I pull up to JD Bootleggers in the Chicago suburb of Antioch and a blonde grandmother in jeans, wire-rimmed glasses, and a black top cut to a disturbingly deep V asks me, politely, to move.
“The kids are going to be doing tricks in that lot after awhile,” she says over the sound of Rick Fobes ’72 and his band, the Windy City Rev Ups, warming up for the Rottweiler Rescue Benefit they’re playing here tonight. I park the College’s white Chevrolet Impala discreetly away from the venue (as if my khakis and Sonoma shirt won’t broadcast “geek”) and walk into a virtual sea of denim and leather, tight-fitting T-shirts, and more tattoos than a troupe of Maori fire dancers. On my way to the bar’s back deck I steer clear of a couple of square-headed Rottweilers panting along on loose leashes (in black leather collars, of course).
In the next two hours I’ll learn that an animal with 328 pounds of bite force can make a great pet; watch a retired advertising executive tear up solos of Carlos Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” and “Soul Sacrifice” on a portable Hammond B-3 organ; and realize I’ve been wrong all these years about bikers and the places they hang out.
“When I grew up I thought bikers were dangerous. I judged them. It was stupid, really,” Fobes says after thanking me for stopping by to listen to the band.
“I’ve met so many of these folks, and they have been so courteous,” he says, acknowledging that many of the bikers here “probably put on shirts and slacks on Mondays.
“We’re not bikers, but they like what we play.”
Rick and I got to know each other when he was president of the National Association of Wabash Men and wrote a regular column for Wabash Magazine. I got a better sense of the man when his father died and Rick was generous at a difficult time in helping us fashion one of the most illuminating remembrances we’ve published in Wabash Magazine. Don Fobes ’34, longtime Wabash trustee and business executive, also played jazz piano—once sat in with some jazz greats in New York. Rick had directed us to the man to tell that story and reveal the passion with which Don pursued his avocation.
So when Rick started playing keyboards with a band toward the end of his advertising career and then retired and started playing regular gigs and impressive venues like the Taste of Chicago and the internationally famous Chicago House of Blues, I wondered if the son might be living out the old man’s dream.
IN HIGH SCHOOL DURING THE LATE 60s, Rick played with a rock band called The Thundermen at Indianapolis’ North Central, but after Wabash he put performing on hold to focus on family and career until his Wabash classmate Don Lawton called him one day in the early 1990s. The Class of ’69 was having its 25th reunion and wanted The Thundermen to play. Fobes didn’t even own a keyboard, but Lawton offered his and was able to convince another former band member to re-join the group. A North Central reunion tradition was born.
“Throughout the 90s I’d drive down to the Wood-stock Country Club and play that one event,” Rick says.
But it’s a big leap from a once-a-year gig to soloing with a group one reviewer calls “one of the tightest and most entertaining bands on the Chicago music scene today.” Fobes’ first step came when an advertising client told him that a band was forming to play “rock and blues in Chicago and the suburbs.” Fobes auditioned for the job and “Rick Keys,” as Rev Ups bandleader Rich Reminger calls Fobes, was born. “We started out just for fun—everyone here had a day job,” Rick explains. Today the Rev Ups have produced three CDs and play up to three gigs a week, but the fun hasn’t waned.
“We’re all really good friends, too. A lot of bands break up because they’re musically very good but can’t stand each other. Everyone here has different musical tastes, we all come from different genres of music. We’re pretty basic—a lot of Allman Brothers, Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton—I’m always looking for songs that feature the organ. But we’re such good friends that we don’t get that ego thing going.”
We cut the conversation short as Rick sees it’s time to begin the first set. The crowd warms quickly to the Rev Ups, and after a few numbers, women start shouting out requests.
When the band takes a break a half-hour later, a middle-aged woman in jeans and sweatshirt and
a bald man in vest, tattoos, and using a cane to walk announce the total raised for the Rottweiler Rescue and award some raffle prizes. It’s a lot like a PTA fundraiser, just at a bar to which most of the people rode on Harleys and the school uniform is denim
and anything black.
The Rev Ups play a lot of charity events—three just this week.
“Yesterday afternoon we played at a VFW, a benefit for a family of a guy who died in a car accident five years ago. We did that one for free.”
Bandleader Reminger overhears our conversation and adds that “Rick is one of the first guys to say ‘yes’ to these fundraisers, no matter what they pay.”
Rick changes the subject.
“I’m so lucky that these guys aren’t selfish guitar players,” he says. “George and Rich are the nicest guys in the room. At first I just played chords behind them, but as we grew as a band, and my confidence grew, they started liking some of those organ songs and I started taking on a larger role.”
In fact, “Rick Keys” is, with Reminger’s vocals and lead guitar player George Lemperis’ skillful riffs, the band’s signature sound.
The second set opens with “Born Under a Bad Sign,” with Rick featured on the B-3, the Leslie rotating speaking horns throbbing with that familiar 60s and 70s rock organ vibrato.
“I’ve loved that sound since I was 12 years old,” Rick says. “I wouldn’t play without the Leslie—my band mates think I should be buried with my speaker cabinet!”
A biker hands me a beer, which I scrutinize out of the corner of my eye even as I’m thanking him. Several couples take to the lawn to dance—several older couples dance swing-step, the blonde grandmother sways with a toddler, a little boy dances right in front of the stage. As the setting sun casts a golden light, the scene is downright pastoral—a field of self-proclaimed black sheep.
A Rottweiler sneaks up beside me and, without thinking, I reach down to pet it. The dog leans against my leg like a golden retriever.
“We use the money we make here to re-home these guys,” says the pretty brunette in jeans and baby blue sweatshirt holding the leash. “Because of the breed and the reputation, which they do not deserve, it can be difficult to find homes.”
THE NEXT MORNING RICK IS AT HOME in his music room in Plainfield at the keys of his father’s old baby grand piano.
“Dad brought me up listening to Benny Goodman, Dave Brubeck, Marion McFarland. But the piano was always going at our house. Dad would play, my grandfather would come over and sing—he had a good voice. Or he’d start dancing a jig.
“I think my grandfather’s love of music had an effect on my dad. Bill Fobes, Wabash Class of 1910, lived to be 97, and would still walk the streets of Crawfordsville at that age. ‘The great thing about Crawfordsville,’ Bill would say, ‘is that I know if I drop dead on the sidewalk, people will drive by and say, ‘Hey, that’s Bill Fobes.’
“He must have told us that story a thousand times.”
Wood-framed photos of family, friends, and Wabash events fill the walls of Fobes’ study, but the music room is all pictures of the band and posters from gigs the musicians have played over the years.
Rick plays a phrase or two from Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed.”
“I wish I could play like my father plays,” he says, alternating speaking of his dad in the past and present tense. “His best friend, Alex Carroll, once made a cassette tape of his playing at a party and called it ‘I Never Play the Same Way Twice.’ Dad never played a piece the same way twice. I play the pieces very much the same way from one time to the next.”
When I suggest that in an ensemble, that’s probably a good idea, he nods.
“I’ve never been a lead piano player. I would rather embellish and play some dramatic chords against some-one else’s lead than to try to play the whole song by myself.”
Rick’s talked about this with friend and fellow pianist John Failey ’72.
“John is a very good concert pianist, and I can’t do what he does. But he’s seen our band, and he says he marvels at what I do. I say what I do is just a subset of what he does, but he says, ‘No, no, I can’t hear those chords.’
“One thing I loved about my dad so much: He didn’t want the spotlight. My mom used to say she had to drag him to every party they attended, but if they coerced him to the piano, he was the last
to leave.
“Whenever he played with singers or other musicians, he could play in any key they wanted. He could transpose on the fly.”
How would his dad feel about the music he plays today?
“I’m so grateful that he heard The Thundermen a few times in the mid-90s. Even when he and
mom were pretty frail—it was after my sister died prematurely, which hit them very hard—he still came to the Woodstock and listened to us.
“Dad was the one, along with mom, who first encouraged me to take piano lessons, to keep playing.
I play his piano every day and—this may sound odd—but I think he can hear it.”
A PHONE CALL INTERRUPTS our conversation. Rick’s daughter, Katie, is a guidance counselor in the Naperville High School system (in fact, she helped recruit two members of Wabash’s class of 2012). Her five-year-old daughter, Olivia, is sick and needs to miss school this morning, and Rick, as usual, volunteers to babysit. A couple days a week he drives Olivia and her friends to kindergarten, and he relishes his “grandfather” time with Olivia’s older sisters, Abbie and Emmie.
And the musical tradition continues.
“My son, Rich, plays much better than me and is quite the musician, reading much better than either Dad or I ever could. But Olivia, Abbie, and Emmie all take piano lessons.
“Hearing them play on Dad’s old piano in my living room is the best. Lots of duets of ‘Heart and Soul.’ I’m sure Dad and Mom really enjoy the music.”
