King Stan Band

by Tim Wenger

Perhaps the most exciting Blues concert of the year is happening New Year’s Eve at the Buffalo Rose in Golden. The legendary King Stan Band will be performing with teenage phenom Young Austin in an “old school vs. new school” themed event. We got a hold of both groups and let them share their thoughts on the show, their careers, and the major generation gap between the two bands.

CMB: Talk a little bit about your style and how it has evolved to what it is now throughout your career in music.

KSB (King Stan Band): Interesting thing about the King Stan Band is that the crowd is usually surprised at how much energy this band produces. High energy from a Blues band is not what most people expect. Our goal is to get people on their feet and dancing. We really enjoy it when the crowd becomes part of our show. Stan’s early career started at the Apollo Theater where he learned the importance of getting the crowd into it. He also toured with soul greats such as Junior Walker’s All-Stars, [blind] Clarence Carter, and Wilson Pickett. Playing with Blues greats such as King Floyd, ZZ Hill, Millie Jackson, and Greg Allman has evolved Stan’s style from Soul merging with Blues. The band’s tag line is ‘Rhythm and Blues with soul. …’ Although, after people see King Stan, they usually say ‘Rhythm and Blues with a party. …’

CMB: Any big highlights that have changed you as a musician?

KSB: Like Young Austin, King Stan started his music career very early in life. He played New York’s Apollo Theater at the age of 18. In attendance that night was James Brown. Stan later joined a band in the James Brown organization in Georgia. He also played the Burning Spear in Chicago, Illinois. There he met BB King. BB’s words stuck with him as he said, ‘Stan, you can really play that guitar!’

Touring with Clarence Carter, Stan met and played with many greats of the era. One particular night he took a slide guitar lesson from Dwayne Allman. ‘Dwayne could play slide like no one you have ever heard,’ says Stan. ‘He was truly a gifted musician.’

Stan can go on and on with stories of touring in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. You can hear the experience in his voice. His vocals take you back to a time where this type of music was ruling the charts. It is truly a treat to hear Stan play.

CMB: How did the band form?

KSB: Stan and drummer Mark Marusin met through a mutual friend back in 2007. Mark grew up in Denver playing in multiple bands and learning his licks from Kofi Baker (son of Cream drummer Ginger Baker).

Adding the band’s amazing lead guitar, player Ted Loughry was next. At only 44 years of age, Ted is the band’s child prodigy. He graduated in 1989 from the Guitar Institute of Technology in Hollywood, Calif., with a degree in contemporary guitar. Ted was also recently featured in Guitar Player magazine.

Bassist John ‘Machine Gun’ Gallagher was the final piece of the puzzle and really took the band to a new level.  Growing up in upstate New York, John began his career playing with talents such as Jerry Vale, Bobby Rydell, Al Martino, Bobby Vinton, Lenny Welch, and Bobby Sherman. The band’s rhythm section has been labeled ‘freight train’ and is anchored by Marusin and Gallagher.

This band loves to play together and the chemistry shows on stage. With this much talent, it is normal to have the standard band issues with personalities and power struggles. Not so with the King Stan Band. ‘Might be something that comes with experience,’ says King Stan. ‘The crowd can tell when a band is having fun together.’

CMB: How did the idea for this New Year’s Eve show come about with the young and old performing together (not that you guys are old. …)

KSB: Ha ha, we don’t mind being called old (we call it experienced). The ribbing usually changes after people hear us. We did a gig recently where a young band was playing before us. Their lead singer mentioned to us, ‘I hope we didn’t keep you guys up too late.’ After our set, the singer came up to us and apologized, saying, ‘I can’t believe it, you guys just blew us off the stage. …’

With experience comes an eye for talent. We met Young Austin two years ago playing at the Arvada Blues Festival.  Recently, we were playing in the Colorado Blues Society International Blues Challenge finals at the Buffalo Rose.  Young Austin and No Difference were one of the bands also in the finals. When asked by the Rose who we would want to play a show with, Young Austin was a perfect choice. Austin and his band are phenomenal talents that have to be seen to believe.

We decided to market the show as Old School versus New. The idea was to bring in the New Year with two of Colorado’s most exciting bands. We wanted to give something for every fan (young and old). We hope to send folks home knowing that they had the party of their lives during this New Year’s Eve.

CMB: What covers can we look forward to at the show? Any staples?

KSB: We have a couple of covers that the crowd tends to go nuts over including Junior Walker’s ‘Shot Gun’ and James Brown’s ‘There was a time.’ We also get a ton of requests for our originals, ‘Gotcha Back Again’ and ‘I’m Leaving this Town.’ We are gaining a fairly large following in the Denver area and they have strong feelings about their favorites. If we don’t play them, we end up hearing about it later on our FaceBook page or on our website KingStanBand.com. We also have a new live CD that we are working on. Included will be several of our staples including covers and originals.

CMB: How will the lineup work for the night, and will both bands be performing together onstage at all?

KSB: The King Stan Band will be first up followed by Young Austin and No Difference. We think Austin was probably worried about keeping us up too late. … We are hoping that Austin lets us come up and finish out the night with a bang from both bands.

CMB: What else should CMB readers know about you?

KSB: We think a lot of people (young and old) believe the Blues are dead or boring. Well, they ain’t heard the Blues the way we play it. We recently played a gig at a sorority up at Colorado State University. We had about 300 sorority sisters up and dancing after our third song. Not bad for a bunch of ‘old guys.’

Tags: king stan band

Category: The Rock