NRBQ - History

History

Steve Ferguson was playing in a popular Louisville, KY band called the MerseyBeats (no relation to the Liverpool group who did “I Stand Accused”). When the band began to get more popular and started recording, the name was changed to “MerseyBeats USA” to avoid any potential for confusion or law suits. In 1966, the keyboard player took a night off for his senior prom . The local union sent a substitute named Terry Adams. Later in the summer Terry became a permanent member when the original keyboardist left the band to get married.

Terry and Steve hit it off from the beginning. Steve came from a blues and rock background while Terry was deeply rooted in jazz. Later that year, the pair left the MerseyBeats USA to start a new group. The name NRBQ was adopted early with several other local players joining in. It wasn't until the next year when the pair went to Florida to try the waters that the band formally known as NRBQ developed.

Ferguson and Adams moved to Miami, where they met the remnants of a band called the Seven of Us, singer Frank Gadler, drummer Tom Staley and bassist Joey Spampinato (originally known by the stage name of Jody St. Nicholas), and formed NRBQ in 1967. The group relocated to the northeastern U.S., living for a while in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and gaining attention in local clubs and performing at the Fillmore East. NRBQ was signed to Columbia Records in 1969, and released its self-titled debut album the same year. The record featured cover versions of everyone from Eddie Cochran to Sun Ra, along with a number of similarly wide-ranging original songs. The following year, the group collaborated with rockabilly legend Carl Perkins on an album titled Boppin' The Blues."

However, before NRBQ could finish its third album, Columbia dropped the group. Over the next three years, the band experienced personnel shifts, with the departure of Ferguson (replaced for one year by Ken Sheehan), Gadler, and Staley, and the arrival of two new members: guitarist/singer Al Anderson formerly of The Wildweeds, known for the Connecticut and Massachusetts regional hit No Good To Cry, and drummer Tom Ardolino. The Adams/Spampinato/Anderson/Ardolino quartet stayed together longer than any other incarnation of the band (20 years, from 1974 until 1994), and was often augmented by the Whole Wheat Horns. In 1994 Anderson departed the group to become an award-winning Nashville songwriter for many country-western acts. He was replaced in NRBQ by Joey Spampinato's younger brother, Johnny Spampinato, who was (and still is) a member of power-pop band The Incredible Casuals.

On April 30 and May 1 of 2004, the group celebrated its 35th anniversary with concerts at the Calvin Theater in Northampton, Massachusetts. The shows featured every former and current member of the band, as Ferguson, Gadler, Staley, Sheehan and Anderson came back for a NRBQ reunion.