My cousin, John Wehrle, turned me on to the BoDeans a number of years ago when he was living up in Milwaukee. The BoDeans are from the Milwaukee area and are a local and regional musical phenomenon.
The BoDeans are really two guys, Kurt Neumann (pictured at left), and Sammy Llanas (pictured below). They met in high school in suburban Waukesha in the mid 70's and formed the BoDeans in 1983. Bassist Bob Griffin joined the band in 1985 just in time for their 1986 debut CD, Love and Hope and Sex and Dreams, which is still one of the most underrated rock albums put out in the last 25 years. Over the years they've had a number of drummers play with them, most recently 
former John Mellencamp drummer, Kenny Aronoff, was playing with the band.
We've seen the BoDeans at Summerfest at the Marcus Amphitheater six or seven times. Actually, the last time we saw them in 2003, we were a little disappointed in the show and ended up leaving early.
Shoot ahead to 2005 - The River Roots Live two day festival was going to take place in Davenport and I was hired by Kristy Adams from the River Music Experience to do the announcements and to help out with stage production. Initially, the headliner was supposed to be Johnny Winter. But I was on the road one evening about two months before the show and I got a call from Kristy. "This has been the worst day of my life," she exclaimed. Turned out that Johnny Winter had to cancel due to slow rehabilitation from carpel tunnel surgery. She was in a bind.
She said, "OK, here's two bands we can get. We can get Robert Cray, or we can get someone that I know you'll flip out when I tell you."
I asked, "OK, who?"
She said, "The BoDeans."
I said, "Well, Robert Cray would be great to see, but it would be cool to work with The BoDeans."
So, they ended up getting the BoDeans.
For about 8 years, the BoDeans - read: Sammy and Kurt - had been in a major legal battle with their former manager, Mark McCraw, who maintained that he held all copyrights to The BoDeans song titles. A judgment against McCraw was thrown out in appeal in the summer of 2005 and Kurt and Sammy were scheduled to go back to court to seek to overturn the appeal just after they played in Davenport. Kurt was quoted in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that if the courts didn't reverse the appeal, the show in Davenport may be their last show as the BoDeans.
So, it was going to be an interesting evening - this could very well be the last time we see Kurt and Sammy as the BoDeans.
Now, my cousin's girl friend, Bonnie, is a HUGE BoDeans fan. She says that Sammy makes her "moist". She and John were coming up from St. Louis for the show and she was kidding me for weeks in advance that I had to get her backstage to meet Sammy. I told her that I wasn't quite in charge of the backstage proceedings as I usually am with other events I work for the city of Davenport, but I'd see what I could do.
The BoDeans arrive on Friday evening and are milling around the backstage area. I usually don't like to bother the musicians if I don't know them, but I did go up to Sammy and shake his hand and tell him that I really liked his music. He was reserved and quiet, thanked me in shy-type manner and that was that.
During Edgar Winter's set, I noticed Sammy was just kind of hanging around the backstage area and I thought, "OK, maybe I can make Bonnie's night." So I go out in front of the stage and I get Bonnie's attention. She comes over and I said, "Come with me." And I take her backstage.
Now, mind you, I'm am committing the number one sin in backstage, pre-show etiquette - taking a fan to meet a performer without asking them first if it's OK if I bring someone back. Sammy is still standing there and I take Bonnie up to introduce her to him.
I said, "Sammy, this is a very good friend of mine and she has seen you a number of times and she wanted to come back to say 'hello'."
Sammy kind of gave me this 'pained' look on his face and Bonnie - to my absolute horror - instead of shaking his hand or just standing there, she went up to him and said, "Oh, I've got to just give you a hug." She tried to hug Sammy and he jumped back like she had 20,000 volts going through her body! Oh, I was mortified. First of all, I just committed the ultimate backstage infraction for bringing her back - which was very unprofessional on my part - and then she exacerbated it by trying to molest him! It was actually kind of funny. But I felt really bad.
I apologized to Sammy about it after the show and he was pretty neutral about it. But I could tell that he didn't like it at the time. Oh well...
On the other hand, I was standing by the stage waiting for the equipment to get set up for The BoDeans and Kurt Neumann walks up. We start talking about things, how nice the night was, how their show a couple nights prior in Oshkosh had gone (they had a severe thunderstorm come through in the middle of their show), and then I said, "You know, I really hope things go well for you next week in court."
Kurt, matter of factly, said, "Well, I appreciate that. I really do. We were shocked when the earlier decision was overturned by the appellate court and if we can't get the appeal reversed, we can't fight this any longer. We're out of money. We've had two lawsuits in the past few years and we just don't have the money or the will to fight any longer."
I asked, "Two lawsuits? What was the other lawsuit?"
He said, "The company who make Sam Adams Beer (Boston Brewing Company) made a bottled tea about six or seven years ago and called it 'BoDeans Tea' or something like that. We had people coming up and asking us about our tea, and we didn't know what they were talking about. So while we had a lawsuit against our ex-manager for copyright and trademark rights, we all sued the beer company for trademark infringement. We won. They don't make the tea any more."
As Sammy was reserved and close to the chest, Kurt was outgoing, personable and self-effacing. He saw me before he went on stage and said, "Well, let's go out and see if we can screw this up one last time!" And he winked at me as we both laughed.
It was a good show, and I'm happy to say it wasn't their last. They settled with their old manager out of court and they'll continue to be The BoDeans for many years to come.
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