The Band

MALCOLM KIRBY They say he comes “from down south somewhere”; nobody seems to know exactly. We do know there are Scots immigrants, a tough, ethnic melting-pot coastal city bordering the Mason-Dixon line involved, as well as an unaccounted-for period rumored to have been spent wandering Celtic Britain, N.Africa, and the Slav-Balkan highlands, as well as the odd foray to New Orleans. The results take various forms: all kinds of basses and guitars, Lap Steels, Celtic and Cajun Fiddle, some rather obscure local instruments, The Great Highland Bagpipes... We are told he thinks there is no reality but music and that all else (including music) is a dream. He listens Real Hard.

HOWIE LESTER, well known Cajun/zydeco fiddler (formerly with Chanka Chank) was kidnapped by Gypsies and first picked up the fiddle in an effort to escape. Surrounded by assassins he grabbed a fiddle and began playing with such intensity that his assailants dropped their weapons and began dancing. Howie has since then always played as if his life depended on it...

Accordion maestro ZACH KUVIZIC was a child prodigy and well known throughout Eastern Europe as “BABY ZACH.” A large child he reached 6 feet by his 11th birthday but was still forced to wear short pants and toddler clothes by his step-mother exploiting the popularity of “The Babe.” Forced to flee from angry mobs when, as a result of politics within the Serbian musicians union, his real age was revealed, he wound up in Rochester just in time to regain his lost childhood by playing with BaZaHa-LaLa.

BARBARA JOHNSTON learned drumming while in prison for smuggling oboes. She earned a pardon when she turned her cell bars into a giant marimba and hypnotized more than 1000 inmates. She travels the world promoting the “talking drum” cure as an alternative to armed conflict.