9:00pm $8.00
Steve, Rick and Guy Crucianelli grew up in a musical family of seven brothers in Kenosha WI. Their mother sang in church choirs and their father played accordion and upright bass in jazz wedding bands on weekends, but playing music wasn't exactly something that the Crucianelli boys were pushed into by their parents. Quite the contrary, actually... their dad at one time had arranged accordion lessons for Steve (lessons Steve soon quit because there were no accordions to be heard on The Dave Clark Five's records, which was Steve's favorite band growing up) but that was pretty much the extent of it.
Music, however, was inevitable for the Crucianelli boys. It started with a drum kit, an acoustic guitar with a few broken strings, the birth of new siblings and the accumulation of a variety of instruments in the basement of a busy home where Mrs. Crucianelli was always cooking for the boys and their friends. As time went on, the music moved from the Crucianelli basement to junior high schools, local bars, clubs in Milwaukee and Chicago, and stages throughout the Midwest and elsewhere with a succession of family-based bands like DVS and The Snakes, Nick Fury, Crucial Nellie, Br6ther, and now, Old Junk.
Old Junk plays slap n' wiggle rockabilly that doesn't bother with the constriction of faithful reconstruction... they put their own family-style spin on the genre. Guy Crucianelli, the youngest of the trio, powers the band with lean locomotive drumbeats as his brother Rick shifts gears seamlessly from sharp distortion licks to fuzzy elastic grooves. Steve takes the lead as vocalist as well as the guy wielding his giant white standup bass, smacking out rhythms while hiccupping his way through his own interpretations of songs made great by the likes of Johnny Burnette, Gene Vincent, and many more. Old Junk shows are new celebrations of old traditions: moving, shaking, sweating, shouting, and howling at the moon in utter delight.