Tracy Ross speaks with Addison Rogers of the group Busman's Holiday who perform Friday afternoon at Paducah's Lowertown Arts and Music Festival.
Brothers Lewis and Addison Rogers are the core of Busman’s Holiday. They grew up under the influence of their father’s extensive jazz collection and started learning music in school. As a band, they got their start performing on the street and at the local farmer’s market with a guitar and a suitcase drum kit.
“We had been playing for maybe a year or two and something motivated us to hit the streets. And at that point we were playing with an upright bass player and a keyboard player, he would play melodica when we were on the street.” Rogers said. “I got some suitcases and I thought they might work out for a base drum… I put it together and it sounded really good and I could put everything in the suitcase and it was super portable. I started playing around on that and I’ve been playing on a suitcase ever since.” On their new record, Popular Cycles, Rogers plays the suitcase in every song.
The brothers started bringing in string and horn accompaniment in 2008 with Old Friend and explored further in that direction with both A Long Goodbye and Popular Cycles. The band has been playing as a duo and as a four-piece over the last year. There performance at Lowertown will include a bass player and a percussionist who also plays synthesizer.
“We also sort of needed them to really well execute this newest record since we sort of built it around a number of different instruments as opposed to just my modest drum set and Lewis’s guitar,” Rogers said.
Busman’s Holiday performs on the Lowertown main stage Friday at 3:55 p.m.
