Hey, this is Paul Martin. And Ray the Roadie. For the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast.

Here we are, another week down. Yeah, well, we've got another week in, and this week we have a kind of a unique band this week, I would say. Wouldn't you say so, Ray? I'd say so.

It's a horn band, right? No, no, no, it's not a horn band, no. No? Oh, okay. It's a string band, and with cello, violin, sometimes a violin, and they're just very unique and they're called Strung Out.

Oh, oh, that's where they got the name, the strings, the strung, okay. Otherwise, they'd probably be, if they had any horns, they'd probably be horned out. It could be, yes, it could be.

That'd be a good name for them, but yeah, I was looking around on our past episodes and taking a look to see who's all out there listening to us. And I just want to thank a few of our friends out there, of course, everybody in the United States that's downloaded and listened to the shows, we thank you. But we also have friends in Canada, Finland, United Kingdom, Denmark, Mexico, Poland, Colombia, Singapore, Guatemala, Germany, Hungary, South Africa, Ireland, and Spain.

Wow, very cool. Gracias to everybody out there. Yes, yes, yes, absolutely.

Thank you so much, everyone, for listening and tuning in and becoming, letting this become a part of what we do and hope you're enjoying it. I'm sure they are, because I know I am. Well, yeah, so what do you say we get to Strung Out right now and get some insight into that band and see what they're all about? We should do that.

I'm hanging on a thread. All right, here we go. Hey, this is Paul Martin.

And Ray LaRoti for the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. Joining us tonight are Jeff, Tom, Ted, and John of Strung Out. What, you're not giving them their last names? No, I'm not.

I don't want to. Last week I had difficulty, and this week I'm not going to do it again. It's like Elvis, Cher, Fabian, and Madonna.

We just go by the first names only. That's good, that's good. It's like Cher, everybody's Cher.

So how are you guys doing? Good, really good. Glad to have you out here tonight, appreciate it. It's great to be here.

Thanks for having us, absolutely. Yeah, so tell us first of all how the band got started. Okay, it's me, Jeff.

Not Jeff James, our drummer, who is missing, but the other Jeff. Back in, I guess it's now 2012. No, it's 2019 right now.

Yeah, I got that. It's a flashback. Yeah, but we started back in 2012.

Tom called our cello player and our drummer Jeff James and I were playing in the Blues Brothers. The Blues Brothers Tribute Band. And one day Tom came up to me and said, I was playing the J character.

Tom was playing bass in that band. And he came up to me and said, hey, I'd like to play my cello in a band. Are you interested in doing something? And you said, you play cello? I had no idea.

I had no idea Tom was a cello player. So that's kind of how it started. Tom, Jeff and I just were kicking around ideas, just trying to find the way to do it, how to do it.

Long story short, Jeff knew Ted Spaniak, our guitar player, piano player, singer. We were also playing in a band together. Jeff was in two bands.

The drummer Jeff. The drummer Jeff, Jeff James. What band was that? That was the Freck Brothers.

Okay. Yeah. Things weren't going well, and Jeff and I had a contingency plan.

We said, if something goes wrong, I know these guys. And of course it went wrong. But yeah, so once we had Ted, we were like, okay, well, let's just find a good bass player.

And after a small amount of hunting, I had jammed with John the year before. And I said, I know this guy John. He's been around.

He's a great player. I think he'd fit in. And sure enough, we put it together, and off we went.

And it evolved into basically what we do now, which is primarily 70s music. We do it, I like to call it original cover music, because the music we play is not covered a lot. It's cover songs, but you don't hear stuff that we play by a lot of bands.

Well, with the cello, you can play things that other bands, nobody can play. There's always room for cello. Before we go any further, cello shots for everybody? Yeah.

Well, the thing about Tommy's cello is that sometimes it sounds like a cello, and sometimes with his pedals, it doesn't sound like a cello. It adds distortion, and it just adds lots of balls, or other effects. The hardest thing about trying to sell Strung Out at the beginning was, how do you describe to someone an electric cello in the band? And it's very hard.

You sort of have to hear it and see how it fits in. And a bunch of people hear it and see it. They love it.

Tommy's our chick. Chick singer. But that was it.

It became this idea where we'd all played in bands for a long time, and we wanted to do something different. And we kind of fell into the 70s idea, because it's the music basically we grew up with. Not to take anything away, but there's a ton of great bands out there playing 80s music, and things like that.

And we didn't even want to compete in that market, to be honest with you. We kind of found a niche that, thankfully, surprisingly to some degree, people just latched on to. Well, I kind of grew up with 70s stuff myself.

Yeah, you're right. Exactly. So I know where you're coming from.

But our thing was that, initially, when I said 70s band to people, they were like, oh, disco? Right. No, no. We play some disco, but that's not the kind of band we are.

We play Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple, and One Hit Wonders. One Hit Wonders, absolutely. There's so much to choose from.

So that's kind of how, and it's still evolving. We come up with stuff all the time that nobody can do ELL. You guys can't.

That's a fact. Nobody can do that. You have to have the strength to do that.

We just like doing the diversity. There's nothing better than seeing the faces of people when you do Black Sabbath and then followed up by John Denver. We were actually thinking about calling the band after a while, Whiplash, because that's just like... It's kind of cool to see that.

Yeah, really. I think we've always kind of felt anything goes, as long as it was basically 70s music. You're not going to have a band that's going to play Black Sabbath and then the next song is Brandy.

Or a Leo Sayers song. And then we're doing Car Wash. I love Car Wash.

Don't mess with that car wash. You know what? That was a new learn for us. We're thinking, Car Wash? People are going to use... They want to hear Led Zeppelin.

They want to hear Black Sabbath. We're like, okay, let's do it. We start with... And all of a sudden the dance floor is... You can't tell me that the 70s weren't the greatest decade of music.

You can't tell me. You can argue with me. You'll lose.

Because the 70s to me... And he's got a gun. The 70s to me was... Took all that great experimental stuff of the 60s and they really refined it in the 70s. And then in the 70s you had... You turn on your radio.

You turn on the AM radio and you heard everything. Different things. Diversity.

Music of all sorts. Look how much music you're hearing now on movies, on the radio, on television. It's all over the place.

At Mariano's. I'm shopping and I hear this stuff. So it was really... I think to most of us... Tom's... I'm not going to tell our ages but Tom's the youngest guy here.

And Tom basically had this... The Cattell collection. Remember all those great records? I got them all. And once we decided on the 70s thing he's like, how about this? How about this? We're like, you're nuts.

But quite honestly some of that stuff's become the most popular stuff. And people who relate to it go, you brought so many memories back. And I was in junior high or I was in high school and this or that.

It's a lot of fun. We're kind of in the business of selling memories in some ways. We're also lucky that Tom's an incredible transcriber.

I mean, we'll take a double guitar solo or a three-part thing you'll tear it apart you'll write it all out. And so we get to authentically produce what's there because you're good at that. And, you know... You said 20 hours.

So, you know, we can kind of play anything. Yeah. We've hit some walls.

We've played a couple of... I think it's more of impatience than anything. Not that we couldn't do certain things it's just because we just okay, let's move on. Why are you looking at me when you say that? Sometimes you come across a song and you think this is easy I know where you're going.

Love grows and my rosemary grows forget about it. This is the most convoluted arrangement you could ever do. At Frankenstein we thought, oh, this is gonna be you know, it's got so many parts to it.

We all kind of did our homework came to rehearsal and it's going blah, blah, blah played it once and went, okay then. And it's one of those You've got rosemary love grows murmur love grows where my rosemary grows single song I can't even how easy to say it and it just took us forever and we finally just scrapped it. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's never enough. Yeah. Do you guys have anything original? Have you guys written anything? With this band this band is not.

Ted is a prolific songwriter actually. Ted has a another group that he's playing with now called Loretta Wayne which is your buddy from grammar school Hi. And they just put out like last year, right? A record of all original songs Love and Trouble Yeah.

But but this band we have not really gone into the original. We basically stuck with you know, what we started with and what's been working and what's been growing you know. Because I said please don't let me write anything for you.

Please don't do any songs ever. Please don't. They were like, okay.

I can tell you're very passionate about that. But yeah, no this band is it's just like I said it's just cover music we try and represent the 70s in a way that you know I think only we can do like I said with the cello and the arrangements we've come up with. You know what's really fun about it is you know you grow up hearing these great songs like Frankenstein or like Abbey Road the last eight minutes of Abbey Road right? Or five minutes or whatever the last part of it is we thought it was going to be really hard to learn this music because forever we talked about it for years it didn't take any time at all because we all had the music in our head it's kind of innate in some way so when you reproduce it it's like I'm reproducing this music it's very exciting it's fun to be it's just fun to be in this band and we all like each other you know we've only had yeah the monkeys nearly broke us up I mean I'm sorry to hear that but then Jeff was gone too well one of the one of the big things that we you know that we do is we put medleys together from some of the most iconic bands so we'll play medleys of Led Zeppelin Deep Purple The Who Black Sabbath you know Three Dog Night I mean and Tom is really good at arranging those things so you know we always were like well the monkeys you know 1966 you know but it kind of fits what we did in our audience so yeah so we came up with the mother of all monkeys medleys do some changes but people love it but people love it and I well we paired it down from nine songs to six right it was ridiculous yeah and I wasn't I wasn't like were there nine monkey songs that were after that oh yeah yeah you don't realize until you start going yeah we had to pair it down from fifteen to fifteen so I'm sorry I wasn't totally on board with it you know because it was sixties yeah and I wasn't a big monkeys fan honestly he was attacked by a monkey at Brookfield yeah I can see that so I said I'm like I'll try anything so we guys said okay let's try it we did it the first time I forget where we did it and it just got a huge people's buzz I'm like well I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang I sang What gave you the job of my junior? SO跟我学校来了 I really wish I could talk about it, but no one wants to hear it.

Did you know the terms, though? That's pretty good. You guys can talk later. We'll talk English.

All right, so Ted gave me some shout-outs a couple minutes ago, so I've got to give some to him. Usually you play with a guitar player who can play a little keyboard, or a keyboard player who can play a little bit of guitar. Ted's a unique breed, because you hear him play keyboard, and you go, Oh my gosh, he's picking up a guitar.

He's probably going to be okay. And all of a sudden, he picks up a guitar, and it's just amazing. So it's kind of a cool thing.

And also, Jeff over here, not only sings, he's got a great voice, but also is a multi-instrument in guitar and keyboard. So there's always just this circus-y type of thing going on. They're changing over here.

I also, in the band, I play cello and violin. So, John, you're the only one who just kind of sits between a five and a four string. I need to get some props out for Paul, too.

Paul plays a Stratocaster and a Telecaster. So two different instruments. And he's a newscaster.

Well, we should mention, too, our illustrious drummer, Jeff James. Tom, you can probably talk more about him. I did a lot of jobbing in the 80s and 90s, I guess you could say, on bass, because it pays better bills than the cello does.

So he's a chameleon. He can sit in with anyone. He's played with, like, the Coasters, the Drifters.

If you have an ER at the end of your band's name, it's pretty much played. Well, the thing about Jeff, I'm sorry for interrupting you. I've played with a zillion drummers, and there's always something they can't play.

We have never run into anything that Jeff can't play. No. Nothing.

It's really amazing. And he sings, which is... And he sings, yes. And he will tell you what the interval is.

He solves problems. You're a drummer, what are you talking about? He understands music better than me. Which is kind of cool.

He's amazing. No drummer jokes about him. Well, you know, there's been a lot of talk about you, Tom.

What's your background? What's my background? Well, I guess you could say I'm classically trained. About 8th grade, there was a bass player in the back of the orchestra who couldn't figure things out. So I thought, you know, I'm going to grab an upright bass from the back room and see if I can figure this out.

So I went back there and joined him, tuned it just like a cello, which isn't this. You played cello? I played cello, yes, since I was 8 years old. So that was kind of my introduction.

I tuned it like a... And so I got to some jazz festival one time and my electric bass was tuned like a cello. And a senior came in, I was a freshman, a little kid. This guy was big and he's from Tennessee or something.

He came in and said, let me try your... It was an old Fender pre-CBS bass. So I said, let me try it. And he picks it up and he starts playing it and it's in fifths.

And he goes, what the heck is this? I felt about this tall. I'm like, all right, I'll tune it the right way. So I started doing that and then started playing in bands and playing it the right way.

And so it's been kind of a marriage of my classical training. I also went to college for classical as well. And then playing in rock bands all my life.

So this band is kind of a natural fit for me because of the fact that we do quite a bit of ELO and the rock stuff too. Is cello something you wanted to play when you were a kid? Yeah. I think my sister played violin and I said, I don't want to do that.

Because you don't want to do anything your sibling does. I'll never forget when I met with the two Jeffs and we were talking about putting the band together. And Jeff Sesmelik over here was like, you know, Tom wants to play cello all the time.

I'm like, what? How could he play cello on every song? It's impossible. It's true. Unheard of.

Yeah. The band went through many different, I guess, inceptions, I guess. We started before Ted.

We're trying to do acoustic guitar players with acoustic cello. We didn't know where it was going. Like I said, the evolution took about, not that long.

Probably five, six months before we met Ted. The first time we got together, when I was solo, we started playing reeling in the ears and we both knew the solo. And we were doing the double solo first time through.

And that was like, okay, we got to do this. Yeah. So, you know.

It's a cool sound. Yeah. I'll finish your thought, too.

Tom teaches, he's an orchestra teacher for junior high kids. So, he brings a lot of, you know, his love of classical music. 70s, yeah.

Yeah, and classic rock to these kids. You've been playing Zeppelin tunes. What'd you have them do? Oh, we did Cashmere.

A lot of things like that. We bring this Jeff in and the drummer Jeff in, so the kids get a taste of real rock. I mean, older rock stars.

That's how they speak. So, it's kind of cool. You know, the kids get a kick out of that.

And really, I mean. It's a cautionary tale. It's a unique experience for them.

Yeah. So, Ted, you've got, I was looking on your website, you've got some stuff you've been doing. It says you've got a lot of music on like A&E and all these cables.

I did do some, I worked with a producer for a while who had me do some soundtracks for A&E. And WTTW. And, yeah, it was American Justice with Bill Curtis.

There were some of those. It's, you know, it's like, you know, story about a murderer. Okay, we need some good acoustic guitar music for this part where he murders.

Acoustic guitar murder music. It was fun. So, my wife is really into the I.D. channel right now.

Which is all about the, all about murders and suspense and whatever. Yeah. And I said to her one day, I said, should I be worried about something? Are you trying to plot my murder? Yeah.

Well, if she does, we've got music for you. Good, good, good. You know, you've got the soundtrack of your death.

Yeah, yeah. When her purse opens up and Ted's card falls out. That's right.

Red flag. Yeah. So, where are you guys going forward now? I mean, is anything changing? Any new music? Or just going to keep doing the same thing? Yeah, we, we, the band plays, the past two years we've been playing ten months out of the year.

We basically take January and February off. And that's where we learn our new music. So, we've got a. New old music.

New old music, right. Yeah. So, we've got a fistful of some newer stuff that we're playing now.

That the fest season and the bar season's, you know, kicked up. So, yeah, we try and keep the material fresh. I mean, for sure.

We always, you know, we're lucky that we have a lot of good regular folks following us. You know, they come out pretty regularly. So, we do it to keep them entertained and us interested, you know.

I always get worried that we're boring the regulars, you know. And apparently we're not. Yeah, I mean.

So, yeah. It's like January and February off when you could be on the cruise ship. That's true.

I just don't like moving equipment. It's cold. I'm going to sit there.

Definitely. I just want someone to come out sometime with a guitar and put it around my, you know. Put it around my shoulder in the middle of a gig, you know.

We need a crew. Just even pretend the guitar breaks down and have somebody come out. Right, right.

I don't care, you know. Just somebody run out from the wings and fix my guitar. As long as it's in tune, man.

Right. When the string breaks, you just look. So, what do you guys got? Go ahead.

I was going to say, Jeff, tell me about the Waco Rhythm Pools. Yeah. Any influence from there? Yeah, well, that's, I mean.

The Waco Rhythm Pools, I was in that band for basically 20 years off and on. You know, it was just a horn band. The reason I ask you about it is because I'm kind of familiar with the band.

Yeah, I know. Well, I was going to say, because there was a horn band in the 80s. And, you know, we were competing with the Dancing Noodles.

And the Dancing Noodles sucked all the oxygen out of the market. But we had a great time in that band. It was a great band.

It was a lot of fun, yeah. And, you know, a lot of, you know, my best friends were made in that band. And my oldest friends, you know.

And, yeah, but that was. Now you guys did a show at the Blue Chip Casino. I remember you came back and did a show.

Yeah. Now, that was after the Veda broke it up? Right. That was like phase three.

There were like four original guys left. But, yeah, yeah. And we did that.

That was a lot of fun. Yeah. It was a good band.

I mean, for, you know, like I said, it was the 80s. Horn bands were big. Right, right.

You know, and. And the horn bands. Yeah, horn bands.

Yeah. Oh, sorry, go ahead. Yeah.

I said don't mention horn bands. Amy gets excited. Yeah.

Well, it's funny because that. Had it not been for that band, I would have probably never met Tom. Yeah.

Because. We were looking for. The Blues Brothers had started in 91, 92, I think.

And we had kind of used. Gone through our Jake. And it was time for him to go other places.

And so we were looking around. And I think we put an ad in Illinois. It was.

Or something like that. I don't know what it was. Trading Times or something.

Oh, really? And, you know, you replied to that. And I went out and saw you at a bowling alley. I think it was.

The Willowbrook Bowl. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I'm like, oh, this guy's got to be great.

So, yeah. Yeah. Took the rest of the band out and saw them.

And you guys aren't doing anything else at the Blues Brothers, are you? No, no. We're still pretty tight with those guys. Yeah, yeah.

I actually sat in with them last year when their current Jake couldn't make a show. I did a show with them. I know.

I've subbed with a couple times. He's subbed with me a few times. Yeah, so.

Yeah, no, it's all very. It's all very good and friendly. They're good friends and great people.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Not the Kevin Kline.

Well, it's funny because Kevin and I are the trombone player. And I know. Yeah.

We don't live with one another. But the trombone player. Yeah, I know.

And I know he played with you guys in the noodles. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

But it was funny because I walked into the Blues Brothers, like the first rehearsal I ever had. And there's Kevin Kline. I played trombone in high school.

And I sat right next to Kevin Kline for three years. Oh, really? Yeah. So I was stunned that it was Kevin.

And it was. What high school was that? Brother Rice. Brother Rice.

Yeah. So what do you guys got coming up this summer? We've got a pretty full dance card. Our schedule for anyone who's interested is at strungoutband.com or strungoutchicago on Facebook.

You know. Yeah. It's like.

Thank you for the. Yeah. I supplied the schedule for you.

But yeah, all kinds of fun festivals. You guys are keeping pretty busy. Yeah.

You guys are doing that thing in Bolingbrook with Five Guys and Cadillac Groove. Right. I know.

Yeah. You talked to both of those guys. Yeah.

Yeah. That was an idea that just sort of came from, hey, we should play something together. And then.

Yeah. You know. And we've been able to do that.

That's very cool. That should be a lot of fun. When is that? When is that? That's in August.

August 9th. Yeah. Yeah.

Tailgaters in Bolingbrook. Right. Three bands and I'm waiting.

Yes. Podcast brought to you by Tailgaters in Bolingbrook. Yeah.

We've got. You know, we're here in Frankfort. We'll be at the Frankfort Fall Fest.

We've got the Naperville Last Fling is on the schedule this year. So, we've got some fun ones that we're looking forward to as well as a lot of just local festivals, concerts in parks, things like that. Yeah.

Online you can find out all about those things. Yes. Alrighty then.

Okay, guys. Alrighty. Well, thanks for coming out.

Thanks. It was groovy. Thanks for having us.

Thank you. Good to meet you guys and talk with you. Yeah.

It was. Whenever M&R needs an opening act, Paul, you let us know. Yeah.

Yeah. We'll call you. Don't call us now.

We'll call you. You probably do that song too. We tried it.

It didn't work out. Too darn hard. I think.

At least we're going back to it, though. I got it. It was a good one.

Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, that was another fun episode with those guys, wasn't it, Ray? Those guys are hilarious. I had a great time. Learned a lot about the cello and the violin too.

Yes, we did. Yes, we did. We were educated on the cello.

It seems like every week we're getting more and more edumacated in something. Yes, we are. Yes, we are.

Well, I want to thank everyone for listening and all our friends in all those countries that Ray mentioned earlier. Definitely. Definitely.

Especially the people here in the United States. You guys are a great group. You guys keep listening every day.

It's awesome. And now that the summer is upon us, you'll probably be seeing us out and about at some of these festivals. If you see us, stop by.

Say hey. Yes. Yes.

Come out and say hello. Thanks again for listening. Be sure and check us out and join our page and download everything and share everything if you can.

And we'll see you next week when we will bring you a surprise guest. That's right. Surprise.

OK. See everybody next Tuesday. Have a great week.

Thank you.