By Loretta B Manele

Bob Head and Scott Solimo, the local duo from the Wangaratta's Blues Brothers 3677 band, are ready to take to the stage again in November at the Wangaratta Jazz & Blues Festival.

It's the band's 30th anniversary, having missed one year due to Covid.

The duo are as passionate today about the music as they were when they formed their band and they are happy to be performing songs that got people dancing back in the 1980s and till today.

Bob plays the part of Elwood Blues while his good friend, Scott plays the part of Jake Blues.

The original Blues Brothers band came into being as a sketch on popular American show, Saturday Night Live (SNL) in 1976, and was created by comedians John Belushi (Jake) and Dan Aykroyd (Elwood).

Their performances were a tribute to American blues and soul music and proved so popular, they formed a real-life band (Blues Brothers) and eventually a feature film in which they performed with blues and soul legends such as Aretha Franklin and James Brown.

When asked what inspired him to form Blues Brothers 3677, Bob said the whole idea started back in the early 1990s at Wangaratta High School.

At the time, Bob explained there was a year 11 project by their bass player who was doing a communications project and decided to, as he puts it, “concentrate” on the Blues Brothers.

Bob said there were a lot of musicians around that formed a band and they played at the jazz festival in 1994.

They needed a harmonica player, Bob said, and he happily nominated himself.

He joined them in 1995 and since then, they have played at 25 or maybe 26 jazz and blues festivals and yes, the music was popular and they dragged in a pretty big audience.

“And it gets people up dancing and having a good time and that's what we want and it's quite amazing," Bob said.

"When you've got a great audience, you can bounce off them and they can bounce off you, you play a lot better and everything really works so well.”

At the time, Bob and Scott had as many as 14 band members, which included some female singers and band members who were playing instruments ranging from horns, keyboards and guitar to bass and drums.

This year the line-up includes Marc Paola – guitar, Stephen McGregor – bass, Damien Montalto – keys, Sandii Keenan – vocals, Jake Molinaro – drums, Brett Spokes – alto sax, Lok Davidson – tenor sax, Col Anderson – bari sax, and Jason Sandercock – trumpet.

Their biggest audience was at a jazz festival where they played in front of up to 10,000 people in the street.

“That was in Reid Street (free stage) days," he said.

“Back in the 1990s and 2000s, when Reid Street was pumping, it was 5000 to 10,000 people.”

For Bob, that era was a “great spectacle” based on the Blues Brothers movies of 1980 and 2000 and all the music derived from those movies and a couple of recordings that came out around the same time.

Scott was inspired be a part of Blues Brothers 3677 because he was a fan of the Blues Brothers movie.

He was, however, not the singer originally, as he was initially a guitar player before taking on the role of a singer.

Bob has remained playing Elwood to Scott's Jake, and he can't see that changing.

“Oh, yes, I won't interfere with that. He's got a good voice, this bloke,” Bob said.

The hardest part of reforming the band was getting the band members together to rehearse as everyone now lives in different places.

“But we don't see it as a challenge, we just see it as a, yeah, we're just going to do it. We have fun doing it,” they said.

Blues Brothers 3677 will be performing on Sunday, 2 November as part of the Wangaratta Jazz & Blues Festival on the Community Stage (located at the gardens of the Holy Trinity) from 3:30pm.

They will be playing all the favourites, about 15 songs in total.

When asked if they were ready for the show, they were ever-ready.

“We're ready to go, absolutely,” they said.