Mel chatted with Gregg “Hobie” Hubbard, keyboard player for Sawyer Brown. Sawyer Brown has been performing together for 38 years and he says they are still having fun.
They got the name of their band from a phone book. Sawyer Brown was a street name. Gregg says they were putting together a list of names and they wanted it to sound like a person. Sawyer Brown was a name they could all remember, and nobody hated, within the band, so they decided to run with it.
Gregg says when they first started playing clubs it was five sets a night, and if they had a five- night gig they would look for one night somewhere, so they always worked six nights a week. He says on Mondays they would each go home with $15, $20 or $25 nights so they weren’t high paying gigs. The best thing he says, is that you figure out how much you want something. When you are sleeping in a renovated school bus in a parking lot in San Angelo Texas, you say do you really want this or is it just easier to go home, and we just refused to go home.
When asked about Buffalo stories, Greg talks about a group of guys who are probably all in their 30’s now and have been seeing them forever and they call themselves the Buffalo Boys. He says they somehow manage to get up front and sing louder than we do. He says we know if they are there and we’re just sort of background noise to whatever party they are have going on and he would be very surprised if they don’t show up and sing loud.
Sawyer Brown is playing at the Erie County Fair on August 12th and you can get tickets at ecfair.org
