60's & 70's Rock 'n Roll
Rick Kelly plays a wide variety of songs including artists like The Beatles, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, and The Who.
About
One of my goals as a youngster was to be in a band and to try and make it big hopefully with a hit record. My first band, ‘The Friday Knights’ was a lot of fun. My friend, Rich Friedland and I formed the band and added a couple of our friends, Paul Inserra (lead guitar) and Cory Fernandez (drums). We performed a few shows here and there and I remember during one show at Taylor junior High School, how the young fans came up to the stage and just stared at us as if we were The Beatles. For that moment, I felt famous. The Friday Knights was my first serious band which launched my musical career.
A couple of years later, Rich and I formed our second band Zeus, which featured me on lead guitar, Rich on bass, John Hayden on rhythm guitar and Mike Brigham on drums. Two of my fondest memories was John always strumming The Beatles song, ‘All My Loving’ during rehearsals and we always warned him that he should not do that because he might accidentally do it during one of our shows, and sure enough the time came when he did it and we all had a great laugh. My favorite memory was headlining, as Zeus, at the first West Coast Beatles convention which was a lot of fun hanging out with other fans and meeting The Beatles staff.
I was also one of the band leaders in our Christian church for nine years and did some solo shows until my most successful duo to date, Chime Travelers, became a reality.
Chime Travelers formed in 2010 with my friend Jay Lewallen. Our format was cover songs from the Golden Era of music, the 60’s and 70’s. We were together a little over 10 years and played more than 1300 shows in Northern California. Our main venues were restaurants, wineries and special events including many private functions and parties. This was an acoustic duo and we both sang lead and harmony and played lead and rhythm guitars. One of my favorite memories was playing to standing room only crowds at Trek Winery in Novato, California.