Doc Abbick, Dean Schechinger, & Tom Montag (sometimes Chuck Abbick on sax and keyboard when he is not too busy)
Influences
Fr. Kevin Cray, Kingston Trio, Peter Paul & Mary, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, The Beatles, John Denver, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Hank Williams, Brother Oswald, Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers, and Booker T & the MGs, for starters.
Sounds Like
In various combinations: Simon & Garfunkel, Johnny Cash, Booker T & the MGs, Kingston Trio, etc.
Doc Abbick in Trinity is three former schoolmates who, forty-some years later, have come back together to create original "new roots" music which mixes a dallop of folk, a dab of country, and a pinch of that old-time rock 'n roll. The band's first album, Fairy Tales & Nonsense, was released in 2007. Their second, The Last Caboose, came out in early 2009.
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Doc Abbick and Dean Schechinger had been a folk duo back in the Hootenanny days of the 1960s when all three band members attended Trinity Prep, a boarding high school in Sioux City. After graduation in May, 1965, Doc and Dean and classmate Tom Montag went their separate ways. The school closed a few years after that. In June of 2007, a Trinity reunion was held in Sioux City, and Doc and Dean had the opportunity to re-sing the old songs for alumni on Saturday night in the hotel lounge. Tom signed on to play bass with them for the event. Afterwards Doc, Dean, and Tom all agreed: "This can't be all there is to it." And it wasn't.
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They set to work immediately to create their first album, Fairy Tales & Nonsense (http://cdbaby.com/cd/docabbick2), as a gift to Dean's first grandchild.
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What would they do for their second album? Fifteen original train songs, they decided, that they'd call The Last Caboose, forthcoming in February, 2009.
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In making a song, the words come first. Tom Montag, Fairwater, Wisconsin, writes most of the lyrics for the group. A poet and essayist, Tom retired in 2002 at age 55 from a career in printing, in order to devote himself full-time to his writing. Among other titles, he is the author of the memoir, Curlew: Home, and collections of poetry such as Middle Ground and The Big Book of Ben Zen. He blogs as The Middlewesterner at: http://middlewesterner.blogspot.com. Tom was born in 1947, "the year the last steam engine pulled a train through my hometown, Curlew, Iowa."
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Next comes the music. Dean Schechinger, Papillion, Nebraska, writes most of the melodies for the songs. He has worked as claim supervisor in the insurance business for 35 years and credits a steam train to Rochester, Minnesota, with saving his life when he was a two-year-old. "The doctor put me and mom on a express into Rochester where the doctors discovered I had some kind of food allergy," Dean says. "I don't remember the trip and I eat everything put in front of me now." He adds that "when I was 7, my dad took me down to the Chicago Northwestern tracks and we watched the last steam-powered coal train make its last run down the track. The next day a shiny new diesel took its place."
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Finally, words and music are put together in a pleasing fashion. Doc Abbick, Milford, Kansas, is the band's arranger and producer. Doc is a dentist in Junction City, Kansas, and earlier had recorded and released a solo album, Live to Sing, Sing to Live (http://www.cdbaby.com/docabbick).
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Compelling reasons to write train songs? "My paternal grandfather was a Painter for Union Pacific," Doc says. "My father was a Carman Apprentice Instructor for The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway. My brother Chuck was a Fireman, and later, an Electrician's Helper for the Santa Fe. My brother John and I both spent many summers working as Laborers in the various Santa Fe shops in Argentine, Kansas. I was a member of the International Union of Firemen and Oilers. My father's house was close to the yards in Kansas City, Kansas. In the still of a summer's night I could hear the trains singing. It seemed like music from a mechanical ballet to me - the crescendo of steel wheels on steel rails, the roar of the diesel engines and the blast from their horns, the percussive, reverberating crash of cars being coupled as they made up the trains: for years they performed my nightly lullaby."
