“Hey,” Tim said on the phone by way of introduction.  “Pat says you can play drums.” That definitely got my attention.  Pat was a fellow pitcher on my Babe Ruth 15-year old baseball team.  He knew I had borrowed my dad’s big old Leedys to play with a few kids’ bands and sat in with […]

Jeff and I were walking across the parking lot from his condo to the nearby grocery store.  Every Thursday night we get together to cook man food (okay, it’s usually hamburger helper) and listen to a ball game. As we crossed the street we heard music coming from the parking lot, unlike anything we had […]

The cool thing about playing a wide variety of music from the sixties through today is that it has such universal appeal.  It would be easy to assume that 20 year-olds want to hear only today’s artists, urban people prefer hip hop, folks over 50 will only tolerate classic rock or country, and small town […]

It’s tough sledding when you are really different from every other kid in your second grade class. And your school. And your whole city. Jeff Balek, our drummer and the namesake of our family band “Caution! Blind Driver” was REALLY different, being totally blind. It’s not that the kids were mean, or didn’t like him. […]

Jenny shows off her new Eastwood bass guitar at Promenade:

I don’t even try to do set lists any more.  It’s just too hard.  Jenny has to carry that weight. As a variety cover band, we know that the most important thing to our guests is the songs.  People want to hear songs they like and if they can sing along, all the better.  The […]

One of our favorite events – Paws In the Park – is coming up on April 7. It’s a family affair, and I mean the whole family including the pooches. Lots of cool people with their cool dogs, plus vendors, food, prizes, dog stuff and Caution! Blind Driver on the big stage. We always brush […]

Jeff and I took an interest in Ronnie Milsap, a blind musician from North Carolina like Jeff, and were amazed to learn his history and the quality and quantity of his work. Milsap was born blind in Robbinsville, NC in 1943.  His mother almost immediately abandoned him and he was sent to the state school […]

Okay, the Fender Mustang experiment didn’t work. At all. Jenny needed a good short-scale bass and loved the look and feel of her new Mustang at rehearsal. But you never know how a piece of musical equipment will perform until you gig with it. First thing we noticed is no headroom due to weak PJ […]