Printer Friendly Version - Still Going Strong With Stories, Songs, Bouchard Brothers Plan Gig at Kate

Joe Bouchard, who will be playing on Saturday, July 31 at The Kate with his brother Albert Bouchard and his partner Joan Levy Hepburn, is best known as one of the founding members of the band Blue Öyster Cult. The original band recorded for Columbia Records in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and toured all over the world with shows in the U.S., Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Japan.Photo courtesy of Joe Bouchard

The Energizer Bunny has been pounding the bass drum in television commercials since l989.

He has been performing since the 1958 when at the age of 10, he and his brother Albert along with assorted cousins two formed their own band, and played local gigs in their hometown in upstate New York. They were well enough known that a local paper covered one of their performances featuring Joe on guitar and Albert, a year and a half older, on drums.

Both Joe and Albert Bouchard are still at it. They will perform as the Bouchard Brothers on Saturday, July 31 at 8 p.m. at The Katharine Hepburn Performing Arts Center, 300 Main Street, Old Saybrook, presenting a mélange of music from their days as founding members of the iconic rock band Blue Oyster Cult, along with new music they have written and stories of their days as big-time rockers.

Actually, Bouchard Brothers has one more member, Joe Bouchard’s partner, Joan Levy Hepburn, a photographer and musician. She sings and plays acoustic guitar. Albert Bouchard plays percussion and both brothers also play electric guitars, but Joe Bouchard said the different types of guitars blend very well.

At a recent interview, Joe Bouchard talked about his present performances as well as his long career.

“We are the elder statesmen of rock and that’s a flag I carry happily,” he says.

Bouchard says audiences, many of whom were Blue Oyster Cult fans, always want to hear the hard rock numbers the group was known for. Even people not familiar with Blue Oyster Cult’s music often know about the band because of “More Cowbell,” the famous Saturday Night Live spoof of the group and its heavy metal music.

Still, Bouchard said Bouchard Brothers as a performance group is not frozen in the past.

“The whole music business has changed since we started out. We listen to new stuff, we play new stuff” he says.

On several of the songs they will be performing, Bouchard will play the trumpet, an instrument he played as a youngster right through his early college days and has resumed playing. He started trumpet in grade school along with piano at the urging of his mother, but was never enthusiastic about the keyboard.

“I hated piano,” he said. “I finally convinced my mother to let me stop in my first semester of college.”

Bouchard has played the trumpet with the New Horizons Band of the Community Music School, a group designed for seniors who have played throughout their lives as well as those returning to music or even starting an instrument.

In addition to his days with Blue Oyster Cult, Bouchard had a career as a music teacher at two Connecticut private schools, the Kent School and the Frederick Gunn School, better known by its former name, The Gunnery.

Albert Bouchard also had a professional career in education, both as an administrator and a music teacher for more than 25 years music at Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School, in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, New York.

Both brothers have continued to write songs, put out their own solo albums, and perform with other groups in addition to the Bouchard Brothers. In 2020, Joe Bouchard put out his sixth solo album, Strange Legends, and did some 90 interviews about the new release.

“Mostly sitting at home on Zoom or Skype,” he says. “It was great that so many people wanted to do interviews.”

The enforced idleness of the pandemic has given Joe a chance not only to write music but to do what all musicians must always do: practice.

At this point in his career, he is no longer enthusiastic for the kind of road tours that were once the staple of well-known rock groups.

“I played for 50 years every weekend, 12 months a year. I am not expecting that to happen anymore,” he says. “I am not trying to be 20 again.

Besides, Joe noted there is at least one thing he needs occasionally now that was not part of his original touring career.