Vocals, accordion
This is what happens when a computer programmer meets three professional musicians. He’s the one who has the vision to start a German band, and even does the bulk of the arranging! Yup, that’s Bob Donovan. Our accordion player extraordinaire. With hundreds of buttons, keys, and switches on his state-of-the-art digital accordion, it takes a computer geek to figure it out!
Vocals, banjo, tenor guitar, trumpet, kick, occasional accordion
Rob Howard plays the banjo, but also guitar, trumpet, kick drum, and the occasional accordion. His music degree comes in handy when he’s adding almost as many arrangements as Bob to our constantly growing library. He’s the one to figure out how to turn Lady Gaga songs into polkas…
Clarinet, saxophone, kazoo, hammer, occasional harmonies
Eddie Holt has in impressive clarinet performance degree from college. He’s finally getting to put it to use! He’s also a world-class Barbershop singer…so world-class that he helps lead the top-rated Barbershop choir in the world, and also works for the Barbershop Harmony Society, the world leader in Barbershop singing. Yes…he sings in the group…actually everyone sings in the group! But Eddie is the only one that also plays saxophone.
Tuba, snare, trumpet, vocals, rubber chicken, tin whistle, feet jingle bells (foot jingle bells?), bike horn, spoons, this clacker thing, some Dutch busking organ? Lute, maybe? We dunno, he plays literally everything. If you hand him an instrument he doesn’t actually know how to play, he’ll just bang on it with sticks and turn it into a new instrument.
Kurt Heinecke plays the rest of the instruments…tuba (actually a 100-year old helicon), trumpet, valve-trombone, drums, along with the occasional Irish whistle and recorder. He is a full-time composer and musician (ever heard of VeggieTales?), so ironically lets the others in the band do the majority of the arranging! But he did lead a German band in high school and took several years of German…so he’s the one who gets to sing the German tunes! (and his grandfather owned a meat market making bratwurst in Sheboygan, Wisconsin…that’s got to count for something!)