Artists:Old Time Country & Blues Revue

Old Time Country & Blues Revue

Dave "DK" Kolars migrated from North Central Kansas to DeKalb, IL after college in 1967, and immediately fell into the existing music scene, mostly church basement coffeehouses -- in those days, DK played mostly Old Time music on the guitar, having been lucky enough to go to college at Kansas State University with a fellow by the name of Jay Ungar, with whom DK played for a couple of years in an Old Timey string band... Of course, that wasn't enough to satisfy DK, so he also played the blues and some bluegrass as well as the folk music of the time.

After a stint with a bluegrass/jug band (The Kishwaukee River Valley Ramblers) in the late '60s, DK spent a lot of time playing solo, performing at all the local venues that existed in DeKalb, still mostly church basement coffeehouses (!) but with the addition of the La Cache series at the Student Center at NIU, as well as teaching guitar at the former Palmer Music. In 1971, DK became a founding member of The Pleasant Street String Band. This group lasted for about 2 years, during which time they played at most of the major clubs in the N. IL and S. Wisc. area (who remembers Harry Hopes, Charlotte's Web, Amazing Grace, The Earl of Old Town, Holsteins, Kingston Mines, Juicy John Pinks, Good Karma?) and were one of the main backup bands for Vassar Clements when he toured the area, as well as playing many pig roasts, weddings, and bluegrass festivals in the Central and Southern IL and Eastern IA area.

After Pleasant Street broke up, DK ended up becoming a partner in Juicy John Pink's in DeKalb, doing all the standard club owner duties, from making the posters, booking the acts, cooking, doing dishes, running the sound, and sweeping the floor, as well as still teaching guitar. During this time, Juicy John's started the Duck Soup Food Coop and helped to create a music scene that was pretty amazing, featuring people like Bob Gibson, Jim Post, Redwood Landing, The Morgan Brothers (John and Don Stiernberg), Larry Rand, Rich Markow, Tom Dundee, Corky Siegal, Ken Bloom, U. Utah Phillips, Rosalie Sorrels, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Vassar Clements, and many other regional and national acts.

After DK left Juicy John's, he ended up playing with a bluegrass group called Mispent Youth that eventually turned into the group Bluestem (two of those members are now part of the Grasslands Quintette), and played with that group for about 3 years, once again playing local bars (the clubs having all but disappeared by this point in time), weddings, pig roasts, and festivals in the Northern IL area. Then, DK took about a 13 yr. "vacation" from playing music and when he started playing again, concentrated on the Dobro, as there were still a lot of good guitar players out there!

So now it's about 1989-1990, and suddenly there is music coming back into the area, and places to play again... after many bluegrass jam sessions and trips to festivals, in 1994 DK and Rich Mileham formed the Northern Illinois Bluegrass Association (NIBA) to promote bluegrass music in the region. For 6 years, DK did the monthly newsletter and ran the Association with the help of Rich and several volunteers, putting on 3 festivals at Morrison, IL and sponsoring the still active jam session at Harding, IL. DK stepped down as Association leader in 2000 and the organization runs today with a full compliment of board members, still promoting bluegrass in the region.

After a couple of years of woodshedding and relaxing, DK connected with Pete over the holiday season of 2002 (DK had known Pete's wife Diane when she was a student at NIU) and decided that the only sensible thing to do was to become a duo and share the music that we both knew: blues, old timey, folk, bluegrass, '30s & '40s pop, a lot of Pete's original songs, and anything else that catches our fancy.

And there you have it, friends and neighbors!