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The Fabulous Schubert Brothers Band |
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Biographies of Band Members: |
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Will Schubert: Guitar, Harmonica, Vocals Raised in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas I guess my earliest musical exposure was that of my father singing Lovesick Blues in the shower. He was a HUGE Hank Williams fan. Before the arts were cut from our educational system we actually were exposed to a variety of music as part of a well-rounded education. I distinctly remember being moved in second grade music class by, what I later came to learn was "communist music", This Land is Your Land, the late, great Woody Guthrie tune. Just seemed so American to me even at that young age. My mother, a clarinetist in college, allowed us to take music lessons as children. I was a percussionist in Junior High. Soul music was our thing then - Otis Redding, James Brown, etc. We were SO into it. Fast forwarding to sophomore year of high school. I’m listening to Allman Brothers, Stones, Traffic, Doors, Mothers of Invention, Springsteen and most of the other GREAT rock bands of the era. We’re living in Houston, Texas now where my good friend (and great guitarist), Dave Martin, loaned me a ¾ sized Gibson guitar and I started learning 3 chord Bob Dylan songs on it. During that same year (1972) Jim and I went to the Santa Rosa Theatre, in Houston, and saw John Prine and Steve Goodman. Around the same we saw this evening of balladeers, Leon Russel released his Hank Wilson’s Back album. These two, almost simultaneous, events changed my life. No more rocking for about a decade as I immersed myself in traditional American music - country swing, bluegrass and country & western music. It’s been such a great journey since then that it would be difficult to choose just a few of the highlights to share. Buck Owens, so many of the Texas Playboys before their deaths, Gatemouth, Merle, Conway, George, Red Stegall, Bob - the shows I’ve seen over the years have been such a musically expanding part of my life it’s hard to verbalize. Then there’s the blues. Forget about it. Suffice it to say I have been fortunate in my life to have had (or made) the opportunity to see just about everyone I’ve ever wanted to see. No, I never saw Jimi, Woody, the Beatles or Bob Wills, himself (although I have seen the Playboys on many occasions). I’m not that old! But, I have seen (& heard) pretty much EVERYONE else you’d care to mention. Yes, I’m that blessed. In college, Jim and I started "The Fabulous Schubert Brothers" act. We did it, on and off, until he moved to OC in 1980. We were both starting careers and families and, being 1,800+ miles apart, it was tough to rehearse, so we suspended the act indefinitely. But, he kept playing and I kept playing. I lived in Austin and Dallas, primarily over the next 20 years. Doing a single act mostly, but also I'm a founder of The Bleeding Peptic Ulcers out of Dallas, TX. (If you ever have a chance to see the BPU’s, do yourself a favor and go. Tell 'em Will says, "Hi.") Request Sirloin Stockade. They’ll know you’re old school. In May of 2000 I moved to SoCal and within weeks The Fabulous Schubert Brothers’ Band was back on stage performing that unique blend of Blues, Folk, Swing, Bluegrass and Country you’ve all come to know and love. Jim Schubert: Guitar, Mandolin, Vocals Born in Charleston, S.C. in 1953, I started taking piano lessons at age 5 from a neighborhood piano teacher. I learned to read music about a year before I learned to read English. I remember sitting for hours at the old upright in the basement with a Stephen Foster songbook, playing songs like Camptown Races and My Old Kentucky Home. When we moved to Arkansas the piano didn’t make the move, but I started saxophone lessons in the fifth grade and guitar in the sixth grade and began playing in garage bands around age 12 or thirteen. It was 'Louie, Louie,' 'House of the Rising Sun,' Monkees, and Stones tunes. About a year later in 1968 I joined up with some guys from school, ages 14 to 18, from school in Hot Springs, Arkansas. They had just started a soul band doing Otis Redding, James Brown, Sam and Dave, Percy Sledge, Johnny Taylor, the Righteous Bros. covers. That soul sound just took us away and we became obsessed with learning how to play it. The band was four white guys, four black guys so we got gigs playing on both sides of the tracks, and there were pretty clear divisions there at that time. We integrated our band about two years before the high school in town integrated. A lot was happening in the country musically that eventually made it to Arkansas. In addition to the country music on the Saturday afternoon TV shows and the Beatles and Motown on the radio, we started hearing Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and Sly Stone. Mike Bloomfield and the Electric Flag really opened our eyes. Then in spring of '69 our family moved to Houston, Texas. I didn’t know anyone there, but I was playing sax in the school band. The band teacher started a jazz band, which was my first real exposure to trying to play jazz. After graduating from high school I was kind of adrift so I enrolled at University of Houston. A trombonist and graduate teacher named Aubrey Tucker was starting a jazz ensemble program there that year and I joined up, playing tenor and baritone sax and flute and studying music theory for a couple of years. I was living in a house with some people who had acoustic guitars and were playing folk, country, and early country-rock stuff coming over from Austin. A friend, Bill Galbraith, had an old Gibson A-style mandolin that had been in his family for years. No one was playing it so I picked it up one day in the spring of '74 and that was it. I became immediately obsessed with the instrument. I had no teacher, but I met a mandolin player in the neighborhood, Becky Smith. She had a band - The Cypress Swamp Stompers- with her brother Malcolm Smith and future husband, Pat Fowler. They were living and playing around the Montrose area in Houston. I figured out a few chords on the mando and started jamming with them. I learned a few fiddle and Cajun tunes from Malcolm Smith, who was a good fiddler. I was self-taught for years, playing in bluegrass and country bands in Houston and Austin with banjoist Chris Hirsch, who would go on to be three-time Texas state banjo champion. A bluegrass mandolin player in Austin, Dennis McDaniels, was an inspiration to us. A fireman who played a homemade mandolin, he really had that solid bluegrass backbeat chop and knew a lot of tunes. Austin fiddler Alvin Crow had a western swing band that really cooked and I caught the western swing bug, too. In addition to Alvin, Ray Benson and Asleep at The Wheel were playing around town, and I got to see the Texas Playboys when they did their reunion gigs in ’76. I saw Johnny Gimble playing jazz solos on his electric mandolin and it blew my mind. I spent the summer of '78 in San Marcos, Texas where my brother Will was a student at S.W. Texas State University. We picked up a few local gigs at restaurants and honky-tonks and the Schubert Bros. Band was born! We had a blast but it was short-lived. I soon moved to Orange County, Cal. and immediately joined a country band, Haywire, that worked steadily for several years. We had a very dynamic fiddler, Kim Gault (now Kim Angelis), and a great drummer, Brian August, who is also a fantastic singer. During that time I attended a workshop at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in LA with legendary mandolinist Jethro Burns, and once again my mind was blown by his playing. He played the mando like a cross between Django Reinhardt and Chet Atkins, while casually telling jokes and drinking beer! By this time, I had married. My wife, Twila, and I lived in Huntington Beach, Cal. with our two daughters, Shawn and Sharon. Twila became friends with a singer named Cathryn Craig, who was working with Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers. Cathryn wanted to record some songs Twila and I had written. She showed them to Bill Medley and he wanted to produce them. So I found myself in the studio with Bill Medley of the Righteous Bros., one of my early heroes from the soul band days. Through that project I met some guys from Bill’s road band, Michael "Bubba" Eachus on organ, and John Arevello, a great guitarist from San Antonio, Texas, and Colin Cameron, a fantastic bassist who had worked with Mike Nesmith and the Dillards. We started a band for a while playing blues, jazz, country- anything we felt like playing. When that faded out, I retreated into family life. I became a single father in 1984 when Twila suddenly got sick and passed away. Devastated, I tried to carry on. The next fifteen years of my musical life were mostly confined to my living room as I struggled to find a way of making a living that did not involve being out in night clubs every night. I was looking for something I was suited for that would allow me to raise children on my own. The sound and recording industry seemed like a likely place for me to start, eventually leading to a career in the A/V integration business which I still pursue. In 2000 my brother Will moved to southern California and it wasn’t long before we had The Schubert Brothers Band rolling again. We started out as a duo, growing to a trio when we met John Alden, a bass and guitar player from Alpine, Texas, who lives in Huntington Beach, Ca. We continue to develop our Tex-Grass sound, playing around the Orange County and LA area wherever we can find an audience. We all have other careers. I finally learned not to give up the day job, but still keep on pickin’. I’ve learned that I can’t give up music, and neither can I completely give myself over to it. I feel like I’m on a lifelong musical quest, searching out those crossroads where country meets the blues, where fiddle tunes meet jazz, where ancient folk tunes shine a light on current issues. My heroes are the people that went to these places- Bill Monroe, Bob Wills, Ray Charles, Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, Otis Redding, Joni Mitchell, Clifton Chenier, Willie Nelson, Doug Sahm, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle... the list goes on and on. I’m blessed to share this quest with my wife Lydia, who has more innate musical sense than most musicians- she can always tell the real thing from the imitation. And I always feel fortunate to be on stage with my brother Will, and with John Alden. Their love and enthusiasm for the music comes through every time they pick up their guitars. I’m always ready to go with them to play for the people.
John Alden: Bass, Vocals John's been a recording artist since he was 20 and is a classically trained guitarist. He has a degree in Midi Technology. He is the preeminent source of Beatle trivia and can be counted on to know the answer to almost any question on the lads. His major disappointment was that he and Deb had to cancel their private Beatle tour of Liverpool this year. (Next year for sure!) He's the producer on wife Debra's solo albums. He plays guitar with The PD band. But he also plays bass guitar with The Locals, and with the Schubert Brothers (Deb calls them The Hillbillies) and anyone who asks him. Yes girls, John and Deb are married. John's favs: OK, number one--I love my dogs. Sunday morning political shows, The Center Band, Alan Watts, Dandelion greens and flaxseed. Newcastle or Red Zin, Mexican food, maple cookies, strawberry ice cream, new strings, our backyard--especially the fountain, my Takamine Jumbo and G&L 5 string bass, our kids: Mallory, Nicole and Matt, The Beatles, Mozart, Debussy, The Moody Blues, Jobim, Miles, Steely Dan, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash...and Deb. I love Deb. will@schubertbrothers.com HOME BIOS SONGS GIGS LINKS BOOK COPYRIGHT © 2007 - 2011 |
