Issaquah Press, 1988

Past and present

Friendship helps Associated Sounds swing past 20 years

By Michael Landauer

In a day when most professional bands are lucky if they’re together two years, the nucleus of one Issaquah amateur group has been fashioning tunes for almost two decades. The band’s business card says it all: “Associated Sounds, ‘Dance Band’.”

The members of Associated Sounds have made it work, more out of friendship than any lofty aspirations of stardom, says the group’s drummer and original founding member, Tom Needham.

“We all went through elementary and high school together with the opportunity to play music with some very excellent musicians. Many of these people have quit playing but none of us in the group could stand the thought of that,” he said.

Associated Sounds’ first gig was New Year’s Eve 1966-67. All the members were barely 15, Needham said, with three of the boys reaching that birthday just weeks before their first public performance as a group.

The band grew out of the music revolution of the late 1960s. The band started practicing as so many groups do, in someone’s garage after school, “just for something to do,” Needham said.

“Originally we thought we’d become just another rock’n’roll band, but those guys were a dime a dozen,” he said. So the boys took another route – swing music.

Most of the guys listened to this popular dance music throughout their lives through their parents’ record collections, Needham said.

Now, their repertoire includes swing, country and western, polkas, schottisches and even some popular rock tunes. “We try to cover just a little of everything for everybody,” Needham said.

Although the band has been on the road on and off for nearly 20 years, it has stayed pretty close to home. About the farthest it’s traveled is Hope, British Columbia.
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Having to play gigs under candlelight or flashlight illumination because the power blew out, Needham’s drums rolling across the stage after a support gave way and other relatively minor problems have done little to sway the group’s love for performing.

Needham said that people often come up to them and ask, “Aren’t you the kids who used to have the band?” He said almost from the start, there have been rumors of the bands demise.

But it’s not only the group’s love of music that’s acted as a strong bond for Associated Sounds, it was and still is parental support, Needham said. “Our parents are still our biggest fans, “ he said.

Although the group’s love of music works to hold Associated Sounds together, they have never earned enough cash from the band to make even a meager living, Needham said. The jobs the members have are diverse.

Keyboardist and vocalist Tom Howard is a supervisor at a local hardware store, trumpet player and bassist Rick Shillinger is a video processing technician, trumpet player/vocalist Larry Searles runs a dental lab, tenor sax and guitar player Rod Shillinger is a health technologist, and Needham is the fire captain.