Basin Summer Sounds rocks Ephrata
Bill Fortner, Steve Close and Keith Bilodeau of The Funk rehearse before Basin Summer Sounds.
The festival features 11 acts starting at 4:30 p.m. on Friday and 11:30 a.m. on Saturday and is free to the public.
EPHRATA — In a garage between Ephrata and George, a seven-member band prepares for Basin Summer Sounds.
The Funk, the only local band scheduled for the two-day music festival, takes the stage tonight at 6 p.m. in front of the Grant County Courthouse.
The festival features 11 acts starting at 4:30 p.m. on Friday and 11:30 a.m. on Saturday and is free to the public.
Keith Bilodeau, one of The Funk’s founding members, started the funk and classic rock cover-band with Darrin Hein, whom he had worked with before, he said.
“I used to work with Darrin many years ago back in the ‘80s and we actually had a rock band,” Bilodeau, who plays tenor and alto sax in the group, said. “We wanted to put together something different. We wanted to put together something with some horns ... and play festivals.”
The band started with Bilodeau, Hein and a guitar player, before they started recruiting the other members, including the band’s keyboardist, Travis Steffler.
“We all just played in different bands and brought ourselves together as friends and coworkers,” Steffler said. “We’ve been with this same line up for ... three years.”
This is the second year the band has played at the Ephrata music festival.
“Now that we’ve been with this lineup for a while and added to the repertoire, we’re trying to get out there and play more, but the nice thing about it is ... we all get along really well and like each other, so we just like getting together and playing,” Hein said.
Steffler said the band doesn’t perform mainstream music. Even when it’s from famous bands, the group tries to find songs people haven’t heard before.
“We’re doing a Steely Dan tune and I swear to God, we’re all Steely Dan fans, we didn’t even know it was a song they did,” Bilodeau said.
Hein and Steffler said they’re excited about being the only local band at the festival. The band performed at 2 p.m. on Saturday last year and did well despite the heat, Hein said.
“We’re really excited to be able to do Friday night at 6 (p.m.),” he said. “It’s going to be packed down there ... It’s always fun to get up on a nice big stage with nice sound reinforcement instead of being tucked in a corner in some bar.”
The group started performing at the festival after they were hired to play at a sponsors’ dinner, Steffler said.
“They were so impressed they said, ‘We’ve got to get you guys in the line up this year,’” he said. “So four months later, we were in the line up and we’ve been invited back since.”
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