Although most students would like to think of their professors as university employees who only leave their offices to drive their Beemers to university-related meetings, journalism professor Bob Stewart and anthropology professor Elliot Abrams step out of the classroom and into the bar - or coffee house.
Along with stand-up bassist Greg Bikowski, a paramedic by day, and harmonica player John Ortman, a doctor, The Bob Stewart Band uses comforting, folksy-blues melodies as a base for its fiery political ballads.
We rock
but we don't play rock Bikowki said.
When The Bob Stewart Band started playing in the summer of 2002, its songs were more focused around relationships, but lately the group has been writing as an observer to the country's tragedies, writing its political positions into songs such as The Storm about Hurricane Katrina and A Million Miles Away from Home about the deaths of 14 Ohio soldiers in Iraq.
What the band sings about is real, said Stewart, and the members try to sing them as if they are heartfelt memories.
But with hundreds of folk bands popping up in Appalachia every year, The Bob Stewart Band stands out because they don't have a drummer, they are experienced and the band members can afford good instruments, they said.
We are definitely products of the music of our generation and if younger bands are playing this stuff
they're playing it because they've heard it. We really grew up on that stuff
and everything we do
I think
is influenced by music
Stewart said.
Most of the group's songs are written and sung by Stewart; however, each member has his own songs he has written, and each sings them at the shows.
The Bob Stewart Band has a vault filled with mellow, coffeehouse-appropriate songs with lyrics that the times call for
but that does not mean they only play at The Donkey Coffee and Espresso, 17 1/2 W. Washington St. They've been spotted by Court Street shufflers at Blue Gator, 63 N. Court St., and Red Brick Tavern, 14 N. Court St. Sometimes they are wallpaper music and sometimes they are in the spotlight, Bikowski said.
