered around the band. People don't understand that unless they're a musician. But it has to be successful.

It has to. You know that. Definitely.

So has it been the band Sundance since day one? Yes. Where did the name come from? Well, when we started the band, our first sax player, Chris Eastwood, who I mentioned before, his brother was a graphic artist. His name was Peter.

He said, Peter, can you help us come up with a name? We had all these names like Arcade and all kinds of funky names. And he came up with this name Sundance. And then he drew a picture of a sun in the background.

It was a real cool, some really cool artwork. And we all looked at each other and said, oh, what the hell? Let's go with it. And we did.

And over the years, we always wanted to change it, to come up with something more. And we kept saying, but the name's been out there now. There's people calling us, you know, knowing who we are.

And we were always afraid to do that. And so we just kept it and said, oh, what the hell? We're just going to keep it. And this is what it is, you know? And we went with that.

Nothing wrong with that. But one interesting story. We played a wedding for a client back in the 80s.

And she called me about eight years later and said, hey, do you remember me? Of course I said, yes, though I didn't. And she said, I'm getting married. You know this is going out on the air.

She's going to hear this now. I'm not giving any names, just so you know. I'm not giving any names.

So she says, well, you know, I'm getting married again. And I'm like, can you really want the same band? She goes, well, the guy I married was a bum. I don't like any of his friends.

She goes, the only good thing about my first marriage was the band I had at my wedding. She goes, well, you guys play my, I said, for open show? And we did it. And I haven't heard from her.

And this was 20 years ago. So I'm assuming everything was cool. Right.

Well, she went and didn't go for number three yet. I hope you find my charm. Yeah.

Yeah. Because if she went for the third one, then she could have said, well, I think it was the band that's messing this up. I see.

I see. So, Henry, tell me about your excursions through the years with the band. How long have you been with the band? I've been with Sundance four years.

Oh, OK. And now, but I know before we started, Jim said that you guys played together years before. Yeah, in Utopia.

Utopia was a band we had at Northern Illinois University was made up of. I was in the School of Music. There was made up of some of the people in the jazz ensemble.

And Jim became our trumpet player at some point. And I knew Jim. And this is back in the mid 70s, you know, 74, 75.

Yeah. There's a when we had real long hair or actually had hair at that time. We won't talk about that.

Yeah. But yeah, I met Jim back then. And we played a bunch of gigs in that band.

A lot of fun times. We were young and we were crazy. And yeah, it's a lot of cool stuff that went on.

But strange thing about Sundance and me was I had seen Sundance play probably about four or five times. I never realized it was Jim up there, which is strange. So so I connected with Jim, you know, over four years ago on Facebook.

And, you know, we kind of went back and forth and go, oh, my God, we haven't talked to each other in 40 years. So I had an opportunity to come and play with them. And that first gig was at the Lockport Moose at their Moose Fest.

We played outside and we kind of started outside, went inside back and forth. But that was my first time. And it's a nice environment because, you know, every band has has their little issues.

But this is like family in this band. And we're all pretty close to one another. And it's just a lot of fun.

I'm having a lot of fun with this band. Most fun I've had in a band in quite a few years. Very good.

Very good. Angela, tell us your involvement with the band. Oh, that's an interesting story.

I went out to see the band with another person and didn't know Jim. I knew the singer, the female singer. So I went to see her.

Who was the other person you went to? It was an old boyfriend. Remember, this is going on the air. So I met Jim and didn't really think anything of it.

And then that kind of ended. And then Jim started contacting me. And he convinced me to go see a concert with him.

It was Chicago and Earth, Wind and Fire, which were my two favorite bands, which he found out and took me to see the concert. And we've been together ever since. So I see.

How long has that been? We've been married six years, but we've actually been together 10. Oh, OK. So and then Jim, of course, persuaded me to come sit there.

And that was boring. So then he said, we'll take pictures. And that was getting boring.

So then he said, I said, if you want me to come, I need to have a mic. So he gave me his. And then I said, no, that's not going to work.

I need my own mic in the center. And so that's where I'm at now. So it's a lot of fun.

We do have a good time. And we are like family. And it's tiring, you know, but it is fun.

Now, you guys are a cover band. But what kind of stuff do you do? Well, I mean, obviously, obviously, you started with the with the Blues Brothers stuff. We still play Blues Brothers stuff.

Sure. You know, our motto is if you can dance to it, if you can sing to it, if you can groove to it, we can play it. Right.

I mean, it's it's A to Z. I mean, we're constantly learning stuff for people's parties or weddings or functions. We're always learning club stuff. But we've always managed.

The hard thing that's hurt us over the years was the fact that too many people thought, well, this is a wedding band. We don't want to hire them for a fest. And then we did a fest.

Other clients would say, well, I don't know if I want them to do a wedding. They're more of a fest band. So and that's probably hurt us more over the years than anything else.

Because and my motto was we're going to play it all so we can always be playing because we this is how we make our living, you know. And we've been fortunate to be averaging anywhere from 70 to 100 gigs a year going on 40 years. And that hasn't been easy.

But the secret to that is being able to play lots of different types of music. And you got to have good musicians to do that because some guys are good at one. Some guys can play funk great, but they can't play rock or some guys can play jazz, but they can't play this.

So it's been tough finding people that fit what you want to do. So we will rehearse. We'll learn a song and say this song will only come out when we do when you rehearse.

Well, we do rehearse about a couple of times a year. Most of the most of the songs are learned on stage. I mean, at our age, you're right.

You're right. How do we end this? No, I agree. That's it.

How do we how's the song? We got a beginning. We got an end. That's it.

We're good in the middle. The way we learn most of our songs is we'll say, hey, this is a cool song. Who wants to sing it? Good.

It's yours. You're going to sing background. Oh, you want to take a solo? Good.

OK, let's work it up. We'll try it at the gig this weekend. Then we'll talk about it.

Sometimes it comes off. Sometimes it don't. But there's always that one odd song that needs a lot of stuff in it that we'll have to get together to rehearse because they want it or something.

But we've got several books of music that we'll use for a fest for a club or we'll use for a wedding or a private party or a corporate function. It all depends what it is. But it means a lot of work on our part, but it keeps the band working.

And what I've learned is over the years, as long as you have work and you've got money coming in, you'll always have a band. And that's what's kept this band going. I mean, I've had people leave because they said we work too much.

I've had people leave. And I've had people leave who said, you don't work enough. And now that we're all getting older, we've all had families.

We've all had kids now. It's been hard to keep it going. But now in some of our cases, we have our kids playing in the band.

So hopefully they'll keep it going. My son, Tony, plays trumpet with us. Our guitar player, Joe's son, Frank, played with us for three or four years.

And who knows who's next? Now you mentioned some of the musicians. Henry, we know you play trombone. And Jim, you play trumpet and keys.

Trumpet and keys. Angel, you're a singer. Who are some of the other members of the band? Well, our lead guitarist is Joe Alangi.

And Joe's also probably our best male vocalist in the band, I would say. And he's played with many bands before he hooked up with us. He's also very versatile.

He plays drums. He plays bass. He plays guitar.

He sings lead. And he can do any of those full time. You hate those guys, don't you? Yeah, but you love having them, though.

You love having them on your side. And when Joe first came with us, he was our drummer. Oh, wow.

And then when our guitar player at the time had passed away, we said, OK, Joe, you're now the guitar player. And we were like, holy cow. Man.

You know, there's times he's played bass. He's always sang. Who did he come from? What were some of his bands? He played with a band called Elite, which was a very popular wedding band in the 80s and the 90s.

And he played with a lot of other bands out of the North Side. And then we had Roy DeGangi. We have Roy DeGangi on bass guitar.

And he's only our second bassist in 40 years. Our first bassist was Joe Richards, who I've lost contact with. Man, I hope he hears this and he gets in touch with me, because I miss him dearly.

He was a great guy. He played with a band called The Hounds in the 70s. And we managed to get him.

And he was with us for about 12 years before he left. And then we got Roy. And Roy did a lot of playing with Perry Danos.

Perry's now in Nashville. And he also did a lot of playing in Vegas. He was in Tahoe for a long time.

Then he relocated back to Chicago. And we got him in the band. Our drummer now is Darren Marino, who's played with a lot of metal bands, believe it or not, out of the North Side, Hans and something.

You remember what it was called? Man, it was such a cool name. Yeah, it was a cool name. I can't remember it.

But you'd never know it. The guy is so versatile. He can play anything.

It doesn't matter if it's a big band tune, or it's a funky tune, or just a good pop tune, or a rocker. He's an excellent drummer and a great singer, too. He's the newest guy in the band.

We're real happy to have him. And one of our lead vocalists, Cherry Pineda, sings with other bands, too. I know one of the other bands she sings with is called Soda.

And she's sung with a lot of different people. Oh, OK. I know Soda.

Yeah, I know Soda real well. And she's one heck of an entertainer and a great vocalist. Yeah, I probably mixed her then, because when I was back in my mixing days.

Absolutely. They've been around for a long time, too. That's right.

And whenever we use a sax player, we use Josh Shapiro. And Josh has played off and on with us since going back to the late 90s. He actually replaced Chris Eastwood, who was our first sax player, who just basically got burned out on the whole thing that we were doing.

And now he's back into doing more of an original thing, which is cool. So I know he's really happy. And he's a very talented musician.

But Josh plays with us a lot. Josh plays with everybody and anybody you can think of in the city. And then Henry's our trombone player.

We also use my son, Tony, on trumpet, who plays a lot with us, too. And we've got so many parts that come and go. These are probably the most part.

The nucleus. The nucleus of the band is, yeah. But you know, Henry was telling you about that first band we played with together in the 70s.

That band, Utopia, had a lot of people who went on to do some pretty cool things. The bass player, Mark Gardner, wound up being the bass player for the kind. Oh, OK.

And Mark Shear, who was a lead vocalist, has done a lot of recording with Jim Peterick and doing projects with him. Yeah, I know that name. I don't know if I've ever met him or not.

But he's one heck of a vocalist. And he was back then. And we just reconnected about a year or two ago.

We didn't, you know, we're like, oh, my God. Social media. Yeah, social media brings us all together.

We found each other. I think we had somebody else. Dave Nuccio, who was the keyboard player, has got the New Invaders.

That's his band. He's a big part of that. And I think he's a college professor.

Yeah, he's at Joliet Junior College in the music department there. And the interesting thing about Dave is, Dave and I went to school together from about kindergarten on. And we played in bands in the 70s before we went our own ways, you know? So there was a lot of people that came and went in and out of that band that we were from.

Right. Yeah. Now, you talked about some of them doing some original projects.

Have you guys ever considered doing any original material? We never did. Never did. We never have.

Guys in the band have done things on their own. But we've, as collectively as a band, we've always been a cover band. Right.

You know, it's just. Well, no, it's great. Different stages of our life.

Right. You know, when we're all looking to buy houses after a while, we knew we had to prove income. Right, right.

You know that story. We had kids, there's college bills to be paid. So it was always about having to make sure we were making something.

And the only way to do that were to play gigs that paid. Right. And we kind of almost let that run us.

And that was good and bad, you know, because that burned a lot of people out musically. Right. And financially, it made a lot of people happy.

I mean, you know. So that's a double edged sword there, actually. Absolutely.

So where do you find yourself doing more? More clubs or fests or weddings or? Well, now we're doing probably more fests and private parties. In the 80s, we were a huge wedding band. I think around 91 or 90, we peaked at about, did about 110 weddings one year.

Wow. Now we made a boatload of money doing it, but we were killing each other. I mean, the wedding market's tough because you have to play a lot of music you don't like.

Because it's not about what you like or what you want to play. It's about what they want to hear. Right.

And that wore on us. Do you find that more nowadays than it was back in the 80s? No, that's changing now. Today's wedding client is really hip.

They want to party. They don't want that clean look and precise, this precise. They want a band that gets up there and jams and that can lay it all on the line.

They want it to be crazy and wild. They want it to be a night to remember. And if you go to our website, thebandsundance.com, you'll see a lot of videos we post from weddings on there where you got the bride playing the cowbell and the groom's got a tambourine.

He's running around the stage. Girls are doing flips on the floor. I mean, this is what they want at their weddings.

Right, but I'm talking about music-wise. Oh, music-wise. Music-wise.

Well, no, we can get around with more cool stuff today than we could back in the day. Yeah, absolutely. Do you incorporate the hokey pokey and chicken dance in all your shows? No more.

We used to all the time, but now we've deleted that. Since I've been with the band. And you know what's nice about what you just said? They don't ask for it anymore.

No, I don't think they know it. And I hope they never find it because I don't want to play it anymore. No, but I bet they ask for the Cupid Shuffle, right? Yes, that's a big one.

Now, here's how we get around that. When we do a wedding, I DJ the breaks. Right, I was going to ask you that.

And the band says, thank God, Jim, please DJ that too. We don't want to learn that. I said, no problem, man.

And everybody's happy. Everybody's dancing. We're playing.

We're making some dough. Everybody's happy. It's a good thing.

But we are- That's a very wise move to have a DJ if you didn't do it yourself. Or play the music in between, have a set list made up. Exactly, and we do that.

We custom make everybody's party. They'll tell me everything they want, everything they don't want. I'll put together a playlist that the band will play, or what I'll DJ, and everything will be the exact way you want.

And the nice thing is, we do private parties. Angela takes photos and videos of these parties. We throw them on a flash drive, and we give them to the clients.

You weren't supposed to give out my secret. Since we let that out, other bands are starting to do that now. But it's kind of like a nice added bonus.

What I- It is fun, because the bride is amazed. Because normally, their photographer leaves like nine o'clock. Or at a private party, they don't have a photographer.

So I take lots of pictures and videos when they're going crazy, and then I send it to them. And they're like, oh my gosh, that was really cool. So then they have that later on for remembrance.

Tell them what the one lady said to you. Which one lady? We had this one. Bride's mother said, you know, the best pictures from our wedding were the ones that you guys sent us.

They were better than the photographers. That doesn't happen all the time. But we were told that just recently.

Like you said, the fun part of the night, right? Well, right. And I'm not a photographer, but we did buy a decent camera. I put it on auto.

I pushed the button, and it takes great pictures. And videos. And you get these people doing some wild stuff.

And then they get to go back and look and say, oh, maybe I shouldn't have done that. Or hey, that was really cool. So it is fun.

And we wait till they come back from their honeymoons or if they have a private party. And we find out when's a good time to send it to them. And then we just send it.

And they have it forever. But you know, but the last couple of years. You start charging for that, you know? Well, they're really paying for that.

And the price of it, I'm just telling them I'm giving it to them. Right, right. Of course, I'm joking.

I don't mean that. I don't know who's going to hear this. OK, that's good.

But getting back to your question about what you mostly play. Like, I look at the last couple of years. We did about 60, 70 gigs.

I'd say we did about maybe 15 weddings. One year, we were back up to 20. We did about maybe 15 clubs.

We're starting to do a lot more festivals, private parties, like we did the rock and roll fundraiser at the Forge. Right. We're doing a lot of things like that now.

Park concerts. And when we do those kind of things, we can take more chances and play at Blue Chip Casino. We do the casino.

We also do the Joliet Harris here. The one in Aurora we're supposed to be doing. So we used to do Harrah's when they had bands.

So we've done that whole circuit. Now, back in the 80s, we did the circuits. Geez, where you played five nights a week to all hours of the morning.

Right. So we've been all through those wars, you know? But yeah, it's a nice mix now. Now it's a real nice mix.

I think we're happy with that. Because it's nice to say, hey, we got a weekend where we can dress down and we can jam and open up the sound and play a little bit. Then the next week and say, man, it's Christmas.

We need some money. Oh, we got a party coming up. We're going to make some money tonight.

So it's a nice, it really is a nice mix. And you know, the most important thing is you got to have members in the band that care about what you're doing. Oh, yeah.

Like Henry, he's one of our newest additions. He doesn't care at all? No, no, no, no. What he does for the band.

He hasn't reached the caring stage yet. Yes, I haven't hit anything. What he does for the band is priceless.

I mean, I appreciate so much what he does, what Angela's doing with the pictures and things. Joe, our guitar player, he handles all the PA and he's always on top. What's going on with that? You know, Roy's always putting his nose in to try to make things better.

Our drummer, Darren, who lives out in Huntly. most of our jobs are on the south side. He's always the first one there, the last one to leave.

He'll never leave until everybody's equipment's in their car. I mean we've just got people that are just, that you like to have in the foxhole with you, in the trenches as they say. And you got to have that to keep the band going.

I can't do it all myself. You know, you got to have, it's a collective effort. Sure, sure it is.

It's pretty cool, pretty cool, pretty cool what we do I think in playing gigs too. Primarily the way we choose songs. We don't have a set list for most of the gigs that we do.

Jim calls the songs and it's perfect because it's based on what's happening then, you know. You're playing the right songs for the moment and I'd never played in a band that didn't use a set list before. So it was really a great way to kind of, you know, interact with the audience and give them what they want.

Is he like a third base coach? Oh yeah, most of the time. It's interesting that Henry says that. I used to put set lists together only to play the first couple songs to say, man this ain't working, forget it.

I'm gonna call what I'm calling. Right. And the guys in the band, I don't think they like that I do that, but they're on their toes.

They're paying attention all the time. And I have a knack for just knowing what to call. And I think it's the years of doing it.

It's just, it's a feeling. If you get that feeling, it doesn't feel good. You want to move in a different direction.

And that was part of the reason why I wanted to start my own band was I played other bands in the 70s. I was always sitting there. I was the big jerk of the band.

You know, that one jerk who said, why are we playing that? We should be playing this. I would never call that tune. And that's when I was said, well just shut up.

And I would get fired. I get fired from a number of bands. And it's because they say, this guy's a jerk.

This guy's a big pain in the ass. Get him out of here. And now you're damn proud of it, right? No, you're right.

I'm damn proud of it. But it keeps everybody on their toes. And for some reason, I just can't go with a playlist because I never can stick to it.

No, he, Jim is very good at reading the crowd. Absolutely. He can, it's amazing because he'll just like, he'll, of course, we spread the word, you know, down the line.

We're gonna play, we're gonna play Uptown Funk or we're gonna do this and all of a sudden he'll go, no, wait, no. We're not doing that one, you know. Hold on, we're doing this one.

So he gets, he can see, he can read a crowd, which is really, really good. Because like he says, if you got a set list and you're just going through the set list and the people are not interacting with you, it's no fun. Sure, right.

You know, especially the wedding and stuff, right? Well, yeah. You know, like the Christmas party last night, it was kind of, you know, we were trying to get him to go and then we hit a song and bam, it was like, they went wild. Yeah, we changed directions and that was Jim, you know, saying, well, let's do this.

So, it's just for him to be able to read that crowd and, and know what to go with. You know, sometimes at the far end, they can't hear where we're going, but we get the point across. You can't do Tom Jones if they want ACDC.

That's right. And we play both, by the way. See, that's the thing about this.

Back to back? We've done that. We've done that. We certainly can.

I mean, we can play Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, Dean Martin. And they go into Metallica? We'll turn around, we'll do ACDC, we'll do Bon Jovi. Then we'll do stuff like Sublime, The Killers.

I mean, any of that stuff. Then we'll turn around and do Chicago, Van Morrison, Aretha Franklin. I mean, it doesn't matter.

Whatever the crowd wants, we'll find something. We've got something there. Sing-alongs, if they want to dance, we'll do an Earth, Wind & Fire medley, you know, or Bruno Mars medley.

Any of that stuff, we'll do it. It doesn't matter. We have it.

So you stay pretty contemporary with the music you're doing? Yes, we do. We do, yeah. Well, with the girl singers and the chance to have a guy sing and a girl sing, you can probably get by with doing that.

Well, it's interesting you bring that up. Everybody in the band sings lead. Everybody.

And that's one of their prerequisites that we have in the band, is that everybody can sing. And like the last couple weeks, three of us have been sick. I'm still getting my voice back.

She lost her voice. Roy, our bass player, lost his. So that meant Henry Singamore, Joe Singamore, Darren Singamore, and Cherry Singamore.

Hey, you got four other vocalists. There's no need to cancel the gig or not do this song or that song. And a month before that, Joe was sick.

So we all covered his songs. So and then because you have everybody who can sing and vocals are so important today, as you know, people, that's what gets them to sing along. You got to have the vocal thing happening.

And I think we do. I know a lot of the successful bands out there playing our circuit do also, you know. So, yeah, that's a big, important thing.

Right. So, so go ahead. No, I just can say earlier you said you're on the Internet at the bandsundance.com. Where else could people find you? Facebook, the band Sundance.

We've got YouTube videos. And most of it is cover stuff that we've either done at fests or at somebody's private function, you know. It's all over the place, you know.

Are you from South Side? Yeah, I've been a South Sider my whole life. Henry, I know, has been a South Sider. She's a West Sider.

She's basically from the North Lake area. Oh, okay. That would be Melrose Park.

Melrose Park. I'm sorry. Over by there.

As a child, I grew up in Argo Summit. But then, you know, we call it something else these days, but I won't put that on the air. And then I just moved further west, south as I got older.

But I've never left the South. I know Henry's basically from Joliet, I think. Well, France first.

Okay. Excuse me. How do you follow that? So we find you.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. We find you on Facebook.

And what about Instagram? Anything? Yeah, I'm still trying to figure all that stuff out. I'm the person that does it. That's okay.

I know. I'm with you there. So I do have an Instagram account.

I'm just not real familiar with it. There's a lot of that stuff out there. Yeah, there is.

There's so many places to be. And, you know, it's hard to stay on top of everything because it changes so often. You know, technology just is out there like crazy.

Well, Facebook's certainly a good place to be. Yeah. And Facebook helps us a lot.

I do remember when I first started dating Jim and Facebook hit, you know, I had my Facebook page. And I'm like, hey, is your band on Facebook? He's like, Facebook? What's that? So I will take credit for the band's Facebook page because I'm the one that said it. There you go.

And I do maintain the website. So I do a little bit of the technology part. Henry is awesome with our Facebook page.

He takes our pictures and he creates posts about where we're going. Image montage. He is awesome with that.

So it is great to have him helping me. So like when we say Henry has really stepped up for the band, we do mean it because he takes over some of the things that we do where we don't have time. He is awesome.

And that's in addition to being one heck of a singer and trombone player, too. I don't know how you play the trombone and sing at the same time. I'm looking forward to seeing that.

You know, he does. He will be playing or he'll be singing and all of a sudden it's like stops and he starts playing, you know, and then he'll go back to singing. It's really pretty cool when he does.

Damn slide gets in the way. You got to live with that, huh? Well, thank you, guys. Appreciate your time coming out here and visiting with us.

Well, thank you. We appreciate it. We enjoy coming out here and doing this.

Thank you very much. Yes, thank you for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us.

Hey, where might some people be seeing us in the near future? Well, next week Friday, we're having a Christmas party at the Lockport Moose. I think it's free to members and there may be a small cover. It depends.

Like five bucks. It's like five. It's like five bucks, but you got to get there early.

The place packs up big time. And we're going to have some friends come out. A lot of times we play public places like that.

We have a lot of friends that come out and sit in and play and it just turns into a big jam by the end of the night. And it's always a lot of fun to do that. How about New Year's Eve? New Year's Eve, we're playing at Jameson's out in Huntley.

It's a private party. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's... Oh, you guys got to travel now.

Yeah. We do that. We throw our drummer a bone.

Because he lives out there. He makes him happy, you know. So I don't want to lose him.

He's a good guy. You don't want to lose him, you know, so we got to make him happy too, though. But yeah, and then we're going to be coming back to the Joliet Hollywood Casino.

We're going to be coming back there soon. I don't know when yet, but we're still getting all these dates coming up. But another thing that we do do that I didn't talk about is we talked about Perry Danos earlier.

I was going to ask you about that. I noticed that Perry was on a couple of your videos. Yes.

I saw a video with him. Well, he's, as we all know, he's living in Nashville now. Right.

And he's kind of, you know, he's got his star going out there and his big thing. He works with a lot of the big name people. Well, he comes back up to Chicago once a year.

And he's now, the last couple of years, he's used us as his backup band. So he comes out and he plays and we learned a bunch of his stuff, plus we do a bunch of our stuff. And he'll come up for about, we'll do about maybe five, six gigs.

And then he comes back up in fall and does a few fests that we do, the one big one in Evergreen Park. And I've got a history with Perry going back to the 90s when he had Backstreet going. We would, Sundance would open up for some of his shows and I made a deal with him.

I said, if you can get me, because at that time I was trying to crack into the fest circuit, into the club circuit, and get out of the wedding stuff I was doing. I said, Perry, if you can do that, I'll give you the horn section for free. And I was part of the horn section.

Two other guys. He says, oh man, that sounds great. Let's do it.

So we do the first set. Backstreet would come out and do the second set. And then the horns would stay and we'd play as an add-on horn section for him.

Oh, I see. And we just developed a friendship and became good friends and we're still good friends to this day to where now he comes up and we play with him and do concerts together. And there's been some really good shows with him because he's incredible.

Right. He's something else. Well, I know Jimmy Hood and Mike McHugh played bass with him or played with him.

Mike Brown. You probably remember Mike Brown too. Mike Brown, sure.

And the first couple of Perry gigs, well, Jimmy Hood did one of the gigs with us a year or two ago. It was our guitar player Joe couldn't make it and Jimmy played. And as you know, Jimmy's a great guitar player.

And the first Perry gig we had Mike Brown play drums with us. And I just saw their original keyboard player Myron at a wedding not too long ago. Oh, Myron, sure.

And Myron came up and played a couple songs. So it's, you know, in this business, the music scene in Chicago, as big as it is, it really isn't. Right.

Everybody, like I met you today. Especially the South Side guys. I found that out.

The South Side people, they kind of all intermingle and play with each other and jam together. Oh, absolutely. Tonight when I just, today when I just met you, I'm like, oh my God, I remember this guy from back in the day.

It all comes around. It all comes around. And that's why you have to be careful.

You don't burn any bridges. In this business, we got to stick together. We got to help one another out.

Because there's nobody else looking out for us. You know that. And that's important.

It's like a fraternity. It is. It's like a fraternity.

It's like a fraternity. But we've got some Perry shows coming up in January. They're still in the, they're still getting set up.

But it'll be some of the casinos and maybe something at Bourbon Street or something like that. It's not done yet because he has a schedule down there. He plays on the General Jackson Show Boat, which is a big venue down there.

And he has to wait until he sees what his schedule is. And then we see what ours is and we put it together. And then we'll have something, though, probably in January and February.

In addition to things on our own, too. But go to that website, TheBandSundance.com. It's got our schedule up there. It'll have dates, what we're doing, videos, everything.

Whatever you, you know, any information you might need about the band. All righty. Well, thanks a lot, guys, for coming out.

Thank you. Battling the cold weather and your colds and illnesses. No voices.

It was a lot of fun. Thanks a lot. Thanks for having us.

Thanks again for having us. Thank you. Well, Ray, that was fun talking with those guys.

They've got some good stories. And they've been around for quite a while. Yeah, they have.

And you know what? It's like they got everything covered. I mean, they are doing weddings. They are doing festivals.

They're doing clubs, private parties. I mean, there's like no stopping them. Yes, they are.

As a matter of fact, they said that New Year's Eve, they'll be out in Huntley. Jamison's out in Huntley. You can see him out there.

And just check out their website. And I'm sure you can find them just about anywhere. Jamison's in Huntley, you say? Yes.

That's the place that Orien Samuelson from Channel 9 goes to. That's right. From WPN.

Yes, he does. Yes, he does. That's right.

Him and his wife have the filet of salmon or something there all the time. Right. Maybe he'll be out there partying with them on New Year's Eve.

You never know. That's right. Orien Samuelson at your party.

He can whoop it up, that guy, I tell you. That's right. Yes, he can.

Well, Paul, have yourself a great Christmas. Yes, I will. Thank you.

You do the same. We'll talk to you afterwards. And everybody out there, enjoy your holidays with your families.

Hope Santa's good to you. Don't forget to share our podcast. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts, you can find us.

Everywhere. Just look for the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. That's right.

And don't forget, you can find us every Monday night on the Road to Rock Radio. RoadtoRockRadio.org. Six o'clock, Monday night. Check us out.

All right, Ray, we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening, everybody, and have a Merry Christmas. See you.