116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Blue Band sings its last goodbye
When Bob Dorr blows out the candles on his birthday cake next January, he'll be blowing out the candles on The Blue Band, too.
But until that big weekend blowout Jan. 12 and 13, 2018, in the Riverside Casino, the Blue crew is on the road with The Last Goodbye Tour.
It's a bittersweet time for Dorr, who turned 65 on Jan. 12. He thought about ending the band last year, after celebrating its 35th year, but he just wasn't ready. The road was still calling.
'What it boils down to is I'm a gig junkie,” he said from the headquarters of Hot Fudge Music. That's the record label and music production company he owns and operates from the Cedar Falls home he shares with his wife, Carolyn, who sometimes sings with the band.
He's produced more than 25 recordings of Blue Band music, and the nearby garage is where he puts together his Iowa Public Radio shows 'Backtracks,” 'Blue Avenue” and 'Beatles Medley.”
It's the band that's been his baby, however, and it's hard to let go.
'I don't have children, and essentially, The Blue Band has been my only child since I was 29 years old,” he said. 'This has been kind of an emotional roller coaster already, and I'll bet it will just magnify itself as it goes along.
'The Blue Band literally has given me a sense of purpose, and I think all humans need a sense of purpose in order to maintain some kind of sanity and reason to get up in the morning. So from that standpoint, I'm a little anxious as to what's next,” he said.
The last State Fair gig, the last Cedar Rapids Freedom Festival gig - the last this and the last that - were too hard to contemplate last year. But he's steeling himself for these moments as the band goes on its last tour this spring and summer.
'This gives me an opportunity to actually live in the moment for all of these ongoing Blue Band gigs,” he said.
So why hang it all up? Staffing woes, which morph into money woes.
'Once I get up on stage driving the seven- or eight-piece band, it's pure heaven,” Dorr said. 'But assembling all of those things - getting seven or eight people at a specific location and driving the 10 mile-per-gallon truck - comes down to the economics of modern day music. It's just very difficult to monetize music these days, especially with a very large band. Eight people on the road just doesn't make sense anymore.”
That wasn't so hard in the beginning.
The band sprang up in summer 1981 to pick up three remaining contracted gigs after the Little Red Rooster Band broke up. Dorr and Molly Nova on bass, violin and vocals had been with that group since 1977, so they rounded up four more people and hit the stage as Bobby's Blue Band on June 10, 1981, at the Cooper Wagon Works in Dubuque.
Those first three gigs turned into 125 performances per year, mostly within 300 miles of the Cedar Valley home base, but taking the band as far afield as Colorado ski resorts, Sun Valley in Idaho and the international Bluestock Celebration in Memphis, where they played at B.B. King's nightclub on the famed Beale Street. The band has played the major Midwestern blues festivals, including the Kansas City Jazz & Blues Festival, and opened for the biggest names in the business, from B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Tower of Power to Maria Muldaur and Leon Russell.
Joining Dorr nearly every step of the way is guitarist Jeff Petersen of Waterloo, who came onboard in September 1981. They are the only two players from that first year remaining in the band - and the only two for whom gigs are their primary income. Everyone else in the rotating lineup has a day job.
'Jeff Petersen is the unsung hero of the whole thing,” Dorr said. 'He's the world's greatest band member, pure and simple.” He also penned the tour's signature song, 'The Last Goodbye.”
Over the years, the band's name has changed and musicians have come and gone, but the quality has never wavered for Eastern Iowa's 'blue-soul-rockabilly-reggae band.”
'I believe the Blue Band can rightly claim to have more inducted Iowa Blues Hall of Famers than any other band,” said Dorr, who was inducted into the Iowa Rock 'n' Roll Music Association Hall of Fame in 2000 as a KUNI radio deejay and 2007 with the band, as well as the Iowa blues Hall of Fame in 2005. 'We've seen many, many very skilled people come and go. That's a point of pride.”
The tour launched this winter in Parnell and Cedar Rapids, and just as Dorr hoped, many longtime fans came to reconnect and reminisce.
The end of the band isn't the end of Dorr and Peterson hitting the road. They regularly play two or three times a week in duos, trios and other small combos, and will continue to do so.
'I'm still going to be able to get my music fix,” Dorr said.
l Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com
Bob Dorr The lineup for Bob Dorr & The Blue Band changes according to who's available any given night. But for the New Year's Eve party at the Artisan's Sanctuary in its former Cedar Rapids site, the lineup featured (from left) drummer John Rohlf, vocalist Cathy Henry, guitarist Jeff Petersen, frontman Bob Dorr, bassist Doug Norton, sax player Nolan Schroeder and Brian Crew on trombone. All live in the Cedar Falls/Waterloo area except Norton, of Marshalltown.
The Gazette Bob Dorr, founder of Bobby's Blue Band, which eventually became Bob Dorr & The Blue Band, rocks among the crowd while playing the harmonica during a party in Bever Park in Cedar Rapids on Aug. 18, 1985. At age 12, Dorr said he 'wanted to be John Lennon,' but his dad bought him a drum set. 'So I became Ringo, instead.' He still plays drums on occasion, rubs his trademark washboard necktie, strolls through the crowd with his harmonica, and sings as The Blue Band's frontman.
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