Kate Masters

As soon as they heard the words “special delivery,” Greg Shipman and John Grimes knew they had a band name. It was 2002 and they were brainstorming ideas with their former singer, Paul Graham, a mail carrier in downtown Frederick.

“Paul was like, ‘Yeah, I was at work and I looked down and saw a package that had “Special Delivery” stamped on it,’” Grimes said. “And it just kind of stuck. Nobody else had anything that sounded as good, except for Paul.”

Sixteen years later and the band’s lineup has shifted slightly. Another Paul (Boismenu) now supplies the lead vocals. Kevin Delmolino is on the bass guitar. Rick Tehansky, the newest member, just joined on the keyboards. But there’s still Shipman and Grimes, the drummer and guitarist, fast friends and bandmates for more than 30 years.

The pair met through a garage band, Triple Irony, and then played together in a blues cover band called Bone Daddy and the Hot Licks. They can remember warming up for bigger acts at the Rabbit’s Foot, a once-popular nightclub on Md. 355 that’s since become Mariachi Restaurant.

Throughout it all — day jobs and down periods and changes in the Frederick music scene — Shipman and Grimes have stuck together in one cover band or another. And in their eyes, it’s paid off. They’re set to perform at Alive @ 5 tonight, their fourth appearance at the event. They’ve got steady gigs at Buckeystown Pub and Champions and even some of the wineries (which is nice, Grimes said, because they can play earlier in the day).

They’ve also got some great fans. Just a few weeks ago, one of their regular followers presented each member of Special Delivery with a framed portait collage of the band. About 300 people came to their last show at Buckeystown Pub.

That’s not too shabby for a band without a single member under the age of 50. Their oldest member, Tehansky, is 65, Shipman said. But even though Special Delivery is a cover band, they’ve always tried to be just a little bit different.

“We try not to play what everyone else is playing,” Shipman continued. “We do a lot of songs by Steely Dan or the Eagles. We even do some Motown.”

“It’s all about the detail for us,” Grimes added. “We really like the songs that are more technical, music-wise. The best compliment for us is when someone comes up and says, ‘That sounded really close to the recording.’”

That’s not always easy for a band with limited practice and performance time. Boismenu is a union electrician and Delmolino still works as a commercial airline pilot, so it can be difficult to juggle work schedules. Special Delivery only performs about 25 shows a year, including private parties and larger events.

Luckily, Grimes and Shipman stay closer to home. Shipman owns a painting company and Grimes runs a screenprinting and embroidery business, which translates to plenty of band swag and merchandise to give away. He’s also responsible for all the set-up.

“John definitely has a golden ear,” Shipman said. “We have a very clean sound. And that’s important because we’re not able to put the time into it like these other bands. We don’t have that advantage of a weekly set rehearsal. We probably turn down more work than we pick up.”

For a few short minutes, my interview with local band daMood is cut short when bassist Dan Zboyan — who’s been prepping hot dogs in the kitchen of his home off Rosemont Avenue — runs onto the back patio and beckons us to follow him.

The four of us truck into the kitchen and follow Zboyan’s gaze out the front window. There, nestled under a bush, is a fawn about the size of a fox terrier — so young that white spots are still speckled along its back.

It’s the second deer we’ve seen that evening. Frontman Ricole Barnes already pointed out an older doe walking among the trees out back, shooting us a wary look before running from the house. It’s a common sight at Zboyan’s place, a rustic retreat right on the border of urban and rural Frederick. Since daMood was founded, it’s been something of a sanctuary for its members, the Platonic ideal of a practice space. Removed from the city, but not too far removed. Bucolic, but not too bucolic (you know, you can still get cell signal). There’s a full set of instruments and sound equipment in the basement.

“When I first heard about this, I was like, ‘That is too good to be true,’” Barnes said. “I think why we’re such a tight-knit band is because we have this to come to. A house on the hill. I always say it’s like a safe haven away from all the madness down there.”

Practice at Zboyan’s has been a tradition for the band since they came together about two years ago. Barnes has told the story over and over again, but he’s happy to repeat it: how in February of 2016, he made (local) history by becoming the first hip-hop artist to perform at the Weinberg Center during the Frederick Music Showcase. How the performance was an honor, but also a responsibility, in a way, to forge a path and create the best show possible.

Barnes didn’t want to be a guy on stage with two turntables and a microphone, so he asked some local musicians — artists he’d worked with before — to form a full backing band. Before that first show, they all took a shot of Jim Beam Honey (now a ritual for the band, and the basis for the title of their latest EP), went out, and performed a show that helped define their unique local sound — rock and rap, hip-hop and a little bit of punk, an amalgam of styles and influences borrowed from members of the band.

There are now six, including the original five members — Barnes, Zboyan, guitarist Chris Smith, keyboardist April Reardon, and Ethan Lichtenberger on the horns. In the past few weeks, they’ve also added Thaddeus Achey (or Tad) to replace their original drummer, something that’s required the youngest member of the band to learn 36 original songs from scratch. But that doesn’t bother him. Achey’s been in literally dozens of bands since he first learned to play the hand drums during two childhood years in Venezuela, including a “folk new metal” group after he moved to Maryland. But it was daMood, he said, that helped him realize the type of music he wanted to play.

“It’s like, ‘Let’s hear the Latin drums from Venezuela, let’s hear some new metal,’” Achey said. “I finally feel like I can be appreciated and also give my all to this band.”

The original five members of the band had a similar feeling after their first Weinberg performance. The night after they played, they all went back to Zboyan’s house for a feast, Smith said. He even saved a picture on his phone — fried chicken, coleslaw, cornbread and macaroni and cheese.

“It was like, we have to keep going,” he said. “The camaraderie and the synergy that we had was a real good feeling, real good thing. Like, alright, let’s keep the ball rolling.”

That’s brought the band to their next big venture — the Alive @ 5 show they’re playing tonight at the Carroll Creek amphitheater. In a way, Barnes said, it’s even bigger than the Weinberg. There will be more people there. The set is longer. And while they might not be the first hip-hop act to perform there, “we’re definitely one of the more original acts,” Zboyan said confidently.

That means the band — like they did for the Weinberg show — is thinking big. There will be some covers, Barnes said (“I mean, I know that audience could be 16 to 70. A lot of those folks have never seen a hip-hop show a day in their life.”), but daMood will also play some originals and mashups off their EP. They’ll bring in other local artists, including frequent collaborator Eriq Brown (stage name Bead Gawd), whose pseudonym, he later informed me, stands for “Greatness Achieved With Dreams.”

Later, he and Barnes would practice Brown’s song “Peanut Butter and Jelly and Chopped-Up Strawberries,” a playfully repetitive ode to girls looking like a snack (inspired, Brown said, by a real late-night snack he whipped up one night). The band practiced “Gimme Revolver” and “Make a Wave” and “We’re Up,” all off their EP. But they didn’t play “Frederick Famous,” an earlier song riffing on the band’s local following. In truth, Barnes wants to be bigger than Frederick, and he thinks daMood can make it happen.

“I’d like to take us local, national, international,” he said. “We’re definitely a band of the people.”

If there’s one thing the Drunk Naked Pirates like, as a band, it’s a good time. Just look at their name. Drunk. Naked. Pirates. It’s a moniker that screams fun.

“That’s what the name means — to have a good time,” explained guitarist Mike Loss. “I think it’s something that kind of got thrown around a long time ago and it stuck. But that’s what we’re about. Having fun and having a good time.”

The four-member band, performing Thursday for Alive @ 5 on Carroll Creek, has plenty of experience with that. Over the past five years, they’ve toured the tri-state area covering music from the 1960s on, including current hits.

That blend of songs — with a heavy focus on dance music — has led to plenty of interesting nights, said singer and guitarist Jason Perry. Like one particular show at a bar called Bungalow Billiards in Chantilly, Virginia, where a man jumped onto the dance floor to give his girlfriend a full lap dance.

That same night, a box truck hit drummer Dave Millison’s 1984 Mustang and an as-yet-unidentified fan stole the band’s banner, never to return it. Even that wasn’t quite as memorable as the band’s first Alive @ 5 performance, though, when the crowd finished 17 kegs in an hour.

“Everyone had a good time and it was fantastic,” Perry said. “There’s just something about live performances that rocks, especially with an awesome group of guys, and when everyone’s clicking and everyone’s having a really good time.”

The band’s current members have been together since 2012 and they book events at least two to four times a month, Loss said. Their musical backgrounds vary. Loss, for instance, studied guitar at the Musicians Institute — a for-profit music college in Los Angeles — while Millison is entirely self-taught. Perry picked up the guitar at 13, after years singing in his church choir. Bassist Chris Larkin learned the instrument in his early days as a singer with another group, when his bandmates decided they needed a bass player more than a vocalist.

That experience has allowed the band to move beyond basic covers. Take the group’s version of “Black Betty,” for instance, or “Zombie” by the Cranberries. They’re notably different from the original versions — largely thanks to tweaks or modifications suggested by Loss.

“Mike is the guy who says, ‘Oh, the cover song goes like this; we should go like that,’” Millison said. “Or, ‘Hey, let’s try it like this.’ I think it gives it a little more edge.”

At the same time, adapting original songs can be challenging. Playing covers is a “business decision” for the band, Perry said, but it also requires a level of perfection that isn’t always expected from groups producing their own music. When someone goes up to the band and requests a song by the Rolling Stones, they have something very specific in mind.

“The thing about covers is you’re mimicking what someone else is doing, which is kind of tricky,” Millison said. “With an original song, you’re playing to your ability. With a cover band, you’re playing to the ability of famous musicians. So covers, to me, are more challenging.”

Patty Reese is the youngest of seven siblings, a Silver Spring native who grew up in the midst of “a little Brady Bunch nightmare,” she said. When Reese was 3 years old, her mother married her stepfather and integrated her own four children with her husband’s three. Her parents weren’t musicians, but Reese remembered growing up surrounded by her family’s varied musical tastes.

“Everyone had their own rooms and liked their own styles of music and I just loved it all, really,” she said. “Anyone from Simon and Garfunkel to Led Zeppelin. Bonnie Raitt. Janis Joplin, Aerosmith, John Denver. I had a lot of influences.”

The 54-year-old performer may have been the baby of the family, but her music has grown up over the course of her more than 20-year career. For a long time, she was the frontrunner of other bands — Jr. Cline and The Recliners, a band called One Night Stand, a country girl group named Plum Crazy. As her confidence grew, she struck out on her own, launching an acoustic career and a band centered around her own original music.

“Really, I love songs that tell a story,” Reese said. “What is the human condition, you know? I write love songs, hate songs, love-gone-bad songs. Songs about old people getting ready to pass on. No matter what cross each person has to bear, we all get down, we all celebrate, we all have joy of some kind. I write songs that encompass all those things.”

Reese, performing at Alive @ 5 tonight, ties in original songs from her last three albums with cover songs from other songwriters including Bob Dylan and Steve Earle. Her records have garnered her accolades — 17 different awards from the Washington Area Music Association and a top-five spot on the national Contemporary Blues chart — but they’ve also been a way for Reese to divulge intensely personal experiences.

Take “Is It Too Late,” a gutsy look at the final stages of addiction before recovery. Reese has been sober for 24 years, but there was a time, before she got clean, when all she had was a bicycle, a guitar, “and a friend nice enough to let me stay in her basement because I had nowhere else to go.”

Loving someone with addiction can be just as hard. Before “Letin the Sun,” her most recent record, Reese made “Here and Now,” a self-described “divorce album” inspired by her first marriage. Reese lived with her then-husband in Mount Shasta, an isolated town in northern California, but quickly realized that he had little interest in recovery or self-improvement, she said.

She returned to Maryland in 2001 and wrote “Here and Now” as a solo acoustic album. The songs are some of her most introspective, driven by a steely-eyed look at the reality of her relationship.

“It was all driven by fear that I was getting older and that I needed to settle down and I had to make this work, which is the biggest lie ever,” Reese said. “You know what they say — let go or be dragged.”

Reese’s music has been cheerier as she’s gotten older. Seven years after “Here and Now,” she released “Strong Medicine,” an album she finished around the same time she met her current husband, Mark Pankow. The track “Good Lovin’ Man” — Reese’s first real love song — is about him.

“I had never, ever written a song like that before,” she said with a laugh. “It was always ‘screw you, I made a mistake’ songs.”

“Let in the Sun” also gave her the chance to experiment with style. One of her favorite songs from the album is “Your Love,” a James Brown-inspired funk ballad. Another is “Soul Satisfier,” a horn-infused power ballad.

Reese said the arrangements are also heavily dependent on input from her band, a diverse group of musicians scattered across Maryland. One her longtime collaborators, bassist Sonny Petrosky, lives in Frederick and has played with Reese for more than 20 years.

“I like to say that we’ve been playing together for so long, she’s like my sister,” Petrosky said. “She knows where I’m going and I know where she’s going when it comes to writing and arranging her songs. It’s very comfortable.”

It’s the first week in June and Dan McGuire is busy — he’s busy with weddings, private parties and gigs around the city, from Bushwaller’s to The Cellar Door. But he squeezes in time for me on the afternoon I call him because McGuire is an accommodating guy and I want to talk to him before he plays Alive @ 5 on Carroll Creek, which is one of his band’s biggest shows downtown.

When I interview the frontmen for cover bands, I’ve come to expect a certain amount of showboating, which I can appreciate, because it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to hear a song like “Hey Jude,” and think, “Yeah, I can do that.” But McGuire is not a showboater. He tells me that he didn’t start playing onstage until he was in college at Shippensburg University, which doesn’t have a music program — and he was already studying communications, anyway — so he has no formal instrumental training past high school. Tyler Buisch, the drummer for the Dan McGuire Group, has a bachelor’s degree in jazz drumming and piano and a master’s in jazz bass performance. McGuire, though, has mostly picked things up on his own.

“I’m not that well-versed in music theory,” he said. “I guess I’ve just always had good ears, so I’m able hear things and figure them out. That’s how I learned. But my band members are all very talented, well-studied musicians, so I like to surround myself with those people.”

The group isn’t his full-time job, but McGuire has still managed to become a fairly successful cover artist, squirreling away roughly $10,000 in savings to cover the costs if his band ever decides to tour. He prides himself on the group’s repertoire, which spans from the ‘60s and ‘70s to the current day and includes songs by the Beatles and Stevie Wonder, as well as more contemporary artists including Alanis Morissette, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber.

There are plenty of artists that inspire him, but McGuire’s dream has always been to write music, he said. That goal is complicated by the fact that he’s already written five original songs but likes none of them — at least not enough to share them widely.

“He hasn’t even shown me and we’re good friends,” Buisch said. “I guess you’re opening up your heart, you’re opening yourself up to criticism, and that’s scary.”

“There was an open-mic night at The Cellar Door and I played them there,” McGuire said. “And I don’t know what it was, but I was just extremely critical of myself. And I pretty much stopped playing them. I just didn’t feel they were a good representation of what I was doing at the time.”

That was about four years ago, and the songs came easily to him then. He was in the middle of a relationship that was drifting apart, driven by his focus on growing the band on top of working a full-time job. His mother had recently been diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease — a degenerative illness that targets the nervous system. It was easy to find inspiration.

One of his songs, “Waited,” was about a girl he liked in college who had a serious boyfriend, who later came to Frederick — after that relationship ended — to ask for a chance with him (McGuire’s then-girlfriend didn’t like the song very much). Another song, “Proud of You,” was about his father’s struggles with addiction. Both took only a few minutes to write.

“I’ll never forget because I was in my friend’s basement, we recorded it that night, and I listened to a copy of it as loud as I possibly could on my way home,” McGuire said. “It brought tears to my eyes — it was just a sense of pride and accomplishment. And that’s why, at the time, I thought I would keep it going.”

Real life ended up getting in the way. His relationship ended and his mother passed away. His cover band was gaining traction, and he couldn’t slow down to experiment with original songs. Around the same time, he met the love of his life — a girl named Becca — and proposed to her last November. The two just bought a house downtown and have a wedding planned for November, with a ceremony at Sky Stage and reception at McClintock Distilling.

Plus, having the Dan McGuire Group pays the bills. He can save money and buy his own equipment and there’s a comfort that comes from knowing that bars and private groups will always want to hire a well-run cover band. He’s always booked — at the time of our interview, he had a gig scheduled every night this week.

“I do still want to do original music,” McGuire said. “I plan to do it. But I’ve also been telling myself that for a long time and I haven’t done it. Because right now, I have no reason to slow down doing what I’m doing. Right now, everything is good the way it is.”

Jay Udavcak and Bob Deforge were both musicians well before they became best friends. Udavcak was a second-generation Ukrainian kid growing up outside Pittsburgh, classically trained on the upright bass before he switched to bass guitar at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Deforge, a retired pilot and colonel in the Marine Corps, took up guitar around the age of 13 when he first heard Jimi Hendrix on “Are You Experienced?”

“I said, ‘I gotta be able to play like that,’” Deforge said. “So, I picked the guitar and a cheap stereo system and basically tried to copy Hendrix.”

The two met more than 30 years later, after both had moved to the D.C. area. Around 2002, Deforge said, he put out a classified ad for other people interested in starting a band. Udavcak responded, and the two agreed to meet at Mars Music, a now-defunct chain of music supply stores founded by another guitarist with a desk job — former Office Depot president Mark Begelman.

If Udavcak and Deforge had ever become big stars, their introduction could have gone down in history as the perfect musical meet-up. As Udavcak remembers it, he was noodling around in the bass department of the store when he heard strains of a guitar line coming from another section of the store. He wasn’t sure who it was, but he couldn’t help himself from joining in.

“Whoever it was, they’re playing some really interesting blues stuff,” Udavcak recalled. “So, I had a bass, and I just started riffing off what I heard. He kept playing, so we’re playing together before we’ve even seen each other. That goes on until one of us finally walked over, and that’s when I met Bob, who’s been my partner in Big Bad Juju since day one.”

The two men ended up going to a nearby restaurant for beers and a two-hour dinner turned into a conversation on family, life and musical influences. Big Bad Juju — performing tonight on the Alive @ 5 stage — is the culmination of that first meeting, a cover band whose songs span four decades of American music.

If the name of the band sounds like it’s based off voodoo (or an arcane style of Nigerian music), think again. “Bad Juju” actually traces its origins to the Udavcak family dog, a young Shih Tzu with a bad habit of urinating on the front porch. When the dog lifted its leg, Udavcak’s wife would shout out, “Bad Juju!,” a name that stuck with both him and Deforge.

Later, in 2011, the band temporarily joined forces with a four-piece horn section that seriously amplified its onstage sound. The original four members floated several terrible ideas for incorporating the new section into the band name, Udavcak said — “Bad Juju and the Horndogs” was one of them.

Finally, one of the horn players suggested “Big Bad Juju,” a moniker with better staying power. The crew kept the name even after the horn section dispersed and the band was stripped back down to four people. Every member of Big Bad Juju plays multiple instruments, Udavcak said, and the band still tries to keep its onstage act as theatrical as possible.

“There is not one of us that’s letting the others get away with any s—,” he said. “We’re not just a band of people that stares down at their fretboards. We’re approachable and we want to make sure people are having as much fun as we’re having. It’s not uncommon for Bob and I to jump off the stage and start dancing with the crowd.”

That’s the point of Big Bad Juju — it’s fun. The group plays about twice a month — at weddings and clubs, at breweries and the Marine Corps Marathon — and every event is about making people dance and smile without any ego on the part of its members. All four bandmates have full-time jobs and make time for some practice on the side, Deforge said. No one is trying to be the next big thing.

“It’s the best band I’ve ever been in, quite honestly,” he added. “We’re all very good friends and we all have the same vision. It’s a serious hobby, but not so serious that anyone wants to quit their day job.”

For Udavcak and Deforge, music has always been a serious hobby. Udavcak convinced his parents to let him transfer to Berklee with the promise that he’d study production and engineering, but also spent hours training his voice and honing his bass guitar skills with the school’s gospel choir. Deforge took his guitar nearly everywhere he was stationed with the Marines, from Iwakuni, Japan — where he wooed his wife by playing for an hour straight in his flight suit — to Darwin, Australia.

He never did learn to play quite like Hendrix, though.

“I think I got pretty close,” Deforge said. “But I do the best imitation I can.”

NOTE: Tonight’s Alive @ Five has been cancelled. 

The band Poehemia is settling in the lounge of Racers’ Cafe, a bar just outside the Baltimore city line. Racers’ is a neighborhood joint, complete with checkered linoleum and a blackboard of beers on tap, but the lounge is decidedly more upscale. It’s normally closed, explains lead singer Andy Anderson, but the guys are given special privileges because Anderson used to work there, years ago, as a cashier at the liquor store attached to the main bar.

It’s impossible not to have a drink when you’re sitting with Poehemia. For one thing, all its members — with the exception of drummer Greg Giannetti — are having one, and they’ll urge you to get one, too.

“We’re an Irish band. It’s what we have for breakfast,” Anderson will say. The four men are all in their late 40s, with the exception of Anderson, who is 50. Their age gives an edge of pragmatism to the idealism they all share as musicians.

Take, for instance, the following exchange, prompted by a line of questioning on why — and when — the band decided to start writing original music in addition to the Celtic and rock songs they generally cover.

“We’ve done that for a long time,” says Ted Koch, the band’s second singer and lead guitarist.

“For me, I’ve always aspired to write, to create, you know?” adds Anderson.

“The idea was that the cover band would help to support the original music,” Giannetti says. “I think just about everyone here can agree that this is the most profitable cover band we’ve ever been in.”

To wit: the men of Pohemia are motivated to write and perform their way to the top of the Celtic rock industry, a genre made most recognizable by Flogging Molly, the Dropkick Murphys, and, to a lesser extent, Ed Sheeran — an English musician who, nevertheless, was inspired to write his folk song “Nancy Mulligan” by his Irish paternal grandparents.

Still, they’re introducing the original material slowly. After all, Poehemia made about $40,000 in 2017 and played roughly 53 shows. Many of the band’s appearances — at Irish bars on St. Patrick’s Day, for example, or at Renaissance festivals — depend on its members’ ability to cleanly and expertly deliver popular Celtic songs.

All of which is fine. Good, even. Poehemia’s Irish folk covers are beautiful. Take the band’s rendition of “Galway Girl,” a song which, somewhat ironically, was written by the American folk musician Steve Earle, but became Ireland’s most popular downloaded song in 2008 after it was covered by native artists.

The song, a jaunty ballad about an ill-fated fling, is imbued with a dreamy quality when it’s sung by Anderson in his thick Scottish brogue. The band performs it with spirit. In the lounge at Racers’, Giannetti is set up with a cajón snare and box drum, a small wooden percussion set that still packs a mighty thump. Mike Kerr is on the bass — not a bass guitar, but the orchestral instrument, which has a mighty expanse that manages to dwarf his own tall frame.

Still, you can tell the men are proud, in a modest way, of their original songs. One of the newer ones is “Life of a Privateer,” a tune about a man named Thomas Boyle who moved to Baltimore to become a commissioned sea captain in the War of 1812. (The men are also proud of their shared connection to the city: Poehemia takes its name from famous resident Edgar Allan Poe and National Bohemian, the unofficial beer of Baltimore.)

“Boyle captured more ships than any other captain at the time,” says Koch, who also wrote the lyrics to the song. “It was his way of giving a big middle finger to the British.”

Even newer is “Taste” (working title), a song about the more elemental theme of human unity. Koch wrote the lyrics and is singing it live for the very first time in the lounge at Racers’; the song is so new that Kerr still needs sheet music to keep up. Still, it’s an indication of where the band could go in the future: a more experimental direction with remnants of Irish influence.

Koch and Anderson actually bonded over their mutual appreciation for alternative musicians, including progressive rock bands such as Genesis and Rush. Marco Reabe, a mutual friend who first introduced them, was slightly surprised the two musicians ended up forming a Celtic rock band.

“Part of the reason I thought they would click is because a lot of their interests were not so mainstream,” Reabe said. “They had these somewhat unique interests and they were both serious. They weren’t 20-somethings who just wanted to get drunk and hang out with girls.”

It was perhaps that very seriousness — and a fundamentally entrepreneurial approach — that encouraged the band to go Irish. Both Anderson and Koch grew up immersed in Celtic folk music and even Kerr claims Irish ancestry (Giannetti is the lone Italian, but a very quick learner, his bandmates said). They liked the songs they were playing, and it helped them stand out in the competitive universe of local cover bands.

“I believe that we can be big,” Anderson says. “Everything happens.”

It’s that belief that sustains the band’s rigorous touring schedule and 53 shows a year — performances in the sultry summer heat or the freezing cold on St. Patrick’s Day.

For Poehemia, the question isn’t if. It’s when.