Easy Street Band History

The band began rehearsing in 1967, where a group of school kids, just like it happens so often, decided to create a band in order to have something to do after school when their history began. What began as "Associated Sounds, 'Dance Band' " remained playing together for 23 years. If you are into the music industry you know how hard it is for any amateur or professional band to stay together for that long. In many cases most bands would come and go in just a couple of years. One of the main reasons for this band to have stayed together for so long is definitively the friendship that brought them together. In this band friendship came before any aspirations of stardom. The original members of Associated Sounds 1967, were Tom Needham on drums, Rod Shillenger, Larry Searles trumpet, John Thrash (no longer with the band), Rick Shillenger bass, and then-keyboardist Maxine Pangburn. These kids began playing since elementary school, through high school and then life. They were lucky enough to play with great musicians of their time. Their love for music was so big that none of them could now conceive life without music.

Their first gig came back in the New Year's Eve of 1966-67 and their particular history as a group began there, when no member was over the age of 15 years old. As a matter of fact as the recall, some members had just turned 15 by the time they took part of their first public performance as Associated Sounds. They developed their style in the mist of the music revolution of the late 1960s and that added a lot of special characteristics to the band that they would keep for many years to come. Back in those days everybody had a rock band, and for a very short time they thought that would be their fate as well. However, rock bands were so common back then that they thought it would be very boring to be just another band , and they decided to become a swing band, decision that later on proved to be the best call for the group. The band that later became the Easy Street Band had a varied repertoire including popular rock tunes, schottisches, polkas, swing, country and western. The goal of the band was simply to provide a little bit of everything in order to reach a wider audience. A great deal of the success of Easy Street Band is owed to their versatility. The Easy Street Band line up for 1988 was made up of Rick Shillenger, Larry Searles, Rod Shillenger, Tom Needham and keyboardist Tom Howard (who joined the band 12 years ago).