This is Paul Martin and Ray the Roadie for the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. So I got a lot of great comments from people about the Tommy Shackle interview. It's very insightful and quite entertaining.

Yes, it was. Yes, it was. Tommy's quite the character and we had a lot of fun.

Yes, we had a good time. So this week we met up with a couple other characters. Who was that? Yes, we did.

Yes, we did. We met up with Kevin and Keg Garagosian. Those are the Neverly brothers.

Right. Had a nice interview with them and found out a little more insight into their band. And into rock and roll kind of overall from the 50s into the 60s.

Kevin's quite the historian. Yes, he is. Yes, he is.

He knows his stuff when it comes to that. Yes, he does. That's what makes the Neverly brothers what they are.

Yes, it does. Let's get right into the interview right now and give it a listen to see what it's all about. And away we go.

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

This week we're meeting with Kevin and Keg Garagosian. Garagosian. Garagosian.

I got it wrong. All right. Well, the Neverly brothers.

How are you guys doing today? Great. Thanks for having us on the show. Thanks for coming out.

Thanks for coming out. So tell us a little bit about how you got started. And I know you were in the Wombats before.

And did that progress into what you are doing now or no? No, it was really the Wombats was a group that I started in 1988 and it went through 2005. It was an original project. This is Kevin, by the way.

For all of you out there. My brother Keg sat next to me on my right side. Um, so I started in 88 and then it went through many different lineups over 15 years.

And we were, it became a serious original music project. I was a songwriter, lead singer, put out an album, put on an EP. Nothing ever happened.

So we became a cover band and didn't really make it very far. In that latter period, I started dabbling in the music of the Everly brothers and the Beatles. And I got into, somehow I got into the Everly brothers.

And a friend of mine kind of turned me on to them. And then all of a sudden it was like, this clicked something in me that I love the Beatles. And I found out the Everly brothers were the Beatles inspiration as singers.

In fact, the Beatles used to call themselves the four Everly brothers for a while. It was one of their nicknames amongst themselves. So that kind of pulled this idea together.

And next thing you know, in the beginning, in 2003, started doing a lot of Everly brothers and a lot of Beatles songs. And it was a lot of the sort of rockabilly or folky stuff, the Dylan era Beatles stuff. It was like just the two part harmonies and babies in black.

And I don't want to spoil the party and songs like that. And then the Everly brothers. So we were doing a lot of Everly brothers, like 17 Everly brothers songs.

And a bunch of Beatles songs. And then other mix, it was a mixture. The whole concept hadn't gelled of what we would become three years after the beginning.

But there was this whole sort of two phases to the show. The 50s thing with the Everly brothers kind of leading it off with the harmonies and then leading that into the 1964 British Invasion. But there was no real connection between the two.

Only the fact that my brother was the drummer in the Wambass. And we had other players. So he and I basically both started the Neverly brothers with an upright bass player.

Now, how did the name Neverly come about? Well, Neverly came out because I was trying to think of a name that was with Everly since we were at the time so Everly brothers oriented. But yet not the Everly brothers. So it was like Neverly brothers.

It's not perfect. And then the logo on our bass drum, on Keg's bass drum, is like the Beatles logo on Ringo's bass drum. It's got the big drop letters.

So that was sort of like, okay, the name is sort of Everly. The visual is kind of a subliminal sign of the Beatles. The Beatles kind of grabbed that, you know.

So that was the idea. But the band progressed and within about three years, it became not just Everly brothers and Beatles and other artists around it, it became a whole chronological order, a sequence of songs of representing the whole 50s rock and roll, rhythm and blues period. And then a good sampling of the entire 1964-1965 British Invasion bands.

I love the way you work through the evolution of rock and roll, is what you call it, right? Yes. And you started out with Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, right? Yeah. Our whole concept is it's a tour.

It's like a virtual tour. Everybody in the audience got into our tour bus. And Paul, you've done shows for us many times.

We played at the Blue Chip Casino and you were working the sound there. It's obviously how we got to know each other. So yeah, the whole concept is about this tour.

And in your mind, as a concert attendee, you're in our bus and now we're going to travel around America. And when you mentioned Johnny Cash and Elvis, the first stop on our tour in America is always Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee to celebrate that million-dollar quartet recording session that took place in December of 1956. So we do a little vignette with those four artists, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis.

And then we move on throughout the first set in our tour to go to different cities that represent where the other artists were either from originally or recorded in. Tell me where we go from there. Why don't you tell me where we go from there? You mean in the evolution of rock and roll? Right.

As far as from the 50s and how that segues into the British Invasion of our act? Right. It just shows basically how then the 60s British Invasion bands were directly influenced by the original rockers of the 50s, the American 50s rockers. And it's evident in all the records we all listened to when we were growing up, like the early Beatles albums, there was always a handful of cover tunes, and it was always Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, you know.

Motown. Yeah, Motown. Rhythm and Blues.

You know, everybody. So you get to, you kind of go up to like the mid-60s and that's about it, or do you go further? Pretty much it stops right at the beginning of the British Invasion, like 64, 65. And mainly, like I said, the songs that we highlight, we do some of their original hits, like for the Dave Clark Five, or we do Because, a soul song, you know.

But most of the songs that we're playing by the British Invasion artists are the ones that they covered of their American heroes. So like The Stones, we do Route 66, and Not Fade Away. The Beatles, we do Motown, from the Motown era, we do Smokey Robinson.

You Really Got a Hold on Me, we do that one. So Rhythm and Blues, Twist and Shout is a great example. Most many people don't know that was originally done two years earlier in 1962 by the Isley Brothers here, charting on the Rhythm and Blues charts.

But that's the whole idea, like Keg was saying, is that these, and Rock kind of died in 1960 in America. A lot of guys were dead. I mean, Buddy Holly, the big bopper, Richard B. Allen died in a plane crash in 1959.

Eddie Cochran died in a car crash in London in 1960. Little Richard became a preacher. Tuckberry fell out of favor in public.

He was cavorting with young women, underage allegedly. Jerry Lee Lewis married his teenage 13-year-old cousin. So either these guys were self-destructed or they were dead.

And there was no rock happening almost in 1960. And then the Beatles and the Stones and these groups picked up all this music and started imitating it. And Twist and Shout is just the perfect encapsulation of what we represent and what our show is all about.

The British groups picking up the song and making it even more popular to the masses. Taking a song written and recorded by a black artist and a rhythm and blues chart and taking it into the pop charts, to the mainstream. And that's what those British bands did.

And that's what, as Keg was saying, the show was about. Second half is all about highlighting how the British groups were influenced and imitated it and then repopularized these songs to a whole new mass market and mass audience. And their versions were like supercharged versions of it.

When you hear the original, you hear theirs. It's always like the Beatles version is so much better sounding than the original. For various reasons.

That's the one most people heard. Yeah, most of our generation. They might be familiar with the Isleys, but you heard Twist and Shout comedy hundreds of times.

Yeah, that's the song. Or sometimes you listen to Chuck Berry's original recordings. Some of the times the guitar sounds like it's out of tune or they just did one take.

They really went on a shoestring budget for some of these original American rock and rollers. They didn't really put the production time into it. The levels of the recordings are off kilter a little bit.

But they just, oh, that's great. You know, the guy from the studio or behind the glass wall. He's like, that's great, guys.

It's a cut take. That's it. Yeah, the original Carl Perkins Honey Don't.

It sounds like it falls apart at the end because they were just trying to save as much money as possible. But when the Beatles got in the studio, they were like open pocket books. They could do anything as long as they wanted, take their time much more.

But also technology had advanced from the 50s to the early 60s. So how'd your idea of doing all this come about? Really, just by getting it turned down to like the Everly Brothers. I was never a big 50s guy.

Right. I knew some of the songs. I mean, I knew Buddy Holly, That'll Be the Day.

And I knew the songs. But I grew up, I saw the Beatles. I was a real little kid.

I saw them on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. Right. It was that.

I was really into that stuff. So the Beatles album, and we have an older brother who was like four years older than me. So he was buying the albums and buying the 45s.

So he's more my age. We won't talk about age, but basically, I was really into that. So I was always doing those songs, imitating some of the British songs and Beatle songs.

But the Everly Brothers is what kind of just drew me into the 50s. And then it became, the harmonies were almost the same as what John and Paul were doing. Right.

Pretty much. So that's what drew me to the 50s. And then I always liked to, as being in a band, I always liked to talk as the front man about the songs anyway.

So it was kind of a natural extension of my personality as an entertainer, as a person. And now the Everly Brothers drew the direct line to the Beatles. So then we got into all the 50s artists.

We thought, this is kind of fun. Let's just pass it around. And each of us were singing different vocal parts and different leads and different backgrounds.

And so it's become a very vocal group, obviously. Some good examples of the evolution of rock and roll thing, how the British group is borrowed from the American. One of our favorite songs that we play is David Clark Five.

We do their version of Do You Love Me? And they did that in 1964. The original version was done in 1962 by The Contours. Do I Diddy.

Do I Diddy. Do I Diddy Diddy. Dumb Diddy Do.

Yeah. That was originally recorded in 1963 by an American group called The Exciters. And it wasn't very well received.

It didn't sell very well. The Exciters? Yeah, they were called The Exciters. They did a song called Tell Him, also.

Tell him, tell him. But it didn't do very well for that group. And it was written by the songwriters in New York.

They were writing songs like the Lieber and Stoller guys, that drill building. They were a bunch of songwriters. Carole King was part of that group.

Her husband, Jerry Goffin. So they were churning out songs that were being recorded by groups. And that was a song that was recorded by The Exciters first.

It didn't sell well. Then Man for Man from London recorded it in 1964. And it hit the top of the charts.

So we love doing that one and selling the background on that one as well. There she was, just a-walkin' down the street singing What did he do, what did he do? Snappin' her fingers and choppin' her feet singing What did he do, what did he do? She looked good, she looked good He looked fine, he looked fine What brought you into acoustic guitar? A bass drum and a snare drum and a stand-up bass. I mean, how did it evolve? Did it actually start out with more? No, it was less.

I started out just sort of almost acoustic-ish when I was playing it. Some of those Everly Brothers songs, some of those Beatles songs, there was a lot of acoustic guitar going on. And then on one of our first gigs, I just said, just bring a snare drum.

And we didn't even rehearse. He just said, bring a snare drum and just play some rhythm, whatever. He said, yeah, he goes, bring some brushes and a snare drum and we'll just wing it.

And I'm like, really? I'm not gonna sit down or use sticks and cymbals? And I'm like, I'll be lost for sure, you know, without pounding that right foot on the kick drum. So yeah, we did it and it went over great. It was at a backyard party of a friend's house.

He had a big, like he was a part of a company. It was kind of a company party. It was like 150 people there and he played on his back deck.

And this was like 2003. So that was with Keg. He basically did it and just sat in.

And then the upright bass seemed to be a natural. It was just a tool, you think? Well, yeah, at the moment it was. And then we got, right away, we got a bass player.

And it was Craig Gigstad, who you know very well. He played with us for many, many years. He retired a couple of years ago from playing.

So the, but we also use an electric bass player too. A friend of mine, Gordon Patriarca, who's been on the music scene for many years. But he couldn't play the upright.

And as time went on, they were both, we were using both of them. They were both kind of like jobbers. We didn't have an official bass player for the first year and a half.

And then as the concept sort of gelled more, we felt that the upright was the thing. It seemed like more what we wanted. It seemed more appropriate for what we were doing.

Even though we were doing 60s, it just seemed to be more appropriate. Because everything we did, we had a little bit of a rockabilly slant. And we were a little more rockabilly oriented at the time.

So the upright, we said, we offered Craig the full-time position and we took it. But that's why we liked it. And then, and it just became the staple of what we do.

Well, Craig was very entertaining too. Oh yeah, yeah. Definitely, yeah.

We had a lot of fun. But then after, like what Ken was saying, the first gig, real gig, was like a backyard party. And it went over really well.

And then for the next show, he was like, all right, I want you to add a kick drum. And I want you to stand up, just with the snare again only, and the kick, and the brushes, and stand up and do it. And I'm like, I don't know if I can do that.

I did it and it took a little while, a few gigs in practice to get used to standing up and not hunching over my back and waking up the next morning with my aching back and over my shoulders. And he said, yeah, this is perfect. Kevin said it was his suggestion to do it, an idea to do the stand-up drummer with just brushes and no cymbals and nothing else.

And it really, with the acoustic guitar, the upright bass, and then me just adding the simple rhythms for the songs, it sounded great. No cymbals. Yeah, we all loved it.

And sure makes it a lot easier to set up and break down for shows. Is this something that was stirring inside you, like in the Wombat days? Is this something that you had inside you that you wanted to do eventually? Not really, no. It was just something that came up.

I was kind of getting bored with, and it was depressing what was happening with the Wombats. Over 15 years, or 16 years, it went from a cover band right away, because it was exciting to play music. I hadn't played music for a while.

Keg and I used to have a record store in Orland Park for 10 years. In the early stages of that, around 88, we opened up the store in 86. In the early stages, when we started getting managers, we could actually both take some time off.

And then I started playing music and put the Wombats together. And then right away, within a couple of years, I was writing songs and recording. And we thought we had some connections because of our record store with the music business, but we didn't, because that's a totally different department.

In 1998, we finished the record, I think, and then we released in 2000 the full LP or CD, I should say, of the Wombats. And it didn't go anywhere. That was all original stuff? Yeah, all original.

Was it? Yeah. And then when we played clubs, it would be mixed in, half and half. Right, right.

But as time went on, since we were getting popular, you know how that works. Pretty soon, you're a cover band throwing one original song in per set. Maybe three songs a night or four or five.

And it was getting sort of like, you know, we thought we had a cool band, but cool band doesn't mean you're popular. Right. You're playing like the late 60s, middle 60s, Badfinger, Guess Who? A lot of pop stuff.

Sure. The Cars, Blondie. You know, we were into pop music from the Beatles.

You follow the family tree of pop. What was my bad music like? What was your original? Original? Well, it was basically... In that same vein? In the same vein. I mean, I was a songwriter, so I was influenced.

Basically guitar, bass drum guitar with keyboards. And traditional classic 60s songwriting. Verse, chorus.

Right. So do you still write? No, I don't. I haven't been in that mindset for a long time.

I'm just kidding. Because sometimes, some guys, I mean, obviously still have that mindset, like you said, but don't do anything with it. What if you've done any writing since then? No, a couple of years ago, maybe five, six years ago, I picked up a pen and started writing notes down and started writing here and there, but I never finished a song.

So you have to kind of be inspired to write again. And also with the Neverly Brothers, we're doing renditions of all these songs that are not original songs, but our act is original. So that's the other thing to convey to people is we're not your traditional tribute act where you were impersonators, like a Beatles band.

Someone's going to be talking like Paul McCartney or talking like George. Your act is very original, and I love that about you guys. I love the fact that you just come out there very basic, like we said, and knock it out of the park.

Yeah, well, people are always amazed that we have a full sound. And you as a sound person know there's three guys singing, there's three instruments, my acoustic guitar, I don't use an amplifier, and I don't use any particular pedals that modify the sound, that make it sound like an amp, like a computerized thing. There's just an old pedal board with reverb and delay and equalization pedals, but that's old.

And I put a little, an acoustic pickup in it. So it's just got its own distinct hybrid electric acoustic sound that I kind of developed for this act. You guys have all built guitars, too, don't you? I do.

I have the John Lennon, and well, John Lennon and George Harrison both got the acoustic guitar in 1962, the J160 Gibson. That's the one you see with John all the time playing like on a hard case. Right, right, right.

It came with a pickup in it. It was a very rare guitar, unusual at the time. It came with a pickup put in it, and a volume knob and a tone knob, but it sounds horrible.

I mean, John used to put electric strings on it, not acoustic strings. Oh, really? So when you, I play with acoustic strings, and that pickup doesn't translate very well. So I put an acoustic pickup on it.

Oh, I see. And it sounds different, and it sounds, with my pedals and everything, the way it's through there, the signal, it sounds like an acoustic, but it sounds like an electric at the same time. So I straight off with the rhythm and the leads, and so we have a pretty full sound.

And as a nod to Ringo, I play a Ludwig kit, but it's not the oyster color shell, but it's the red sparkle, so it gives a kind of a throwback look to it, you know, that sparkly 60s look. I do recall back in the day, towards the end of the Wombats and the beginning of the Neverleys, I remember seeing you guys as the Wombats, and the next week I'd see you as the Neverleys Brothers, and then it was the Wombats again. It was just like, bam, bam, and all of a sudden, and I liked the Wombats, I really liked the Wombats, and I mean, I got the albums, and then all of a sudden the Wombats were gone.

And I was like, devastated. I mean, I really liked it. He likes it because you were old.

I'm still old. You're still old, but you got older. Another disappointed fan.

Well, there was a transitional period there. There was 16 lineups, or 14 lineups in 16 years of the Wombats. People kept coming and going.

So every time I started recording, someone would leave, and we'd have to start the whole process of initially getting this person into the songs again and teaching them and rehearsing, and then by the time we were ready to record with them, they'd be gone. I guess I was a bad leader, I don't know. So the recording of the Wombats started in 94, and it didn't end until like 98 or so.

It took four years. It was recorded in various different places, some in my own basement. So that was from 88 to 2005.

And then the Neverlades, we started in 2003. So for two years, I was booking both bands. I was doing both.

Both were my bands. I was doing all the business and promoting and everything. At the time, Keg wasn't doing any promotion.

Now he does. He and I both share responsibilities for booking, and then he's got his own responsibilities. And you had Digging Records, too.

And well, Digging Records is my corporation. It started out as a record label for the Wombats in 95. I incorporated it.

What was the name of the record store? Oh, that was Red Tower Records. Oh, okay. Yeah, we had that from 86 to 96.

Well, 151st there. Yeah, and so while we had... Kevin started the band, the Wombats, while we had the record store, the Neverly Brothers and Wombats continued after we were out of the record business. And then the Neverly Brothers started in 2003.

So about seven years after we closed the record store. That was the period when we had closed the store in 96. And then we kind of went full-time trying to push the Wombats.

And so by 2003, that's when the Wombats were really getting depressing. They were really not good. Well, you know, because you're beating your head against the wall trying to get somewhere.

You think you've got a cool act. Like you said, you thought it was a cool band, a lot of cool songs. But I think... How many pieces did they have? At the end, it was five.

Okay. It was bass, drums, guitar, keyboard. And two guitars.

And it was two sets of brothers in the band. It was Gordon Patriarcha on bass, Jim Patriarcha on guitar, I was guitar, Keg was drums, and we had a friend named Steve Asherman on the keyboards. So we could play almost any rock and roll song.

And we had a lot of guys who could sing. We had four guys who could sing. So we were doing, you know, we could play guest suit songs.

We could play cool stuff. It was like we were doing some of the one-hit wonder things. I don't know what, Sunshine or Jonathan, whatever his name was.

I can't remember his name. We would do Tommy James, the rapper. Different songs were... The Mighty Quinn we did as man for man.

And then I could put my guitar down and I could play the maracas. So we were very versatile. We could play a lot of that pop stuff from, say, 1964 to, say, 1980.

Right. All the way up to the cars. We played Just When I Need It, and My Best Friend's Girl.

We did Blondie one way or another, even though it was female and local. So it was fun. So from 2003 to 2005, the Wombats were doing maybe three or four shows a month, maybe.

And all of a sudden, the Everly Brothers are playing every Friday and Saturday, pretty much. Then it was like, I don't have time for the Wombats, and I don't really want to. It's just good timing.

This thing has taken off. It's become something more unique, more appealing. It just became, with the public, a lot more quickly popular.

So you were involved with one or the other without any hesitation, right? Yeah, it was kind of glad that was the end of the Wombats. It was enough of that. It was time long overdue to put that away.

And it became full-time right away with the Neverly Brothers. It went from just playing a backyard party to a full-time job, you know, zero to 60 in a few seconds. You turn on channel nine in the morning, and there you are.

The next day, you're on Fox, and then you're on channel five. Yeah, well, we were lucky. We got on the news channels pretty quickly.

We started the band in 2003, and by February of 2004, less than a year later, we were on WGN for the first time. And then since then, between WGN's morning and midday and Fox morning news and Saturday news, we've been on 12 times on news shows in our 15 years of being together, which is more than I know most locally-based acts have been. But once you establish that connection and the context, they, at certain times, want to bring you back.

Other times, they don't. You know, but it's been very good. So we've gotten a lot of great exposure from those shows.

The last time we were on television was last September on the Good Day Chicago Saturday show. So that was cool. And so I'm talking to them right now that we may be getting on again this summer for one of our bigger outdoor shows.

So you guys pretty well booked for the summer now, every weekend, or? Pretty much, yeah. I mean, this summer's a little lighter than normal, but typically, we do anywhere from 40 to 50 shows in the summertime. That's our busy season.

And we're all over, not just Chicago area, but we're south. The farthest show this summer was, we're down way near Southern Illinois, near Carbondale, even south of Carbondale, I think a little bit, a little town called DuCoin. DuCoin? It's a state fair.

State fair. That's what we're doing. I just found out about it this year.

I never even knew it. We've been playing the Illinois State Fair in Springfield for 13 years in a row on their free stages. Somebody told me about this, and all of a sudden, I contacted them this year, and the woman who was in charge of booking liked it and booked us.

So we're down, that's one of the farthest ones. But we travel, and during the rest of the year, we're playing concert theaters. We're playing in anywhere from 350 to 1,500 seat theaters, ticketed shows, Midwestern theaters, mostly.

But we've been to the West Coast. We've been to the East Coast. We've been to Atlantic City, New Jersey, four times in the last five years for like one-month residencies and a theater and a casino.

So they liked you out there. Yeah. East Coast, West Coast, they liked what you're doing.

They do, and they find us, even though we're here in the Midwest, and you think, as you said, Paul, we have a unique thing. It's an original concept. Doing the show, even though we're performing in classic rock and roll songs, it's an original concept, and it's a stage show.

So these people don't find anybody that quite does what we do, even on the coast, which is encouraging. That's great. That is great.

Yeah. Now, who's playing bass with you now? Right now, a guy named Mike Bradburn. He has been the bass player for a band in Chicago for 25 years called Dolly Farden.

And if anybody knows, back in the late 80s, there was a band called Stump the Host. They turned into Dolly Farden. And he gigs with a few other groups periodically, but we're his main thing.

Okay, and he's also got a full-time job besides, but he's able to make his own hours, so it works out fine. That's good. Yeah, and he can sing.

So he doesn't sing lead, but he can sing nice background harmonies. So Keg and I, as you mentioned, Craig, our old bass player, he used to sing a lot of lead vocals in the first set, the 50s stuff. And Keg, since he retired, Keg has picked up most of his new songs, his leads.

And we also use other bass players. So yes, thank you. Thank you, thank you.

That's a high five from Paul. Keg, right there for you listening at home. A cross-table high five, yeah, for you listening on the radio, on the wireless.

For those who can't see. But yeah, so Keg's picked up that, and Mike is able to pick up all the harmonies that we need. So Keg and I do the leads, and he does the harmonies, and we also do harmonies when we're not singing lead.

Tell me about some of the music that you do play. Sometimes, you know, we try to, the songs we kind of keep to the original spirit of the song, like in the 50s set, where, but we'll put a little bit of a spin on it, like a Neverly spin onto it sometimes. And that's something I know, at least I think you're a big kinks fan.

I get big kinks fan, yes. It's funny, I didn't get into, I really didn't get into the kinks until past the 60s, like around the mid, early 70s. Some friends of mine from Wisconsin, some buddies turned me on to the kinks.

So my first exposure to the kinks, besides hearing You Really Got Me and some of those songs on the radio, Dale, Dale, you're right. Which is Ray Davies' concert. I got into my first, one of my first concerts.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Don't do it again. Okay, well, I got into them like in their 1974-ish time.

My first, one of my first concerts was in 1974. I saw the kinks at the Aragon Ballroom. They were doing a concept album called Schoolboys and Disgrace.

And they were dressed like into schoolboys and they had a whole horn section. It was when they were big as stage production era. They had like three horns, a keyboard, piano, organ, three girl singers.

And they're all dressed up in these like schoolboy outfits. So I got into the kinks at that point and then I went forward from there and backwards. Lolo was a big song in 1970, which we used to play live.

But, and what you, what Paul refers to is, I got to see the kinks about nine times. And I became a major, one of my favorite concerts because Ray Davies, their lead singer, was such a great showman and a personality. And during the show, he would always imitate Harry Belafonte at one point.

And he did the audience response. He would go, Day-oh! And they would roll back. And we do that as part of our show.

I incorporate that when we play a kink song. I think one of my first concerts I went to, he took me to see the kinks. And I forget the theater that we went to.

Might've been the Uptown or something. You're coming with me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He says, yeah, yeah, check this. Well, I was listening to the records. So I had to get bought.

So, so he took me to the show and I think it was the Misfits Tour. And I remember some guy was hawking, you know, counterfeit t-shirts or whatever out, you know, knockoffs out in front. And we bought a Misfits t-shirt.

I had that for years. It finally fell apart. So, so yeah, I loved it.

I really grew up with the kinks too. I think it was 78, roughly. It might've been the Uptown Theater.

I can't remember exactly. Oh, wow. But I saw the knack too.

I liked the kinks, but the funny thing is I got into the kinks later in the, like in high school. And then I went back in time, but I never got into the sixties, like really like their British Invasion albums until the Neverly Brothers. The Neverly Brothers really kind of got me and pulled me into all that early stuff because the whole concept is the British bands imitating the American groups.

Right. So all of a sudden I'm buying these early albums by the kinks, 1964 or 65. And I never realized half their albums were cover songs too, just like the Beatles were doing.

They're doing like Little Richard stuff and they're doing blues songs and all kinds of, they did Louie Louie. Right. Louie Louie, they did.

I mean, they did all kinds of stuff. The blues were a big influence on a lot of those bands. The blues was a huge influence.

Yeah, well, it's kind of like the Beatles, like they're a huge influence on the Beatles. The blues were, but they took, I think more of their influence came more from like the R&B and the rockabilly. Right.

That came out of America. Whereas in London, where the kinks and the stones were based, the blues really played more of a heavier, you know, influence on them, you know, cause like the stones, you know, doing all those old blues songs, you know, screaming, you know. Because I was like five or six when the Beatles dropped, thanks Sullivan.

So I was too young to really get into that whole scene. And be a record buyer. But now even later, I didn't get into it because I was, I followed the Beatles pop, like I call it the family tree, the Beatles and then Bad Finger and then the pop songs.

And then the power pop of the early 80s, late 70s with the Knack. I saw the Knack in Chicago in 79, at the Uptown Theater. I saw them there too.

It was like a WLS show or whatever. That was my first concert that he, big brother took me to. And then the, and Blondie and the Cars and all.

And there was a lot of obscure, like WXRT, power pop, new wave bands. So to me, and they all go back to the Beatles. That's, that's their, that's their origin of their sound, their songwriting style.

The pop music goes back to that. So everything does that. Well, everything kind of does.

The Beatles really kind of just broke all the rules and changed everything. And, but that's, that's how I, the Neverly Brothers really kind of brought me into that whole, really opened my eyes to how much those bands imitated it and what they really started out doing. Besides the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and then the Animals.

Oh yeah. Now they're from Newcastle, which is way up north in the edge of near Scotland. But I picked up an Animals, like we do their version of Boom Boom, John Lee Hooker.

So they recorded in 64. We did Boom Boom was 1961 originally by John Lee Hooker, which is another great example of what we call the evolution of rock. Part of the fun for me is learning these things and people tell me, you know, wow, you know, you're like a rock and roll encyclopedia.

Well, I've always been into rock and I've always found an interest in it. So I've retained the information, but the Everly Brothers, the Neverly Brothers is what brought me the knowledge. That's how I introduced Kevin, is you know him as your rock and roll historian for this evening.

And that's, what's really cool about, you know, we play these songs and you know, a lot of the same songs from night to night, we'll, we'll switch it up. But it's the same artists, you know, we're always doing the million dollar quartet and we'll switch up some of the songs there. But the really cool thing about it is, now Kevin went back and researched all this stuff and I learned about it, you know, the history of the songs and the origins from that.

Now when he's telling the audience, these people, a lot of these people, you know, grew up listening to these artists. And never heard, never knew that history of it or the inspiration behind it. And when I see their reaction on their face or like, sometimes, you know, Kevin will say like a little historical fact about a song about, you know, who inspired who or what was going on.

And you'll actually see, hear people gasp, like, oh, he's got a CD out, don't you? Yeah, we have, it's kind of a set, a match set, you might say. Because we had so many songs we wanted to do that we ended up doing two CDs. There were 15 songs on each and it's called A Magical History Tour.

Nice. Another little innuendo. Play it anywhere.

Yeah, that subliminal thing that give you a thought of Beatles. A Magical History Tour Volume 1 and A Magical History Tour Volume 2. And it's, the CDs are just like, they mirror the show. The first half of every one of them is the 1950s music that we perform.

The second half is the 1964 British Invasion. Right. And it's two different sets of music, no repeats.

And then the booklets inside each also are like the tour. It looks like a tour guide, a bus tour. And there's pictures inside of like a ticket that says the Rock and Roll History Tour.

And then, where are you going? The next stop is this city. And then I put the song and then the original artist and what year it was recorded. And then the version that was done afterwards.

So it'll say like Carl Perkins, 1956. That's very cool. Honey, don't.

Earthquake's trying to be my baby. And then it'll say The Beatles, 1964. And so it's fun.

It's, I made the whole, I did my, I do graphics with a Photoshop program. So I designed the whole CD and set, and both sets. Is this a studio album or is this a live? It's a studio album.

Just all straight? Yeah, the one thing that's not on it is are the narrations. Because it's a studio album. And I never, at the time, I didn't think of putting on in between songs.

But it does follow a chronological sequence just like the show. And so people usually buy them together because there's so much music. Do you have them for sale at your shows? Are they online too? Is it on iTunes or? Not iTunes, just our website.

Just on your website. And we also sell them at the shows. That's theneverlybrothers.com? Theneverlybrothers.com. You got it.

And where else can we find you on social media? That's Keg. He's a social media guy. We're on Facebook.

You just look up The Neverly Brothers. Facebook.com slash The Neverly Brothers. And we list our shows on both.

We have videos on both the website and the Facebook page. And can I just say The Facebook? You're very proper. Yeah.

Yes, I'm very cool. Yeah, so you can check out everything. We have live footage from concerts that we've done at theaters and other events.

So where can we see you in the upcoming weeks? Where you guys can be playing? Well, next week, the summer shows kick off this weekend. But next week, I'll just say whenever the show can air, who knows. But Thursday, the 2nd of June, we're playing in Morris, Illinois, just west of Joliet on I-80.

It's not that far. It's a courthouse. That's not far from me.

Come on down. Yeah, it's a little too close. Yeah.

Yeah, you can get there by... It's up from me. You got to come up north a bit and then west. It's in front of the Grundy County Courthouse.

So come incognito, all right? Oh, yeah. I'm glad I did 14 counties. That's right, yeah.

Outstanding Morris. It's horse savory. Check the website.

And Neverly is N-E-V-E-R-L-Y, like the word never with an L-Y, theneverlybrothers.com. But you'll see our shows posted, whether it's a festival, or it's a concert in the park, or a concert series put on by a municipality or something like that. We're out there all summer long. Cool.

Yeah, thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks for having us, man.

A lot of great information. A lot of history there. Yeah, it's a magical history tour.

Yes, it is. Thanks a lot, guys. Thanks for having us.

Thanks, guys. He sure is a historian, isn't he? A rock and roll historian. No kidding.

It's amazing. You know, I learned quite a bit of stuff from him just in this short time talking to him. Yes, yes, as well did I. It was a lot of fun with those guys, too.

And we're having fun every week, I think, aren't we? I think I'm having more fun every week, I think. Yeah, yeah, I am. Yeah, no, I'm not thinking.

I am having a lot more fun. And people are saying some great stuff about the shows, which is much appreciated. Yes, it is.

Yes, it is. We're having a lot of fun doing this and going out and meeting bands and band members and getting some insight into their bands. And it's a whole lot of fun for us.

And we hope it transfers to the listener as well. Of course, of course. So who's on deck for next week? Next week, we have Strung Out.

Are they a horn band? No, no horn band. But they're more a string band, thus the name Strung Out. Oh, OK, I got you.

All right. I was just getting a little excited. I thought we were doing another horn band.

Well, we'll find out what they're all about next week. And thanks for listening, everybody. Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram.

We're on iTunes and Google Music. And we're on Tunity. And we're on iHeartRadio.

And we're, you name it, we're everywhere. Just make sure you're liking the podcast and downloading it and enjoying it and tell your friends. That's right.

That's right. Thanks, everyone, for listening. We'll see you next week.

Strung Out. See you next week. Thanks for listening.