LOCAL BANDS: A BLEND OF TALENT AND STYLE

Members of the band Solid State performed at Rivers Edge. Band Members are, clockwise from front left, Ed Strauser, Jonathan Ford, Brian Daugherty and Lance West.

The Acme Blue Band performs regularly at Broussard's Cajun Cuisine. Playing from left are, Steve Pirtle, Tom Bloodworth, Aaron Chandler, Bill Shivelbine. Not shown are Al McFerron and Greg Shivelbine.

Lance West, guitarist, and Brian Daugherty, drummer, jammed while Ed Strauser listened. Strauser never thought about playing in a band seriously. That night he picked up his bass guitar and started to play.

Last September 19-year-olds Strauser, West, and Daugherty formed Solid State. Their band joined the other talented locally grown bands that perform here every week.

After playing for friends and at gigs at Southeast Missouri State Unviersity, Solid State's lead singer, Jonathan Ford, joined the group. Ford, the oldest member of the four-member band, said the group's music is a mixture of hip-hop and rock.

"We are not an alternative band," he said. "Alternative became main stream, we are not."

Ford said the band uses their own original music and they play a blending of different styles to make a new sound.

They plan to make a CD next month on the campus of Webster College in St. Louis and will record 11 to 12 of their own songs.

The band's name reflects the union of the members into one group and their future goals.

"We are all individuals but when we play we are one," said Ed Strauser.

"We want to be the best possible musicians we can be."

While Solid State may be a local fledgling group, the Acme Blues Band has been popular in the Cape Girardeau area music scene for years.

Formed in 1988, the band started with three members.

All local boys, the current Acme Blues consists of drummer Greg Shivelbine, drums; Greg's cousin, Bill Shivelbine, saxophone; Tom Bloodworth, bass guitar; Al McFerron, keyboards; and Steve Pirtle, guitar.

Bloodworth said the band started playing top 40, but developed into a blues band.

"We enjoyed playing the blues," he said. "We play the blues at least once a month at Broussard's."

In April the band made the final cut to play in the Crossroads Music Exposition on Beale Street in Memphis.

The band, which plans to make a CD, plays around the group's everyday lives.

McFerron is a music teacher in Chaffee, the Shivelbines and Bloodworth are in the music store business and all the musicians juggle their playing dates around their families.

Billy Keyes, 24, and lead singer of the local band, Papa Aborigine, said his band has a unique blues-rock feel to their music.

"We are an experimental band," he said. "But we are not just alternative; it's hard to put a label on us."

The band, who also made the cut to the Crossroads Music Exposition in Memphis, is a well organized four member band.

Keyes, who plays the keyboard and trumpet, plays with Keller Ford, drummer/vocals/percussion; Chris Ford, bass guitar/vocals; Alex Allen, guitar; Heath Lucas, road manager; and Lucas's brother Brad Lucas, lighting/artwork.

Members of Papa Aborigine write most their own music.

Keyes said he prefers to play the songs they have written, such as "Fortune and Fame" and "Summer Stone."

He said playing other people's songs is not original enough.

"When we go out to play other people's songs we have to imitate another band's music," he said.

The band plays locally as much as possibl,e including charity benefits. On July 25, at the River City Yacht Club above Port Cape, the band will play during a benefit for pancreatic disease victim, Sam Godwin.

The event should be well attended.

"When we play in town," said Keyes, "we get a good crowd."

Crossroads Music Exposition media relations representative, Bob Camp, has made a name for himself in Cape Girardeau over the years.

Camp started playing in Cape Girardeau in the 70s pushing his own political messages of the time with his band, Chimes of Freedom.

In the 80s he went to Nashville. Living on Music Row, Camp was the manager of a major recording studio.

In 1996 the Bob Camp Project 2000 came on the scene. The band does a regular rotation at Broussards and other local establishments.

After playing at 11 clubs, within a two-block area of Beale Street in April, Camp feels his band's exposure and networking has widened but he still remains a Cape Girardeau tradition.

Bob Camp Project 2000 is more than just one band.

"Project 2000 is not a democratic band. It's Bob Camp's band. I hire who ever is available depending on the job and the budget," he said.

Some of the musicians that play for Project 2000 are quite famous.

Recently playing for the project at a local bar, The Country Club, was Nashville's Don Kendrick, who Camp said plays regularly with Freddie Fender.

Other musicians who regularly join the Project are: Drummers Kevin Gilmore of Portageville and Kelly Keene of Cape Girardeau; bass guitarists Doug "Handgun" Gordon of Memphis, Keith Knudson of Cape Girardeau and Lindsay Bowerman of Cape Girardeau, guitarists Brad Springmeyer of St. Louis and Bruce Zimmerman of Jackson.

Camp said although his band is a local band they spend a lot of time on the road.

"We are the only band in Cape Girardeau that travels on a regular basis," he said. "We spent the first quarter of this year out of town. We do a half a dozen one to three week mini-tours a year."

Camp writes his own songs. "D.W.I. over Y.O.U." and "Tragic Love" have become request favorites.

Making a CD is a band goal.

"I would like to see the band finish a CD before the end of the year," he said. "We have experience and notoriety all around Southeast Missouri but we don't have a CD."

Promoting local bands in downtown Cape Girardeau is a personal goal of Camp's.

"Providing the downtown Cape Girardeau merchants keep an open mind, local bands playing here would literally mean millions of dollars in revenue to the city."