Eric Ward Kuhn is a multi-instrumentalist, singer, and composer. He played his first professional gigs in and around the Bronx in 1975, as bassist with an outfit called The Destinaires, which was four guys out front singing and bass/drums/guitar in back. They had started out as an a capella doo-wop act and swung with the times; while Eric was with them they were doing Doobies classics, Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, and also the Hustle, which was just out on the charts. They wore polyester and platform shoes. Eric had to join the musician’s union to play some of the rooms, but somehow this did not mean getting union scale.
Eric left the band to attend Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut- where he resides to this day. He knocked around out west for a while; at one point he was in a country-rock trio in Oregon called Cascade Freedom with two guys who both had pregnant wives named Dolores. Never having even smooched with anyone named Dolores, he felt very left out.
Back in Connecticut he became a sort of house musician for a youth theatre outfit called Oddfellows Playhouse: for a while there in the 1980’s he was their go-to guy for a musical director when they did a musical and they also hired him to actually write music for some of these productions. Four of the songs on Eden @ the Coffeehouse were written for Oddfellows shows.
Eric put an album out on cassette in 1988 called The Blues for You, which will soon be digitized and re-issued. He played in a trio called the Bus which put out an album in the same period, and there is a lot more music already recorded and on its way to the website.
Eric was a columnist for the local paper in Middletown- his picture, his by-line, the whole bit- until he got tired of not getting paid. At that rate he figures he’d rather blog, and so he will. He is also interested in anagrams. He thinks his next album will be called Scion of the Sonic Icons….
Eric once met Spiro Agnew, which is cooler than meeting him several times. He was at Frank Sinatra's villa in Palm Springs in 1972.
(He didn't meet Frank: bummer!).
Spiro (one called him Ted) told him to look for Frank's version of Bad Leroy Brown by Jim Croce. Ted figured it was going to sweep the airwaves. It didn't, but decades later Eric was sitting in his car eating Chinese food, and heard it on the radio. It sounded just about like Frank Sinatra singing Bad Leroy Brown.
