biography
Rick Buck - acoustic & electric guitars, drums
Johnny Jolin - guitars, lead vocals
Joseph Paul Hauserman - keyboards, drums, vocals
Kimbo Reichley - bass, lead vocals
Alison Rupert - guitars, keyboards, lead vocals
Richard Rupert - acoustic & electric guitars, drums
It was always about the music. Six superb musicians. Consummate stage performers. Shared friendships and earned respect. Years spent separately and together in endlessly different combinations in studios and on the road in great regional bands. Openers. Headliners. Careers spent mastering mostly other people's music. Ready now to lay down their own markets. To make their own musical statements. In their own style. "Original American Country" they call it. Cultivated and harvested in the rich green valleys of Pennsylvania's rolling Susquehanna River basin. And yes, the legend is true. A rock dropped out of the sky and this band was born. Just like the 30-ton meteor that exploded in that nearby cornfield on 23 July 2001, almost nobody saw it coming. But millions heard it when it hit. These singer-songwriters heard it too, during a recording break on their studio porch. Really. Within 72 hours they were suddenly making their own musical shock waves as their first hot original single rolled across radio airwaves. Audiences took immediate notice. Requests for live shows. Talk of an album. New original music. New original songs. Rehearsals scheduled. And then the tragedy struck. Like millions of their fellow countrymen, the utter anguish. But they're musicians, and the Sunday night rehearsal turns spontaneously into a 36-hour recording marathon session. Their shared outpouring of grief. A creative explosion. A chance to help. And on September 18th 2001, exactly one week after the attacks, the airwaves roll again, this time in tribute to fallen heroes: AMERICAN STANDING TALL - THE AMERICAN TRILOGY. "Historic...the greatest album ever to come out of Pennsylvania..." the writer said. Now people really are listening. Heavy airplay in markets from New York to Hawaii. A world tour of mainland China. All of America has been ready for this for a long time, and we're all listening. Because after all, it was always about the music.
