The Story of The BassBoards

(pronounced "Base Boards"...we're not a fishing group)...

Many years ago, in the heart of Mesopotamia, there once lived...skip ahead...skip ahead...

The BassBoards Blues Band (from "bass" and "keyboards") officially began in the summer of 2004, although its roots go a lot further back...just not as far back as Mesopotamia. John Caruana and Greg Lagana, the two music nuts who put this band together, are, in fact, cousins "by marriage" since John's first wife Susan was Greg's "first cousin". These two guys have known each other since the '60s but their friendship and collaboration on a number of projects didn't flourish until they met at a relative's funeral in 1984...a rather inauspicious place for a new beginning.

Computers and music connected the two for many years until Greg convinced John to attend The National Guitar Workshop in New Milford, CT with him and spend a week playing The Blues...Greg ..boards and John on bass guitar. Three years later, at the NGW Blues Summit, the boys were inundated with requests from individual guitarists to back them up onstage at the workshop as well as be the rhythm section for their common gig at the famed Bitter End club in New York City that August. This "popularity" convinced them that a new kind of band could be formed, one that revolved around drums, keys and bass instead of lead guitarists and "front men". Once John's daughter Kate was brought on board to sing a lot of the lead vocals in January of 2005, the band started to get noticed. Now with a full 5-piece horn section in place and Jessica Lyn Smith on lead vocals, there are very few bands out there with the power and talent to match what The BassBoards can deliver to a live audience.

The BassBoards is intended to be a unique repertory band, one in which the rhythm section comprises the core of the outfit while guitars, harp, horns, vocals, etc. are all scaleable to the occasion. At this writing, 12 talented musicians comprise the basic band while over a half-dozen "guest artists" from both New Jersey and as far away as Maine and Alabama play with The BassBoards from time to time. Everyone is an experienced player and an excellent musician in their own right; most of them have played in public many years ago and have been waiting for the right opportunity to showcase their talents again.