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Hometown: Belton, Texas, USA

Influences: No influences given.

Website: http://www.rodgerduncanband.com

Our Story:

It all started with a chance meeting at a club in Temple, Texas, then a meeting via some common acquaintances, & over 8 years later the foursome known as the Rodger Duncan Band is still going strong. Each member of the quartet will tell you that it seems like the trip just started yesterday, and it’s been a damn good one to boot.

The blues had a hold on ‘em (circa ’98-2000)
The early stages were as a blues band; some folks still call them the Rodger Duncan Blues Band. Playing clubs and jammin’ on Muddy, Howlin’ Wolf, Jimmy Reed, and Albert King among others. During this time, the band met many wonderful local musicians and was fortunate to hook up with a couple of horn players (Willie Moss & Pat Trahan) that sat in so much, most people thought they were part of the regular lineup. The band also had a love for jazz, which jumped in on the band’s sound through tunes like “Coming Home Baby” and Zachary Breaux’s “135th Street”. With the help of Miles Ellis on the soundboard, the band was tightening up its sound and making a name for itself in Central Texas.

The foundation of the house was built here, and it still remains.

Maybe Blue (circa 2000-’02)
The guys always had a love for many different types of music, and by this point they were gravitating towards getting out their own music. Rodger was always coming up with ideas, and as fate would have it the rest of the guys happened to be tuning in to whatever radio station he was broadcasting from that guitar. A lot of times he could start playing some guitar chords or a lick and the guys would fall in right behind him, like they had already practiced the song several times before; even though that was the first time they heard what he was throwing at ‘em (still the case today). The other guys in the band also started bringing in songs and ideas, and soon the band had 9 complete songs that were already being included in the set lists at gigs. This musical evolution culminated in a band landmark, the self-produced release of the band’s first “official” CD, Maybe Blue.

Tracks such as “Maybe Blue”, “Bottom’s Up”, and “Claudine” stayed true the blues beginnings of the band, but as the CD progressed you could hear other things creeping in. “Ode to Piglet/Nahara” was a latin based excursion that is still hard to describe to this day, but remains a band & fan favorite; “Five Years” was a blues/R&B tinged reggae song; and then you have the absolute treasure “That’s For Sure” to round out the disc. The band received a good response to the CD and sold many copies. Now the band was ready to take another step forward.

Hummingbird (circa 2002-present)
The best way to describe the next portion of the band’s journey is in Jon’s invitation to family, friends, and fans for the February 2006 CD release party……....

Dear Family, Friends, and Fans,
Well, it’s been a long time coming, but we’ve finally done it. We finished the Hummingbird album. The official release date of Maybe Blue, coincidentally being February 15th, 2002 (CD release party @ Bum’s), some of you “maybe” wondering what took us so long to complete this one. So I am writing this biography as a tale, account, reason, explanation….or excuse...(what have you), for why it took so long.

As I find and 8-track recording (we did) titled, “Jamming and Ideas” Vol.2, dated August 1st and 7th, 2002, the songs apparently began to take shape at this time. Over the course of 2003 and ’04, working these songs into our gig list, we started to get tight on the music and hungry to get it recorded. Soon we would find ourselves with more songs than we could possibly fit on to a single compact disc. Thanks to Rodger’s creative abundance, song writing production for this album would not be a limiting factor.

On September 28th and October 8th, 2004 we did an 8 –track (scratch) recording of what would be the blueprint of the album. We wanted to do a more professional sounding album this time so we saved up our pennies and booked studio time in a studio in November. A weekend later we would find ourselves with our pocketbooks empty and a good idea of how we did not want to do this album. Things just didn’t work out.

After the frustration and agony of this setback, we went back to the drawing board one last time and decided to give it a go of our own. By this time, Brian and I had accumulated enough recording equipment between the two of us to create a “DIY” makeshift 16-track studio right inside Rodger’s house. After a few hours of set-up, we had a bedroom and bathroom for isolation booths, a living room for a drum room, and cords stretched from one end of the house to the other. We then spent a couple of evenings with Miles fine tuning the levels on the board and on February 19th, 2005 we recorded the basic instrument tracks that would eventually become the album you are hearing today.

The next few months would consist of vocal overdubs, some guitar solo edits, a couple of bass edits, one drum addition that I recall, and a couple of percussion tracks. Most of what you hear are actually original takes played together, live. After settling for what we had, knowing that some things could always be better, I would get a crash course in the art of mixing with some help of the ears of the other guys. By May 10th, we had three songs with satisfying mixes to take for a trial run of mastering at Terra Nova Digital Audio in Austin. We went there on June 8th and really started to get an idea of what the album would sound like completed. I kept mixing and we played a couple of gigs the next couple of months to pay for the rest of the mastering. We went back for Jerry Tubbs to put the icing on the cake on October 18th, and I must say, I would highly recommend his mastering to anyone. It’s definitely worth the money!

The holidaze would have us scrambling and hashing out artwork and layouts to package the CD for duplication. Another thanks to Lea for doing a great job on the album cover, and to Affordable Sound in Austin for doing the duplication.

So with writing, recording, mixing, mastering, duplication behind us, (explanation for time, ha-ha!), and CDs in hand, I can say that I am proud of what we’ve accomplished. We hope you enjoy listening and maybe we will see you at the CD release party on February 18th.

Sincerely,
Jonathan and the
rest of the Band

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