Upcoming Gigs

The Band

Ron Sacks

Steve Smith

Mark Stevens

Mike Keefe

Scott Blumenreich

Ron Sacks's band history began in junior high in southern California where he played keyboards and sang with The Four Speeds. He was huge fan of Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Jackie Wilson and Ray Charles.

As a high-schooler in Beverly Hills, he fronted the bands, Our Gang and Boys Town. In 1968 and still a teen, Sacks and his group opened for The Rascals and The Dave Clark Five.

He moved to Colorado in 1985. After ten years with few opportunities to perform, he began jamming at Pennington’s Evergreen Music Store, met Mike Keefe and formed the band, Toast. For a short time he also took a turn as the head of Jam Crackers, an unfortunate group that had a “chicken-wire experience” (see THE BLUES BROTHERS) at a foothills roadhouse called Reggie’s Will o’ the Wisp. The bar burned down a week later. Sacks was never questioned by authorities and denies any knowledge of the incident.

He and Keefe recorded “E-mail Female”, a collection of originals in 1999. He still has a boxful of the disks that he’d like to unload. Talk to him about it.

Today, Sacks is the lead singer and keyboard player for Falling Rock. During the day, he plays golf. Tough life.

As a young man, Steve Smith had the good sense to leave Wichita Falls, Texas for the Colorado high country. He lives in the foothills outside Denver and has absolutely no plans to leave the area.  He's worked for the same company for over 30 years, and really enjoys the customer entertainment portion of his position in sales.

In 2002, Smith joined Falling Rock as rhythm guitarist. Soon after, Ron Sacks pressed him into duty as a back-up vocalist. He was surprised to find that he could hit the high notes and the falsettos. And he’s the big guy in the group.

Although his job consumes most of his time, he has indulged his hobby of collecting handsome guitars and honing his fret-board skills. He spends the rest of his leisure time --- what little he can find --- with his Harley, the free weights at the gym, his wife, his two grown children and three grandsons. Not necessarily in that order.

Smith has been known to swill a few beers with club managers while helping to book gigs for Falling Rock.  His bad temper is notorious throughout the Rocky Mountain region. Once, when riled, he went so far as to mutter, “Damn it!”

Raised in Lincoln, Massachusetts, Mark Stevens grew up listening to WRKO in Boston. His first "band" learned three Beatles tunes, including "Run For Your Life" (some did). They played all the songs they knew, twice, and called it a party in eighth grade. At Principia College in southern Illinois, he was in two bands that played a total of one audition and one semi-real "gig."  Their version of "Down By The River" was so long it could have been the Mississippi.

Life as a reporter took Mark back to Boston. He moved in with the band known as Orchestra Luna, where The Shirts and other New York bands would come to stay.  One of the Orchestra Luna singers was Karla DeVito, who went on to sing with Meat Loaf and marry Robbie Benson.  Mark saw Talking Heads in a tiny Boston bar before their first album came out; The Ramones, too.

Transferred to Los Angeles, Mark formed The Dadz, a band that practiced for a year and then played one gig, a wedding. The drummer designed album covers for lesser-known artists like ELO and Linda Ronstadt.

Mark's next stop (and so far, last stop) was Denver for more journalism work. At The Denver Post in the early 1990's, Mark formed a band with reporters that was dubbed "The Corrections."  That band evolved into Toast, which had a high point near the end of its 10-year run, playing for 15,000 fans at the Olathe Sweet Corn Festival. Fans, that is, of the headliner, Styx.

Mark joined Falling Rock in early 2005 and still fends off Ron's demand that he buy replica Cavern '61 Vintage Hofner Bass.

By day, Mark is Director of School-Community Relations in Greeley-Evans School District 6.

Born in Northern California, Mike Keefe grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, where he listened to the black radio stations from the Illinois side of the Mississippi. Ike and Tina Turner, Jimmy Reed and Chuck Berry were early favorites.

When he was twenty, in Kansas City, he played bass in Open Trench, an impromptu band whose one big gig was a high-school prom with a nine-year-old drummer on a beginner’s kit. The group disbanded shortly before its members (minus the drummer) were drafted into military service. Keefe ended up in the Marine Corps where he learned to spit-shine boots and play blues harp on guard duty.

In Denver, he was a member of a half-speed Bluegrass band called The Lasagna Brothers with a side of Mary Lou. On mandolin this time, Keefe was never good enough to play at regulation tempo. But he took solace in the fact that the other guys were just as pitiful.

Keefe has played guitar and harmonica with The Corrections, Jam Crackers, Toast and, since the turn of the century, Falling Rock. He prefers slow Blues solos mostly because of nightmares he had as a Lasagna Brother.

In the real world, Keefe is the nationally-syndicated editorial cartoonist for The Denver Post. Click here to view his cartoons online.

Falling Rock's drummer, Scott Blumenreich, kicked-off his percussive career at age eight. By the tender age of twelve, he was already on the second iteration of his first Rock & Roll band, Taboo.

With his musical roots based in the era of progressive classical rock, the groups that helped Scott define his high-impact style included Genesis, Yes, Rush, Kansas, ELP, Jethro Tull, The Moody Blues and The Who.

He still breaks out his classic 1975 Ludwig clear-smoke kit for gigs, and loves adding a punchy R&R sound to Falling Rock's eclectic repertoire.

Scott spent the first fifteen years of his life on the east coast where he learned about music, and the remainder of his teenage years and most of his adult life in Colorado, where he’s tried to express what he’s learned.  As a semi-native, his closest call with local renown came at nineteen with a band named Legacy, out of Colorado Springs.  Sometimes “almost made it” has to be good enough!  Thanks KILO FM and the Rainbow Music Hall.