January 20, 2025 • 33 mins
I sat down with Duke Bradford and J J Cruiz to talk about Pet Rock's upcoming Valentines Day show at the Astro and some history about music in Omaha over the last few decades.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's Lucy Chapman. Thanks for joining me once again
for Here's More, and I've got lots more for you today,
lots more about the music in omahas a little bit
of the history. We'll dive into some of the indie
rock and punk rock in the Omaha area and just
have some fun with my special guest today, Duke Bradford
(00:20):
and JJ Cruz of pet Rock.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hey, Lucy, what is a happening?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
You've got a big show coming up in February.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah, thanks, Lucy. We've got a real special show coming
up for us at a really special venue in town.
So it's Valentine's Night, February fourteenth, Friday. We're going to
be playing at the Astro Theater, which is a really
fantastic venue. So we're going to be doing all this
hits of the seventies. We're we're gonna do some love songs,
(00:49):
aren't we Absolutely the seventies had a lot of love
in it and we're gonna spread it around that night.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
We got it. It's Valentine's so we're gonna.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Slay it on thick folks on Valentine.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Whether you want it or not, you're gonna get loving.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
It's gonna be a really fun event and Kgar is
going to be part of that. So Duke Bradford, Yeah,
you guys play a lot of seventies music pretty much.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
To make a full confession here, we might creep into
the earliest of eighties because some songs are just so
on point with what we tried to do that. Yeah,
something slips in from the eighties.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Smooth went into the eighties too, It's not just the
seventies thing.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Well, yeah, and all of that music is great. In fact,
I was at a show not well. I guess it's
been about a year now. I know it's been a
year since I've seen you all for Shame Public about
a year ago, and I think that was the first
time that I had seen Crystal Ball.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Oh stix, so probably come sail Away, that's it.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
See, I didn't even get the title right.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
No you didn't. You're on the radio. Your seventies musical
knowledge cred just went down.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
This much more than that.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Redeem yourself, Lucy, you know how.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I'm going to redeem myself. I'm going to cut all
this out.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Because I.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Know the okay, but yeah, I did see that and
I thought the best.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Come Sailing or it could have been Lady Oh.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, we do play Lady Yeah, but it was it
was Come Saleway.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Okay, let's get that.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
We need to take two. It was the best performance
outside of Sticks of Come Sail Away I have ever heard,
and I gotta tell you it kind of gave Sticks
a little bit of a run for their money on it.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Uh wow, that's that's high praise. Well, we try to
do everything as real as we can. That's kind of
the whole Oh, I don't know. Thought behind pet Rock
as a band is to try to bring the most
authentic representation of that music to the fans, and we
even shoot beyond maybe a live version of this song
(02:52):
you've heard, and we try to hit the album version
as closely as we can, so it really takes you
to back to the time of hearing that music back
on AM radio, and so we're trying to recreate that.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
You mentioned about the need to kind of stay close
to the original renditions of the songs that you guys
are performing. I think that's one of the things that
really draws you or your fans in for the very
first time when they see your YouTube channel. Maybe they're
listening in the background, and they might be thinking they're
actually listening to Andrew.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Gold again, that we're hitting the mark. Then if you're
realizing that, yeah again. When we decided to put this
project together, we didn't want to do our renditions of
these songs because in our mind, these songs are perfect
pretty much the way they are, and that's what's so
great about this era of tunes that we're reproducing. So
they're already perfect. We're not trying to improve upon them.
(03:46):
You know, the recorded album version of let's say a
Boston song is as good as that song is ever
going to be to the ears of the listener. And again,
we want to take you back to that time when
you heard that on the radio. What were you feeling
back then? So great, we're hitting our mark, then that's good.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
And I think that a lot of artists try to
do that. Well, I'm going to redo this song on
our fourth set tonight or whatever, and it sounds nothing
or sounds off from the original, And I think that's
great for the artist. And I really do understand that
as somebody who wants to make it my own maybe
at some point, but when you start to do that,
people go, oh, bathroom break, oh right.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Well, and totally there's room for that, you know, an
interpretation of a great classic song. I mean, and many
great songs have been redone in another style and where
I'm off for that personally, it's just not what we
choose to do as a tribute to the seventies.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Good keep doing that, yeah, JJ Cruz. Now, you joined
pat Rock fairly recently, like April May now, but you
were a fan already, I mean, you knew the band. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
I been a musician in town for years and had
seen the band, and I was like, wow, me being
a musician, I saw probably one of your earliest shows,
one of the earliest pet Rock shows at Waiting Room.
You know, I was actively listening for they going to
get this part right, and.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
So you were probably pretty surprised when they wanted to
talk to you about possibly coming in and taking over
lead singing duties.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
The series of events that happened was really funny because
I didn't I think I had played with Maestro once
at a wedding, yeah yeah, and uh, I think I'd
met Steely Dana one time. Didn't know anybody else in
the band. So I got like three Facebook friend requests
and they were all members of pet Rock and I
was like, well, that's kind of weird. Whatever, that's cool,
(05:40):
and then got a message from Dana, Hey, send me
your phone number, got a question for you. Okay. I thought, well, okay,
something's going on here. I had no idea what was
going on. And then Dana called and said, hey, are
singers leaving? You know, are you interested? Do you even
like this music? I'm like, well, absolutely, I love the music,
you know, that was the first question, said, guy. Listen
(06:00):
to all this stuff regularly?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah. I mean when the time came and we needed
to hire a new vocalist, We've been in this scene
for many years as musicians. I mean I've been playing
around here for forty years. So we have a pretty
good idea of who's out there in the musician pool,
and jj was always when we went through our list
of okay, who can be the vocalist that we need,
(06:25):
it was like he was very high on the list immediately.
And then I think it was backstage at a show
we pulled up a video on YouTube of your band
playing a song and Jeremy was not only singing, but
he was playing the drums and hitting the Don Henley
song and we were like, Okay, this guy could do
it for sure. So yeah, I mean we had a
(06:48):
short list, but he was definitely at the top of it.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Let's talk about just some of the history that you
guys have both lived through played through. Pulled back the
curtain little bit. When I go out to the bar
or out to one of the outdoor events to see
a live band, what am I seeing?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Well, you're seeing people probably not getting paid very much
to get up there and do something for hours on
a time that they've worked a long time on. Yeah,
I mean that's the short of it. That wasn't probably
the greatest.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Well I think that that's true because I've known musicians.
My father was a musician, and.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, it's a lot of Yeah, you're most likely seeing
a lot of work has gone into something up there
that you know, this band or individual you're seeing maybe
getting compensated for and maybe not. I mean, being a
musician for many years you worked for very free or
paid to play.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
I had a chance to talk to you, Gordon Lightfoot
for just a few minutes backstage several years ago, and
he was telling me this story about how the old days.
He was talking about the old day and how you
would go into these bar joints, these little bear joints,
and they stunk and he didn't get any money, and
(08:08):
he's played for hours. And I said to him, I
bet you really missed that, and he looked at me
and he said, no, not at all. I was thinking
of the nostalgia and being young and what's ahead of you,
but he was not having any of it. So can
you kind of relate to that You've been playing music
(08:30):
for forty years, when you first started, you had this idea.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, no, I think that's such a great story. I
think it kind of has to do with the time
in your life and in your quote unquote music career
you're in. I mean, I'm sure JJ can back this up.
But when you're first starting out as a musician, I mean,
once you got out of practicing in your bedroom, then
you were maybe in the garage or basement of your
(08:57):
friend's house trying to play a few songs. I mean,
for me, that was me trying to be a guitar player,
which did not did not work out. It was meeting
my friend Mike at his basement and he'd be on drums,
I'd be on guitar and we'd be trying to play
Van Halen songs or whatever, you know, terribly or whatever music. Well,
then you graduated to what you were playing for us.
(09:20):
For me, it was high school dances, you know. Then,
you know, when you did get your band together and
practice it up, you play a high school dance like
Ario did Oh, Ario Speedwagon, You're right, cheap trick a
lot of them. But this was like at you know,
high schools around Omaha. You know. So we went through
that period and again I loved that period in my life.
(09:42):
But then you would graduate to At that time, before
we even played bars in Omaha, there were teen clubs,
and I don't know if you remember teen clubs. There
was a place called I think it was the Flip
Side on Blondo Street. It's now it's next to I
don't know. I don't know if it's a food for
less or grocery store. It was a teenage night club.
(10:03):
There used to be one in Irvington too.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
About eighty first, eighty second, eighty fourth and yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, and you know it was a place where they
didn't sell alcohol, they sold you know, refreshments, and our
band was able to start booking shows there. We started
putting on our own shows at these at these teen
clubs and charging a cover charge. You know. Then we
went into playing event little halls like in Blair. But
(10:29):
when you got into the clubs like bar Proper and
I'm thinking of for me, it was the Howard Street
Tavern was the first real gig I played by real
I mean, hey, bar crowd with alcohol and things like that.
You know, yeah, get the door, Yeah, where you get
the door where they charged what we charged the cover
charge and the bar would set the cover charge of
(10:50):
five bucks or whatever and that went to the band. Well,
the guy sitting at the door, unlet's he was your friend,
you know, at whatever club you're playing, you know, he's
he's taken money. Is he giving it all to you?
Who knows? You know, maybe maybe not. But I wouldn't
trade those days that was, you know, I don't want
to be there now, Well, get in.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
I get into this conversation all the time with my husband.
In fact, that's one of the ways that I kind
of got to know who pet Rock was because he
found you on YouTube and he said, you got to
watch this band. And then of course we both took
guitar lessons up at deets and I quit, and I'm
going back to it, going back to it.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Never quit playing guitar, I know, but I'm going to
do it.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
But we would get into these great conversations about the
musicians today and without disparaging any of our new artists
out there. Musicians today don't have what they had, what
you guys had when you started. You don't have that
desire to play, to perform and to be part of
the music.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
You didn't pay your dues in the hard times kid.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Well, even beyond that, the artist today they could go
on stage if they were sick or if they had
a cold, whatever, and the computers would just fix it and.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
They'd be fine.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
They don't have that. It feels like they don't have
that heart, most of them.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Yeah, it's way more authentic. I grew up a little different.
My dad's family is all musical. My dad still plays
and I get to play with him once in a while,
which is always fun. But I grew up my dad
needed a drummer when I was geez, I don't remember
early teens thirteen fourteen probably, so I ended up playing
(12:26):
bars with my dad.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You know.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
I still did some basement and garage rehearsals with some
people my age that we played music together. But I
kind of missed a lot of that era or that
phase of musicianship. You know, I've jumped right into the
playing bars.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah yeah, yeah, our bad mind. We're all contemporaries. My
family not musical. I was the lone musician in my family.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
That's why you couldn't play guitar.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Okay, still can't. So you got like forced into music
by your overbearing father.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, he had forced me to play drums. I need
a drummer.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Well, I got a kid right here that'll work for free.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
I think I just wanted to. I don't even know
how I started. Well for wanting to play music for
me was I think seeing bb King perform on television
was literally what sealed the deal for me. I saw
him and was just hypnotized. I mean he was at
the time, he was even sitting down but playing, just
(13:27):
playing the way he does and his left hand, the
way his left hand moved. I just was transfixed, and
I said, that is cool. I want to do something
like that. And then it was I got bit by
the Elvis bug. All the music of the fifties, Chuck
Berry and then quickly got hit on the head by
Kiss and Van Halen and then it was it. So
(13:50):
I came to it. You were indentured into it.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
I just grew up around it.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
My dad played with his parents in a band when
I was growing up. So my grandmother played until she
passed at age eighty eight. I think she passed away
and still played piano. You know, she'd always play in
the mood that was her song, you know. But my
grandfather passed away when I was three, I think, and
(14:16):
I got his drum set. So that's what got me
started when I was really young.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
So that's just started on the Omaha area, uh, northwest Iowa, Okay,
So you've kind of grown up with the regional or
the local band scene in one aspect or another.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I moved to Omaha in the early nineties and played
you know the twenties, the Ranch Bowl, you know ten
ten Club, Arthur's, Duncan's Arthur, Yes, back in the day.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Oh my god, the Chicago downtown that there's so many
great the stories of the Ranch Bowl and the talent
that we saw come through there, the talent we got
to play with being in the early nineties playing clubs
like that. Yeah, those were different days.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
I was on the tail end of the road days.
I was actually a traveling musician for I don't know,
three or four years about and I remember coming to
the Ranch Bowl and seeing the lineup of bands that
had been there, and I was like, oh they were here,
Like oh I missed them. I was in Wyoming or Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
They had so much great talent through there, and and
being a kid in your own at that time playing
a lot of original music of your own, you know,
in the early nineties, to get an opportunity to get
up there and open for a lot of these acts
was just something else. These were not just nobody's they
were bringing in I mean the Chili Peppers, Hohoskerdo, I
(15:49):
mean tons of great bands coming through there. And to
be like what an eighteen nineteen year old kid going,
hey can you Matt Marko calls you can your band
open for this? And You're like, Okay, when do I need.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
To be there?
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah? And you didn't even care if you got paid
at that point, you know, you were just happy, happy
to be there amongst that.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
And that's kind of what I meant earlier when you're
talking about the music of the seventies. The bands. Yeah,
the Eagles would show up on stage and whatever they
had on that day, with their t shirts and and
their jeans, and it wasn't a big production. It was
about the music.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, you didn't have to have a big dance posse
behind you and all this stuff. The musicianship was so
great that. I mean, the Eagles are famous for being
nothing to watch.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, they were actually accused of loitering on stage.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah yeah, yeah, just standing there on stage like that.
But you know, then, of course we had Kiss and
Alice Cooper in those eras that then took up the showmanship.
But so much of the music, it's that we again tribute. Boy,
it's hard to do, very hard, so you couldn't necessarily
(17:02):
be dancing around all the time and doing that stuff.
But yeah, the music is so great. The harmonies, the
orchestration of the instruments is pretty pretty dynamic and huge.
And it wasn't done by a fleet of producers. It
was either the guys in the bands working with one
producer and maybe an auxiliary songwriter. But you know, what
(17:26):
you saw on stage was a group of great musicians
that created a lot of this.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yeah, the seventies specifically were a very creative period for music.
You look at like Steely Dan, how creative they were
with chords and jazz chords in pop music. I mean,
who'd ever thought of that until Steely Dan did. Yeah,
I mean a lot of creative things happened in that decade.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Do you think that the artists of today have that
creativity or do you think the Adeles and the Pinks
and the Taylor Swift do they have the ability to
be that creative that Steely Dan was in the South
because they're kind of a product.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Now, Yeah, those artists specifically probably not. But I mean
Steely Dan had that band specifically had jazz backgrounds. So
there are musicians of that caliber, I'm sure that exist,
But to bridge into pop from the jazz world, that's
not gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Yeah, I mean, obviously there's amazingly talented musicians, my goodness,
all over, and there's great bands out there that are
doing a lot of great creative stuff. But yeah, a
dressing like the top tier of the pop charts and things, now,
I don't. Yeah, like you said, they're a product, there's
definitely a sound they're going for in a formula they're repeating.
(18:43):
So yeah, I think in many instances it is driven
by management who has maybe hired a producer that is
very good at doing crafting these kinds of hits that
play very well. So yeah, I think a lot of
those artists are funneled that way. But there's always great
creative artists out there, you just may never hear them.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
How do you feel YouTube or the Internet is affecting
music of local bands, regional bands, artists that have not
been discovered yet. How do you think the internet is
affecting those artists.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
It's a great avenue for getting exposure and for putting
out a product to be seen. Hopefully it catches and
spreads like a virus.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
I guess yeah, I mean it. It's definitely an avenue
that you can reach people on. It's a little bit
different with artists not really being paid royalties like they
used to. A lot of the money comes from actually
touring and if you can get the word out there
about your tour, where you're going to be able to
(19:46):
sell your merchandise and sell tickets if it's a ticket
to show. Yeah, the Internet it's amazing for that for
just crafting or developing great musicians and skills as a musician.
The Internet's amazing for that. I mean, look at all
the young You see a host of young people all
over that are amazing technical players, maybe of an instrument. Well,
(20:09):
when we were kids, I mean, if you had to
learn a song, let's say you had to oh gosh.
I remember very early on I had to learn Chuck
Berry to play at a high school function. And it's like, Okay, well,
how do I do this? Put the cassette on, play it,
try to figure it out, rewind it again a hundred times,
go back, and but well, now you can go to
(20:29):
YouTube and it's going to be like, here's how you
do it. So I think that for the development of
just good talent, technical talent, for sure, the internet's amazing
for that. And promotion, Yeah, you just got to know
how to work it because I mean there's a lot
of noise out there. It's a huge bunch of information
being pushed from people trying to get noticed.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
I guess the indie scene was really big in Omaha
in the nineties, and Omaha put up some pretty good
artists that went on to do very well. Were you
involved in the indie scene?
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, I was very much so in those days. You
weren't even were you here then? Was the early nineties, Yeah,
ninety one, ninety two, ninety three.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
I was around, but not really in that world at all.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah, we were most notably as three eleven out of
that era for being successful and just really forging identity
and a fan base that has lasted four years. But yeah,
I mean at that time, there was a lot of
a lot of publications. Industry publications were very interested. A
(21:35):
lot of record labels were looking for talent around the
Omaha area at that time. And I played with a
well notorious act at that time and we were called
by Spin magazine, Rolling Stone. We had record labels reach
out to us, and very famously, I remember our singer
at the time got a call from and I forget
(21:57):
who it was, which label, and they just said, hey,
we want to talk to you about your band, and
he said, you don't have enough f and money and wow,
I know, well, but that you know, we were indie
punks back then. Man, we didn't need them.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Were you guys fighting with the with the the punk like.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
The mohawk like mohawk punks.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
The punk movement through them all same time?
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Oh yeah. Those punk guys were around, sure at that time,
but we never had anything but camaraderie with local bands
at that time. I mean, we weren't. We weren't looking
at it really as competition because back in those indie days,
we were doing something that we felt was a radical
departure from all of that music. Anyway, we were, we
(22:40):
were playing well. We used to bill ourselves as the
loudest acoustic band in the world. You know, we were, Yeah,
we were. We were playing so loud and setting the
stage on fire and distributing pornography to the audiences, which
got us banned from the ranch Bowl. They think, oh yeah, yeah,
we were distributing. I think it was opening for three
(23:02):
to eleven at that time. They had hit big, and
we were playing a gig at Ranch Bow opening for
him and her singer. Same guy that told the record
label to go to hell was throwing out playing cards
that had like the old naked ladies on the one side,
cards from like the sixties and seventies, and he started
throwing those out to the audience, and Matt Markle, the
(23:23):
owner at that time, did not approve that and said
we'll never have them back. And then good old Roger Armstrong,
the old house sound engineer from there, who's since passed
away but was a wonderful champion of local music at
the time. I remember a couple weeks later he calls
us back and goes, you guys can come back, and
we're like, awesome. But so, we never really fought with
(23:46):
local bands or anything like that. We just had a
great time. It was a great time. A lot of
really good music, indie music out there that I still love.
I still have boxes of local CDs. I probably have
the biggest local CD collection from that era, I bet
of anyone.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
I think a lot of people at that time who
were not in the business, were not in the industry,
would hear these things about indie music and Omaha and
not really understand it. I'm for one of them. I
didn't really think that that was such a big deal
until much later, and I looked back on that and said, wow,
you know, the spotlight was really on Omaha at that time.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Yeah, it was kind of a little strange little couple
of years that it really was. Its eyes were turned here.
We also had some great local music rags and things
like that going around, and clubs that were really supportive
of that and sharkis my goodness, some great, great clubs
in town that were just into the local indie scene.
(24:45):
I mean, these were great clubs that would book bands
playing their original music all the time. Weekends were filled
with here's five local bands playing their own music at
these top clubs at the time, and that was that
was kind of unheard of. Now you don't see that.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
That was my next gie.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yeah, you don't see that at all. I mean you'll
see some. Obviously, there's some great I mean, you know,
the faint get together for a show or Bright Eyes
or things like that. Obviously there's some, but not as
a general rule. You're not getting big houses packed with
original music happening right now that I'm aware of. But
I'm an old geezer probably out of touch.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
JJ. When you came into Omaha in the nineties, it
had to be kind of a different atmosphere.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, it was. I went to college in Moorhead, Minnesota,
and we played a lot of clubs up in that
area for a while, and we were going to Kansas City,
Saint Louis. This is dumb to live in North Dakota.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
You know, Well, you can finish that sentence right there.
Period you have had anything else, it's like twenty below.
This is dumb.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Oh it's cold. I still have friends and former bandmates
that still live there.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
I winter in Fargo.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
No one says that, No one ever says that words
never spoken. Well, it just made sense as a band
for to move further south and Omaha. We were playing
three clubs in Omaha at the time, so it just
made sense to move to Omaha, and that's where I
ended up staying.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
So you went to the big city.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Yeah, it was a much different scene than Fargo, of course, So.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Yeah, I can imagine that would probably be a little
bit of a difference. What would you guys bring back
if you could, what aspect of music from the nineties,
live music from the nineties or in the early two thousands,
What would you bring back?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Boy, Yeah, that's I think. One of the things just
being a part of pet Rock is the popularity. That's
one thing that has kind of for most bands in town.
Popularity is it used to be pretty easy to play
a club, play rock songs and have a big Crowd's
that's a struggle anymore, and pet Rocks just they're popular
(26:50):
times ten. It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
I think maybe this will somewhat answer JJ's point or
speak to it and your question. I mean, I think
from that time, it was connection to your audience, because again,
back in those nineties, our little indie band had a
very dedicated group of people that loved that music, you know,
our music, and we had connections with him, And I
(27:13):
think why pet Rock A big part of why it
works is, yeah, not only does it great music people
want to hear, but we really try to connect with people.
The music makes those connections, you know. Again, like I said,
I always say, I hear these songs and I remember
being in the back, being in the suicide seats in
the station wagon of my parents' car, driving back from Lewisville, Nebraska.
(27:33):
We connect not only to those times, but personally, I
go every show, I go out if there's a break,
and I since the beginning of this band, I talk
to people and try to connect with them, and I
hear their stories. We get responses from people. My wife
just died and this song was one of our favorites,
and you guys play it and it brought me back
to this time. So I think that's maybe the thing
(27:56):
that is a little bit missing from most local I don't.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Know, maybe bring that you're kind of recreating that.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Try and do because I think that, you know, I mean,
music is in and entertainment in general, it's escape. It's like, yeah,
we're a tribute band. It's nostalgia. Well, nostalgia's nothing to
be scoffed at often. I mean, yeah, we're old Manuel
and get off my lawn, kid, But nostalgia it's a
feeling to where it's not saying everything new is bad,
(28:25):
it's going no. But these feelings that this music, that
these visuals we put on stage bring up in the
people that I think is part of why it's working
for us.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
That yeah, I mean that's something that specific songs can
just trigger a memory. Got songs that do that for me.
Everybody relates to that. That's one of the fun things
about this music.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
For sure, your audience is getting you're getting some younger
people in there.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Oh, I'm always amazed at the young people. We have
this young couple that comes to our shows and they're
in their early twenties and they come to so many
of our and they sing every word to every song.
And I'll go out there and be like, what in
the world you guys, how are you? And they're like, oh,
this is our music, just our last show. I think
(29:11):
the series we did at Slow Down, I met several
young young people that knew every and they'll all say,
my dad introduced us to this music. So I always
am like, you have great parents, and they're like, you're
right because they love this music. You know. We've always
had a little bit in with the younger crowd, and
I think it is kind of growing in that regard.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
That's fun. Yeah, there are friends of the band that
are our age and they bring their kids to the shows,
so you know, you sometimes see parents and kids together,
so that's always interesting.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
The seventies transcend all age limitations. There's a lot for
everyone in it. We always say we're what smooth rock,
and with the title smooth rock, it's like what is that?
And I think we posted a question to our social
media with the big resurgence of what yacht rock? Yacht
rock didn't even exist really as a term when pet
(30:03):
rock started to our knowledge really, so we always called
it smoothen smooth rock, and that came from how I
used to describe bass lines when I was younger. It's like, oh,
it has a real smooth sound. So I pose the question,
all yacht rock may be smooth, but it's all smooth
rock yacht rock, and I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
I don't think so either.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Chevy Van is not yacht rock, is it? Do you
ever heard chippy?
Speaker 1 (30:28):
I don't know what. But see, that's the problem with
yacht rock, that term, it's really undefinable. Consider it on
its base value yacht rock. Then you're listening to it
on a boat, or you're listening to it while you're
having fun with your friends and partying and stuff. Yeah,
so what song wouldn't fall under that category?
Speaker 3 (30:46):
I wouldn't call Styck's yacht rock. No, No, Chevy Van
like you said, yeah, yeah, there are others two Kansas, Yeah,
called Kansas yacht rock.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Smooth as a feeling deep down inside.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
So there it is the definition of smooth, and yacht
rock is a feeling.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah, you go out and you're you know, you're feeling
kind of groovy and you're smoothing. Man, you know, you're
having good thoughts while listening to a kick ass band.
You're smoothing. You know, you're having a Tom Collins kicking back.
You're smoothing. But we do break out some rock sometimes.
You know, we are a bunch of old rock musicians,
(31:24):
so sometimes we got to bust out Boston.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
It's because there's no rules and I love it. No,
I I think that's what's great about pet Rock and
some of the other bands that are are around town
right now. There aren't any rules.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Just do what you want, do what you want. No
one's going to tell me what to want.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Well, it has been such a pleasure having you both
in here, Duke Bradford and JJ Cruise from pet Rock.
You got a show coming up on February fourteenth at
the Astro for lovers. No, that doesn't have to be right.
It's times today. I'm just saying, you know.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Yeah, getting the spirit man. I love my dog.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Thanks so much for being here today. It was a
lot of fun going down that road with music in
Oma and your show. What is a good website?
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, I mean the website is www doe anymore I
don't even know, but it's petrockband dot com. And then yeah,
we're on YouTube, We're on Instagram, Facebook, all the usual.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Channels that is pet Rock. Come and see them on
February fourteenth. I'm sure you've got other dates coming up.
We're all getting our concert schedules filled out for the summer.
Where we're going to go and see who We got
to get pet Rock on there a couple of times.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Oh my gosh, we're all over in the summer. It's
kind of crazy. Our summer schedule is getting packed with
some really cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
You've run up to Okoboji again, Yes.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yeah, we'll be playing the Green Space and Okoboji on
fourth of July. I believe we are the fourth of July. Yeah,
that'll be fun. We haven't been back outside there for
a few years now, so.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
JJ welcome to the band from the fan base.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Yeah, they've all been very welcoming so far.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Thanks again, guys, and we will see you February fourteenth
at the Astro.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Thanks Lucy.
Hey, it's Lucy Chapman. Thanks for joining me once again
for Here's More, and I've got lots more for you today,
lots more about the music in omahas a little bit
of the history. We'll dive into some of the indie
rock and punk rock in the Omaha area and just
have some fun with my special guest today, Duke Bradford
(00:20):
and JJ Cruz of pet Rock.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hey, Lucy, what is a happening?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
You've got a big show coming up in February.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah, thanks, Lucy. We've got a real special show coming
up for us at a really special venue in town.
So it's Valentine's Night, February fourteenth, Friday. We're going to
be playing at the Astro Theater, which is a really
fantastic venue. So we're going to be doing all this
hits of the seventies. We're we're gonna do some love songs,
(00:49):
aren't we Absolutely the seventies had a lot of love
in it and we're gonna spread it around that night.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
We got it. It's Valentine's so we're gonna.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Slay it on thick folks on Valentine.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Whether you want it or not, you're gonna get loving.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
It's gonna be a really fun event and Kgar is
going to be part of that. So Duke Bradford, Yeah,
you guys play a lot of seventies music pretty much.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
To make a full confession here, we might creep into
the earliest of eighties because some songs are just so
on point with what we tried to do that. Yeah,
something slips in from the eighties.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Smooth went into the eighties too, It's not just the
seventies thing.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Well, yeah, and all of that music is great. In fact,
I was at a show not well. I guess it's
been about a year now. I know it's been a
year since I've seen you all for Shame Public about
a year ago, and I think that was the first
time that I had seen Crystal Ball.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Oh stix, so probably come sail Away, that's it.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
See, I didn't even get the title right.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
No you didn't. You're on the radio. Your seventies musical
knowledge cred just went down.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
This much more than that.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Redeem yourself, Lucy, you know how.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I'm going to redeem myself. I'm going to cut all
this out.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Because I.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Know the okay, but yeah, I did see that and
I thought the best.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Come Sailing or it could have been Lady Oh.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, we do play Lady Yeah, but it was it
was Come Saleway.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Okay, let's get that.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
We need to take two. It was the best performance
outside of Sticks of Come Sail Away I have ever heard,
and I gotta tell you it kind of gave Sticks
a little bit of a run for their money on it.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Uh wow, that's that's high praise. Well, we try to
do everything as real as we can. That's kind of
the whole Oh, I don't know. Thought behind pet Rock
as a band is to try to bring the most
authentic representation of that music to the fans, and we
even shoot beyond maybe a live version of this song
(02:52):
you've heard, and we try to hit the album version
as closely as we can, so it really takes you
to back to the time of hearing that music back
on AM radio, and so we're trying to recreate that.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
You mentioned about the need to kind of stay close
to the original renditions of the songs that you guys
are performing. I think that's one of the things that
really draws you or your fans in for the very
first time when they see your YouTube channel. Maybe they're
listening in the background, and they might be thinking they're
actually listening to Andrew.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Gold again, that we're hitting the mark. Then if you're
realizing that, yeah again. When we decided to put this
project together, we didn't want to do our renditions of
these songs because in our mind, these songs are perfect
pretty much the way they are, and that's what's so
great about this era of tunes that we're reproducing. So
they're already perfect. We're not trying to improve upon them.
(03:46):
You know, the recorded album version of let's say a
Boston song is as good as that song is ever
going to be to the ears of the listener. And again,
we want to take you back to that time when
you heard that on the radio. What were you feeling
back then? So great, we're hitting our mark, then that's good.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
And I think that a lot of artists try to
do that. Well, I'm going to redo this song on
our fourth set tonight or whatever, and it sounds nothing
or sounds off from the original, And I think that's
great for the artist. And I really do understand that
as somebody who wants to make it my own maybe
at some point, but when you start to do that,
people go, oh, bathroom break, oh right.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Well, and totally there's room for that, you know, an
interpretation of a great classic song. I mean, and many
great songs have been redone in another style and where
I'm off for that personally, it's just not what we
choose to do as a tribute to the seventies.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Good keep doing that, yeah, JJ Cruz. Now, you joined
pat Rock fairly recently, like April May now, but you
were a fan already, I mean, you knew the band. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
I been a musician in town for years and had
seen the band, and I was like, wow, me being
a musician, I saw probably one of your earliest shows,
one of the earliest pet Rock shows at Waiting Room.
You know, I was actively listening for they going to
get this part right, and.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
So you were probably pretty surprised when they wanted to
talk to you about possibly coming in and taking over
lead singing duties.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
The series of events that happened was really funny because
I didn't I think I had played with Maestro once
at a wedding, yeah yeah, and uh, I think I'd
met Steely Dana one time. Didn't know anybody else in
the band. So I got like three Facebook friend requests
and they were all members of pet Rock and I
was like, well, that's kind of weird. Whatever, that's cool,
(05:40):
and then got a message from Dana, Hey, send me
your phone number, got a question for you. Okay. I thought, well, okay,
something's going on here. I had no idea what was
going on. And then Dana called and said, hey, are
singers leaving? You know, are you interested? Do you even
like this music? I'm like, well, absolutely, I love the music,
you know, that was the first question, said, guy. Listen
(06:00):
to all this stuff regularly?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah. I mean when the time came and we needed
to hire a new vocalist, We've been in this scene
for many years as musicians. I mean I've been playing
around here for forty years. So we have a pretty
good idea of who's out there in the musician pool,
and jj was always when we went through our list
of okay, who can be the vocalist that we need,
(06:25):
it was like he was very high on the list immediately.
And then I think it was backstage at a show
we pulled up a video on YouTube of your band
playing a song and Jeremy was not only singing, but
he was playing the drums and hitting the Don Henley
song and we were like, Okay, this guy could do
it for sure. So yeah, I mean we had a
(06:48):
short list, but he was definitely at the top of it.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Let's talk about just some of the history that you
guys have both lived through played through. Pulled back the
curtain little bit. When I go out to the bar
or out to one of the outdoor events to see
a live band, what am I seeing?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Well, you're seeing people probably not getting paid very much
to get up there and do something for hours on
a time that they've worked a long time on. Yeah,
I mean that's the short of it. That wasn't probably
the greatest.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Well I think that that's true because I've known musicians.
My father was a musician, and.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, it's a lot of Yeah, you're most likely seeing
a lot of work has gone into something up there
that you know, this band or individual you're seeing maybe
getting compensated for and maybe not. I mean, being a
musician for many years you worked for very free or
paid to play.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
I had a chance to talk to you, Gordon Lightfoot
for just a few minutes backstage several years ago, and
he was telling me this story about how the old days.
He was talking about the old day and how you
would go into these bar joints, these little bear joints,
and they stunk and he didn't get any money, and
(08:08):
he's played for hours. And I said to him, I
bet you really missed that, and he looked at me
and he said, no, not at all. I was thinking
of the nostalgia and being young and what's ahead of you,
but he was not having any of it. So can
you kind of relate to that You've been playing music
(08:30):
for forty years, when you first started, you had this idea.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, no, I think that's such a great story. I
think it kind of has to do with the time
in your life and in your quote unquote music career
you're in. I mean, I'm sure JJ can back this up.
But when you're first starting out as a musician, I mean,
once you got out of practicing in your bedroom, then
you were maybe in the garage or basement of your
(08:57):
friend's house trying to play a few songs. I mean,
for me, that was me trying to be a guitar player,
which did not did not work out. It was meeting
my friend Mike at his basement and he'd be on drums,
I'd be on guitar and we'd be trying to play
Van Halen songs or whatever, you know, terribly or whatever music. Well,
then you graduated to what you were playing for us.
(09:20):
For me, it was high school dances, you know. Then,
you know, when you did get your band together and
practice it up, you play a high school dance like
Ario did Oh, Ario Speedwagon, You're right, cheap trick a
lot of them. But this was like at you know,
high schools around Omaha. You know. So we went through
that period and again I loved that period in my life.
(09:42):
But then you would graduate to At that time, before
we even played bars in Omaha, there were teen clubs,
and I don't know if you remember teen clubs. There
was a place called I think it was the Flip
Side on Blondo Street. It's now it's next to I
don't know. I don't know if it's a food for
less or grocery store. It was a teenage night club.
(10:03):
There used to be one in Irvington too.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
About eighty first, eighty second, eighty fourth and yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, and you know it was a place where they
didn't sell alcohol, they sold you know, refreshments, and our
band was able to start booking shows there. We started
putting on our own shows at these at these teen
clubs and charging a cover charge. You know. Then we
went into playing event little halls like in Blair. But
(10:29):
when you got into the clubs like bar Proper and
I'm thinking of for me, it was the Howard Street
Tavern was the first real gig I played by real
I mean, hey, bar crowd with alcohol and things like that.
You know, yeah, get the door, Yeah, where you get
the door where they charged what we charged the cover
charge and the bar would set the cover charge of
(10:50):
five bucks or whatever and that went to the band. Well,
the guy sitting at the door, unlet's he was your friend,
you know, at whatever club you're playing, you know, he's
he's taken money. Is he giving it all to you?
Who knows? You know, maybe maybe not. But I wouldn't
trade those days that was, you know, I don't want
to be there now, Well, get in.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
I get into this conversation all the time with my husband.
In fact, that's one of the ways that I kind
of got to know who pet Rock was because he
found you on YouTube and he said, you got to
watch this band. And then of course we both took
guitar lessons up at deets and I quit, and I'm
going back to it, going back to it.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Never quit playing guitar, I know, but I'm going to
do it.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
But we would get into these great conversations about the
musicians today and without disparaging any of our new artists
out there. Musicians today don't have what they had, what
you guys had when you started. You don't have that
desire to play, to perform and to be part of
the music.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
You didn't pay your dues in the hard times kid.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Well, even beyond that, the artist today they could go
on stage if they were sick or if they had
a cold, whatever, and the computers would just fix it and.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
They'd be fine.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
They don't have that. It feels like they don't have
that heart, most of them.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Yeah, it's way more authentic. I grew up a little different.
My dad's family is all musical. My dad still plays
and I get to play with him once in a while,
which is always fun. But I grew up my dad
needed a drummer when I was geez, I don't remember
early teens thirteen fourteen probably, so I ended up playing
(12:26):
bars with my dad.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You know.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
I still did some basement and garage rehearsals with some
people my age that we played music together. But I
kind of missed a lot of that era or that
phase of musicianship. You know, I've jumped right into the
playing bars.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah yeah, yeah, our bad mind. We're all contemporaries. My
family not musical. I was the lone musician in my family.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
That's why you couldn't play guitar.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Okay, still can't. So you got like forced into music
by your overbearing father.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, he had forced me to play drums. I need
a drummer.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Well, I got a kid right here that'll work for free.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
I think I just wanted to. I don't even know
how I started. Well for wanting to play music for
me was I think seeing bb King perform on television
was literally what sealed the deal for me. I saw
him and was just hypnotized. I mean he was at
the time, he was even sitting down but playing, just
(13:27):
playing the way he does and his left hand, the
way his left hand moved. I just was transfixed, and
I said, that is cool. I want to do something
like that. And then it was I got bit by
the Elvis bug. All the music of the fifties, Chuck
Berry and then quickly got hit on the head by
Kiss and Van Halen and then it was it. So
(13:50):
I came to it. You were indentured into it.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
I just grew up around it.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
My dad played with his parents in a band when
I was growing up. So my grandmother played until she
passed at age eighty eight. I think she passed away
and still played piano. You know, she'd always play in
the mood that was her song, you know. But my
grandfather passed away when I was three, I think, and
(14:16):
I got his drum set. So that's what got me
started when I was really young.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
So that's just started on the Omaha area, uh, northwest Iowa, Okay,
So you've kind of grown up with the regional or
the local band scene in one aspect or another.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I moved to Omaha in the early nineties and played
you know the twenties, the Ranch Bowl, you know ten
ten Club, Arthur's, Duncan's Arthur, Yes, back in the day.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Oh my god, the Chicago downtown that there's so many
great the stories of the Ranch Bowl and the talent
that we saw come through there, the talent we got
to play with being in the early nineties playing clubs
like that. Yeah, those were different days.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
I was on the tail end of the road days.
I was actually a traveling musician for I don't know,
three or four years about and I remember coming to
the Ranch Bowl and seeing the lineup of bands that
had been there, and I was like, oh they were here,
Like oh I missed them. I was in Wyoming or Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
They had so much great talent through there, and and
being a kid in your own at that time playing
a lot of original music of your own, you know,
in the early nineties, to get an opportunity to get
up there and open for a lot of these acts
was just something else. These were not just nobody's they
were bringing in I mean the Chili Peppers, Hohoskerdo, I
(15:49):
mean tons of great bands coming through there. And to
be like what an eighteen nineteen year old kid going,
hey can you Matt Marko calls you can your band
open for this? And You're like, Okay, when do I need.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
To be there?
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah? And you didn't even care if you got paid
at that point, you know, you were just happy, happy
to be there amongst that.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
And that's kind of what I meant earlier when you're
talking about the music of the seventies. The bands. Yeah,
the Eagles would show up on stage and whatever they
had on that day, with their t shirts and and
their jeans, and it wasn't a big production. It was
about the music.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, you didn't have to have a big dance posse
behind you and all this stuff. The musicianship was so
great that. I mean, the Eagles are famous for being
nothing to watch.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, they were actually accused of loitering on stage.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah yeah, yeah, just standing there on stage like that.
But you know, then, of course we had Kiss and
Alice Cooper in those eras that then took up the showmanship.
But so much of the music, it's that we again tribute. Boy,
it's hard to do, very hard, so you couldn't necessarily
(17:02):
be dancing around all the time and doing that stuff.
But yeah, the music is so great. The harmonies, the
orchestration of the instruments is pretty pretty dynamic and huge.
And it wasn't done by a fleet of producers. It
was either the guys in the bands working with one
producer and maybe an auxiliary songwriter. But you know, what
(17:26):
you saw on stage was a group of great musicians
that created a lot of this.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yeah, the seventies specifically were a very creative period for music.
You look at like Steely Dan, how creative they were
with chords and jazz chords in pop music. I mean,
who'd ever thought of that until Steely Dan did. Yeah,
I mean a lot of creative things happened in that decade.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Do you think that the artists of today have that
creativity or do you think the Adeles and the Pinks
and the Taylor Swift do they have the ability to
be that creative that Steely Dan was in the South
because they're kind of a product.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Now, Yeah, those artists specifically probably not. But I mean
Steely Dan had that band specifically had jazz backgrounds. So
there are musicians of that caliber, I'm sure that exist,
But to bridge into pop from the jazz world, that's
not gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Yeah, I mean, obviously there's amazingly talented musicians, my goodness,
all over, and there's great bands out there that are
doing a lot of great creative stuff. But yeah, a
dressing like the top tier of the pop charts and things, now,
I don't. Yeah, like you said, they're a product, there's
definitely a sound they're going for in a formula they're repeating.
(18:43):
So yeah, I think in many instances it is driven
by management who has maybe hired a producer that is
very good at doing crafting these kinds of hits that
play very well. So yeah, I think a lot of
those artists are funneled that way. But there's always great
creative artists out there, you just may never hear them.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
How do you feel YouTube or the Internet is affecting
music of local bands, regional bands, artists that have not
been discovered yet. How do you think the internet is
affecting those artists.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
It's a great avenue for getting exposure and for putting
out a product to be seen. Hopefully it catches and
spreads like a virus.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
I guess yeah, I mean it. It's definitely an avenue
that you can reach people on. It's a little bit
different with artists not really being paid royalties like they
used to. A lot of the money comes from actually
touring and if you can get the word out there
about your tour, where you're going to be able to
(19:46):
sell your merchandise and sell tickets if it's a ticket
to show. Yeah, the Internet it's amazing for that for
just crafting or developing great musicians and skills as a musician.
The Internet's amazing for that. I mean, look at all
the young You see a host of young people all
over that are amazing technical players, maybe of an instrument. Well,
(20:09):
when we were kids, I mean, if you had to
learn a song, let's say you had to oh gosh.
I remember very early on I had to learn Chuck
Berry to play at a high school function. And it's like, Okay, well,
how do I do this? Put the cassette on, play it,
try to figure it out, rewind it again a hundred times,
go back, and but well, now you can go to
(20:29):
YouTube and it's going to be like, here's how you
do it. So I think that for the development of
just good talent, technical talent, for sure, the internet's amazing
for that. And promotion, Yeah, you just got to know
how to work it because I mean there's a lot
of noise out there. It's a huge bunch of information
being pushed from people trying to get noticed.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
I guess the indie scene was really big in Omaha
in the nineties, and Omaha put up some pretty good
artists that went on to do very well. Were you
involved in the indie scene?
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, I was very much so in those days. You
weren't even were you here then? Was the early nineties, Yeah,
ninety one, ninety two, ninety three.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
I was around, but not really in that world at all.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah, we were most notably as three eleven out of
that era for being successful and just really forging identity
and a fan base that has lasted four years. But yeah,
I mean at that time, there was a lot of
a lot of publications. Industry publications were very interested. A
(21:35):
lot of record labels were looking for talent around the
Omaha area at that time. And I played with a
well notorious act at that time and we were called
by Spin magazine, Rolling Stone. We had record labels reach
out to us, and very famously, I remember our singer
at the time got a call from and I forget
(21:57):
who it was, which label, and they just said, hey,
we want to talk to you about your band, and
he said, you don't have enough f and money and wow,
I know, well, but that you know, we were indie
punks back then. Man, we didn't need them.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Were you guys fighting with the with the the punk like.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
The mohawk like mohawk punks.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
The punk movement through them all same time?
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Oh yeah. Those punk guys were around, sure at that time,
but we never had anything but camaraderie with local bands
at that time. I mean, we weren't. We weren't looking
at it really as competition because back in those indie days,
we were doing something that we felt was a radical
departure from all of that music. Anyway, we were, we
(22:40):
were playing well. We used to bill ourselves as the
loudest acoustic band in the world. You know, we were, Yeah,
we were. We were playing so loud and setting the
stage on fire and distributing pornography to the audiences, which
got us banned from the ranch Bowl. They think, oh yeah, yeah,
we were distributing. I think it was opening for three
(23:02):
to eleven at that time. They had hit big, and
we were playing a gig at Ranch Bow opening for
him and her singer. Same guy that told the record
label to go to hell was throwing out playing cards
that had like the old naked ladies on the one side,
cards from like the sixties and seventies, and he started
throwing those out to the audience, and Matt Markle, the
(23:23):
owner at that time, did not approve that and said
we'll never have them back. And then good old Roger Armstrong,
the old house sound engineer from there, who's since passed
away but was a wonderful champion of local music at
the time. I remember a couple weeks later he calls
us back and goes, you guys can come back, and
we're like, awesome. But so, we never really fought with
(23:46):
local bands or anything like that. We just had a
great time. It was a great time. A lot of
really good music, indie music out there that I still love.
I still have boxes of local CDs. I probably have
the biggest local CD collection from that era, I bet
of anyone.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
I think a lot of people at that time who
were not in the business, were not in the industry,
would hear these things about indie music and Omaha and
not really understand it. I'm for one of them. I
didn't really think that that was such a big deal
until much later, and I looked back on that and said, wow,
you know, the spotlight was really on Omaha at that time.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Yeah, it was kind of a little strange little couple
of years that it really was. Its eyes were turned here.
We also had some great local music rags and things
like that going around, and clubs that were really supportive
of that and sharkis my goodness, some great, great clubs
in town that were just into the local indie scene.
(24:45):
I mean, these were great clubs that would book bands
playing their original music all the time. Weekends were filled
with here's five local bands playing their own music at
these top clubs at the time, and that was that
was kind of unheard of. Now you don't see that.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
That was my next gie.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yeah, you don't see that at all. I mean you'll
see some. Obviously, there's some great I mean, you know,
the faint get together for a show or Bright Eyes
or things like that. Obviously there's some, but not as
a general rule. You're not getting big houses packed with
original music happening right now that I'm aware of. But
I'm an old geezer probably out of touch.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
JJ. When you came into Omaha in the nineties, it
had to be kind of a different atmosphere.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, it was. I went to college in Moorhead, Minnesota,
and we played a lot of clubs up in that
area for a while, and we were going to Kansas City,
Saint Louis. This is dumb to live in North Dakota.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
You know, Well, you can finish that sentence right there.
Period you have had anything else, it's like twenty below.
This is dumb.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Oh it's cold. I still have friends and former bandmates
that still live there.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
I winter in Fargo.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
No one says that, No one ever says that words
never spoken. Well, it just made sense as a band
for to move further south and Omaha. We were playing
three clubs in Omaha at the time, so it just
made sense to move to Omaha, and that's where I
ended up staying.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
So you went to the big city.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Yeah, it was a much different scene than Fargo, of course, So.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Yeah, I can imagine that would probably be a little
bit of a difference. What would you guys bring back
if you could, what aspect of music from the nineties,
live music from the nineties or in the early two thousands,
What would you bring back?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Boy, Yeah, that's I think. One of the things just
being a part of pet Rock is the popularity. That's
one thing that has kind of for most bands in town.
Popularity is it used to be pretty easy to play
a club, play rock songs and have a big Crowd's
that's a struggle anymore, and pet Rocks just they're popular
(26:50):
times ten. It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
I think maybe this will somewhat answer JJ's point or
speak to it and your question. I mean, I think
from that time, it was connection to your audience, because again,
back in those nineties, our little indie band had a
very dedicated group of people that loved that music, you know,
our music, and we had connections with him, And I
(27:13):
think why pet Rock A big part of why it
works is, yeah, not only does it great music people
want to hear, but we really try to connect with people.
The music makes those connections, you know. Again, like I said,
I always say, I hear these songs and I remember
being in the back, being in the suicide seats in
the station wagon of my parents' car, driving back from Lewisville, Nebraska.
(27:33):
We connect not only to those times, but personally, I
go every show, I go out if there's a break,
and I since the beginning of this band, I talk
to people and try to connect with them, and I
hear their stories. We get responses from people. My wife
just died and this song was one of our favorites,
and you guys play it and it brought me back
to this time. So I think that's maybe the thing
(27:56):
that is a little bit missing from most local I don't.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Know, maybe bring that you're kind of recreating that.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Try and do because I think that, you know, I mean,
music is in and entertainment in general, it's escape. It's like, yeah,
we're a tribute band. It's nostalgia. Well, nostalgia's nothing to
be scoffed at often. I mean, yeah, we're old Manuel
and get off my lawn, kid, But nostalgia it's a
feeling to where it's not saying everything new is bad,
(28:25):
it's going no. But these feelings that this music, that
these visuals we put on stage bring up in the
people that I think is part of why it's working
for us.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
That yeah, I mean that's something that specific songs can
just trigger a memory. Got songs that do that for me.
Everybody relates to that. That's one of the fun things
about this music.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
For sure, your audience is getting you're getting some younger
people in there.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Oh, I'm always amazed at the young people. We have
this young couple that comes to our shows and they're
in their early twenties and they come to so many
of our and they sing every word to every song.
And I'll go out there and be like, what in
the world you guys, how are you? And they're like, oh,
this is our music, just our last show. I think
(29:11):
the series we did at Slow Down, I met several
young young people that knew every and they'll all say,
my dad introduced us to this music. So I always
am like, you have great parents, and they're like, you're
right because they love this music. You know. We've always
had a little bit in with the younger crowd, and
I think it is kind of growing in that regard.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
That's fun. Yeah, there are friends of the band that
are our age and they bring their kids to the shows,
so you know, you sometimes see parents and kids together,
so that's always interesting.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
The seventies transcend all age limitations. There's a lot for
everyone in it. We always say we're what smooth rock,
and with the title smooth rock, it's like what is that?
And I think we posted a question to our social
media with the big resurgence of what yacht rock? Yacht
rock didn't even exist really as a term when pet
(30:03):
rock started to our knowledge really, so we always called
it smoothen smooth rock, and that came from how I
used to describe bass lines when I was younger. It's like, oh,
it has a real smooth sound. So I pose the question,
all yacht rock may be smooth, but it's all smooth
rock yacht rock, and I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
I don't think so either.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Chevy Van is not yacht rock, is it? Do you
ever heard chippy?
Speaker 1 (30:28):
I don't know what. But see, that's the problem with
yacht rock, that term, it's really undefinable. Consider it on
its base value yacht rock. Then you're listening to it
on a boat, or you're listening to it while you're
having fun with your friends and partying and stuff. Yeah,
so what song wouldn't fall under that category?
Speaker 3 (30:46):
I wouldn't call Styck's yacht rock. No, No, Chevy Van
like you said, yeah, yeah, there are others two Kansas, Yeah,
called Kansas yacht rock.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Smooth as a feeling deep down inside.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
So there it is the definition of smooth, and yacht
rock is a feeling.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah, you go out and you're you know, you're feeling
kind of groovy and you're smoothing. Man, you know, you're
having good thoughts while listening to a kick ass band.
You're smoothing. You know, you're having a Tom Collins kicking back.
You're smoothing. But we do break out some rock sometimes.
You know, we are a bunch of old rock musicians,
(31:24):
so sometimes we got to bust out Boston.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
It's because there's no rules and I love it. No,
I I think that's what's great about pet Rock and
some of the other bands that are are around town
right now. There aren't any rules.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Just do what you want, do what you want. No
one's going to tell me what to want.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Well, it has been such a pleasure having you both
in here, Duke Bradford and JJ Cruise from pet Rock.
You got a show coming up on February fourteenth at
the Astro for lovers. No, that doesn't have to be right.
It's times today. I'm just saying, you know.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Yeah, getting the spirit man. I love my dog.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Thanks so much for being here today. It was a
lot of fun going down that road with music in
Oma and your show. What is a good website?
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, I mean the website is www doe anymore I
don't even know, but it's petrockband dot com. And then yeah,
we're on YouTube, We're on Instagram, Facebook, all the usual.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Channels that is pet Rock. Come and see them on
February fourteenth. I'm sure you've got other dates coming up.
We're all getting our concert schedules filled out for the summer.
Where we're going to go and see who We got
to get pet Rock on there a couple of times.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Oh my gosh, we're all over in the summer. It's
kind of crazy. Our summer schedule is getting packed with
some really cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
You've run up to Okoboji again, Yes.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yeah, we'll be playing the Green Space and Okoboji on
fourth of July. I believe we are the fourth of July. Yeah,
that'll be fun. We haven't been back outside there for
a few years now, so.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
JJ welcome to the band from the fan base.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Yeah, they've all been very welcoming so far.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Thanks again, guys, and we will see you February fourteenth
at the Astro.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Thanks Lucy.
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