Speaking for WPGU is Ashish Patel and Speaking for Kilborn Alley is Tom Duncanson.

WPGU: How did all of the members of Kilborn Alley meet and when did you officially become a band?

KA: Andrew "D" Duncanson, Chris Breen, and the original drummer in the band, Anthony Decerbo (today a rap artist with a good following around C-U) knew each other since kindergarten at Holy Cross School in Champaign. That would have been 1987. Andrew met Josh Stimmel in bonehead math class at Centennial High School in 1998-99. D was wearing a Jimi Hendrix shirt, and they started talking guitar. The band jammed a lot in a garage on W. Clark in Champaign, played their first house party in January 2000. Duncanson and Decerbo were still in high school, Breen had graduated early and was in a special auto repair program at Parkland, and Stimmel was studying guitar and making in-roads in the pizza industry. They put together a four song sampler cd (earthshaking stuff like "Going to Iowa City") and got their first bar gig at The Neil Street Pub on April 29th of that year. Gigs came steadily, and they got up at every open jam they could find, especially Tuesday nights at The Canopy. An amazing young harmonica player named Joe Asselin had moved to town from Maine that year. By the fall of 2000 Joe was in the band. Jaden Brooks, son of long time Champaign blues and country band regular Bruce Brooks, took over the drumming that fall when Decerbo went to college. In 2005 long-time C-U drumming stalwart Ed O'Hara (several country and blues bands, notably a long run with Billy Galt and the Blues Deacons) joined the band. In the last year soul singer Abraham Johnson has frequently joined the band for gigs. As of this week, Kilborn Alley has played over 640 shows (not counting private parties), mostly four hour bar gigs, in 100 different bars and many other types of venues.

WPGU: How would you describe the music you play, and who or what are some of your influences?

KA: Kilborn Alley plays filthy Chicago party blues! Also, what is known as "southern fried soul" and sometimes some "funk." The goal is to reach into your ear to find your spine, pull it out, twist it, soak it in barbeque sauce, and then make it get up and dance. The baseline influence is Muddy Waters. Next would be the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, with Mike Bloomfield on guitar. But the band is enormously influenced by Junior Wells, Little Walter, Elmore James, Jimmy Reed, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Magic Sam, Otis Rush, B.B. King, Big Mamma Thornton, Buddy Guy, Coco Taylor, Freddie King, and our guy, the late Little Milton, and then further influenced by almost everything else that marches under the label "blues." We have listened a lot to people most European Americans have never heard of-- Joyce Lawson, Johnny Taylor, Tyrone Davis, Artie White, Denise Lasalle, and others. Though we like the guy's music, Kilborn Alley defines itself against the sound of Stevie Ray Vaughan, who, through no fault of his own accidentally redefined "blues" as whopping guitar sounds, today usually played through lots of "effects pedals."

Today we write a lot of the songs we play, and our songs are driving a lot of fabulous classics off of our play list or back to the third set. We are putting our life experience into the old forms, delivering them fresh with a lot of energy, and sometimes a sly sense of deliberate imitation or a wised-up sense of innovation.

WPGU: What are some venues you frequently play?

KA: For a long time we were overplayed in C-U, with a weekly gig at Tommy G's, a semi-weekly at Jackson's Ribs-n-Tips, and then frequent shows at the Iron Post, the Cowboy Monkey, The Canopy Club, The Phoenix, the Neil Street Pub, the Malibu Bay Lounge, and others. When we weren't in C-U we were on the road with trips to Decatur, Bloomington, Peoria, Kankakee, Chicago, Springfield, the Quad Cities, and forays into Indiana and Iowa. We took off most of the fall of 2005 to record a new album, coming out on Blue Bella this spring, and now we are going about the task of reinventing a local-regional schedule while hoping to get national and international representation.

WPGU: What is your recording history, and is Kilborn Alley planning on making any future recordings?

KA: We did a couple of self-produced things in 2001, one based on a "WEFT Session," then a much better self-produced album ("The Kilborn Alley Blues Band") in 2003. Now we have a new album, recorded in Elgin and produced by Chicago blues master Nick Moss, coming out on Blue Bella this spring. Twelve songs from "The Kilborn Alley Blues Band" were used in the soundtrack of the independent feature film "Envying Alice."

WPGU: Is there anything else you would like to inlclude in your bio?

KA: Probably the thing you need to know about Kilborn Alley is that we love the U of I audience. We even put out a novelty song about the basketball team last year. We've been on the bill at The Canopy over 100 times. But college students are just one happy corner of our audience. We play for bikers and farmers and people coming off the second shift at factories. We play for connoisseurs at blues festivals and blues society functions. And it is our very great privilege to play for a mature African American audience who grew up on this music.

The last thing you need to understand is that we have a good local blues scene, and the older players on that scene and local promoters and venue operators across a lot of genres of music have been very generous in including us these last six year. The Kilborn Alley story is the story of their willingness to take a chance on the oxymoron, the "young blues band."

Thanks for asking!