The Unity Bluegrass Band

The Unity Bluegrass Band

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Hello, I am Adrian McKee.

The Unity Bluegrass Band was a band based in the Chicagoland area from the early 70's to the mid 80's. I was a member (Stand-up Bass player) from 1977 to 1979. At that time, to my knowledge, there were not many Bluegrass bands with African American members. Throughout that time it went from its beginnings as a Jug/Folk Band, to a more traditional Bluegrass Band, to a more *progressive* organization that performed Bluegrass, Country, Rock, Folk, and Jazz. Anyone who had the pleasure of hearing us will remember the energy we created, the music, which was always uplifting, and the jokes... Oh the Jokes. We used to go from one *groaner* to the next, to the next, sometimes forgetting we were supposed to be playing music, but we always made sure everyone had a good time.

As time moves forward I will be editing this site, adding pictures, recordings, information, stories and anything else that comes to mind. Feel free to come back often as I will be making changes (hopefully for the better) to this site.

Adrian

What's New?

ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

The Unity Bluegrass Band is scheduled for a Reunion Weekend at the Green Lake Bahá'í Conference. The dates are August 28 - 30, 2009 in Green Lake, Wis. The Unity Bluegrass Band has not performed there since 1977. As of now it looks like most of the members from that performance will be there (plus a few additional folks). More to come!!!GREEN LAKE NEWS!!! 6/20/09
Because of old age and injuries of others, Richard Staller will be joining Unity Bluegrass Band on guitar. The members who are scheduled to perform are David Neidig, David Bragman, David Rohling (Hmmm, maybe we WILL have to rename the band "THE DAVE BAND"), Mark Harries, Doug Minard, Adrian McKee and Richard Staller. Janie Fry will be joining us in the audience.

7/4/09
Added a picture to Doug Minard's profile page. Added a picture to Haydn Mohr's profile page. Added several pictures to 9 Years of Unity page illustrating the personnel changes throughout the years.

3/22/09
Added a link for Arnold Shultz on the Afro-Bluegrass page. Arnold had quite an influence on the music and guitar styles of Kentucky having mentored Bill Monroe and influencing Merle Travis in developing his style of guitar playing.

3/7/09a
Must be a slow day. To see the future home of Unity Bluegrass click here.

3/7/09
Its 60 degrees out and I got the Spring Cleaning Bug. Since I am sitting at Starbucks in Charleston, Ill. about the only thing I could clean was Unity, so I rewrote some of the text, changed around some of the links on the Links Page. And while I was there I decided to copy the link for David Neidig's band and for Doug Minard's band to that page as well. Then while doing that I added some text to several of the links that held special meaning to me, which in turn started me adding a remembrance to the Guitar Works link, telling of the *GREAT* "Doc" Terry. You should go check it out.

2/11/09
I FINALLY found the CD that Dave Bragman made for me of "Getting Around TUIT" so I have now ripped it and it is available for download at a higher sampling rate than the other copy that I have. Both the high and low res. versions are available for download.

1/30/09
Added a photo of yours truly as he looked in 1976 when he was, of all things, a Bluegrass Bassist (come on guys, send me your pics from the album shoot).

Also added a link in Afro-Bluegrass to an Bulletin Board Post that referenced me. (found it again after loosing track of it several years ago)

12/27/08
Finally updated the picture for Dave Bragman (sorry it took so long Dave). I also added in the Memorabilia section more pictures of Dave performing around the Windy City.

11/30/08
Added Performance tracks from Glenview 1976 performance, including *groaners* to give you the feel of being in the audience. So grab your tomatoes, oranges and other throwing paraphernalia and be ready to listen to a performance of the Unity Bluegrass Band.

6/14/08
Added Airtime information for Dave Bragman's Radio Shows on WLUW

6/14/08
Am sitting at Janie Frye's house right now. We are here for Karen's 50th Birthday party and I decided to do some personnel updates on the site. You can now find more extensive information on what your favorite UBB members have been up to. I also saw Mark Harries last night and he brought along a collections of UBB pictures. I hope to talk him out of several to add to the Web Site. Wish me luck.

11/19/07
Added a few things today. With Help from Dave Bragman I have uploaded music from UBB's tape "On Our Way" plus three tracks he had from a couple of gigs. The first are 2 tracks from Brookfield Zoo and 1 track from Charlotte's Web. Also if you have your speakers on you should be hearing a sound bite from Dave & Earl's Breakdown, the theme song from UBB.

11/21/07
Just uploaded the rest of "Getting Around Tuit" and compressed the intro music down to a little over 100k for faster downloading. I also decided to add this part so you can always be aware of changes to the Web Site.

11/4/07
In going through some things I discovered a paper Dave Neidig passed out that tells the story of the first 9 years of UBB. I have included it here (with a few minor changes, sorry Dave). Also included with this package is a list of gigs the band did over the years so I have included that up to 1980. I will be adding the rest of it soon.