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This week's Take Cover session is a little different, as it's the first time we've featured a touring band. Kopecky Family Band drove 16 hours straight from Norman, Oklahoma, to the Musical Instrument Museum to play a few songs and explore the museum.
Tonight the band is scheduled to perform its first Arizona show at Crescent Ballroom. Check out Kopecky Family Band playing a couple of original songs and a Christmas favorite in an intimate setting after the jump.
"This is our second time in the last year playing the west coast. We always love coming out here because you wake up and you look out the windows of the van and it's so inspiring and beautiful. It's different than the east coast and other places because there's less buildings and less traffic, just totally beautiful," says singer Kelsey Kopecky on her first impressions of Arizona.
"Driving in, it felt like home in a weird way. This feels good, there's only a handful of places I really think that you actually feel that. One could actually be home, and the other one's a place that you could potentially make home," says singer/guitarist Gabe Simon.
The band had to reschedule a couple of tour dates because cellist Markus Midkiff's younger brother unexpectedly passed away last week.
"It's good for me to be on tour, I know it's good for these guys because we really are a family," says Midkiff, "It's been tough...I guess it will really influence this tour. There's a lot of passion."
Events like these are what makes the band feel like a family-- even if no one is technically related. Members of the Kopecky Family Band were drawn together while attending college in Nashville, Tennessee, where the band continues to live now.
"It was this very magical experience. we had all played with tons of people growing up, but it was the first time for me that I felt this definite amazing freedom with creating music with these guys. We didn't stop, and here we are," says Kopecky.
Part of Kopecky Family Band's charm is its versatility. For our session, the six piece band played two songs as a four-piece while the bassist and drummer relaxed in the MIM's cozy chairs. For its final song, "Change," Kopecky and Simon performed a duet.
Kopecky Family Band loves mixing up the number of people on stage. "You learn to adapt to being a larger group that's trying to make one unique sound versus six unique sounds," says Simon.
Kopecky Family Band is scheduled to perform on Tuesday, December 4 at Crescent Ballroom with Ladylike and The Senators.Keep Phoenix New Times Free... Since we started Phoenix New Times, it has been defined as the free, independent voice of Phoenix, and we would like to keep it that way. Offering our readers free access to incisive coverage of local news, food and culture. Producing stories on everything from political scandals to the hottest new bands, with gutsy reporting, stylish writing, and staffers who've won everything from the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi feature-writing award to the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. But with local journalism's existence under siege and advertising revenue setbacks having a larger impact, it is important now more than ever for us to rally support behind funding our local journalism. You can help by participating in our "I Support" membership program, allowing us to keep covering Phoenix with no paywalls.
