Blue Sky, a group formed in 1972 by Calvin College students Bob Keeley and Pete Bardolph, has been reincarnated as the Lazy Blue Tunas.

By REKA JELLEMA
Staff writer

 Everything old will be new again when the members of Lazy Blue Tuna take the stage at One Trick Pony in Grand Rapids tonight.

The band is a reincarnation of Blue Sky, a band formed in 1972 by Calvin College students Bob Keeley and Pete Bardolph. The group usually featured three acoustic guitars and three-part vocals and played covers of songs by the Beatles, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, the Allman Brothers and the Eagles.

Keeley, a Holland resident, remembers the day he met Bardolph in 1972. The two students were introduced by a mutual friend, he said.

"Craig would approach me and say, 'You've got to meet Pete.' He'd tell Pete, 'You've got to meet Bob,'" recalls Keeley, now a professor of education at Calvin. "One day he introduced the two of us and left. It was fairly awkward until one of us finally said, 'So, you play guitar, right?' The other said, 'Yeah. So you want to jam?'"

The men played a George Harrison song, and one taught the other the chords to Cat Stevens' "Peace Train," Keeley said.

A friendship was formed.

The two, now in their late 40s, shared a passion for music that is still going strong today. And though Blue Sky split when the men graduated from college, they remained friends.

So when Bardolph, a music director at Bella Vista Church in Rockford and co-owner of Rainbow Music in Grand Rapids, called his old friend Keeley to ask if he wanted to get the band together and play some gigs, Keeley didn't hesitate.

With Bardolph's friend Dave Marsh on guitar and Rainbow Music co-owner John Gelderloos on bass, the Lazy Blue Tunas were in tune again.

Planning and rehearsing for tonight's gig at One Trick Pony brought back old times, good times for the men. It gave the friends an excuse to hook up and spend more time together than they have in several years.

"Our whole families are friends," said Bardolph, who also plays in the Grand Rapids band Trilogy. "But it's kind of easy to let things slip. This gig has given us a nice opportunity to just get together and hang out again."

The friendship that began with a musical affinity hasn't changed much in the 25 years since it started.

"We were both such a good fit on the day we met in how deeply we liked to think about the guitar and what are influences were musically and culturally," Bardolph said. "Not much has changed."

Both men agree that they have matured as musicians.

"We're better players now that we were then, by a long shot, I think," Keeley said. "My ear is a lot better and things I used to struggle with musically back then I can do off the top of my head now."

Bill Ryckbost of Holland caught a set when the Tunas played One Trick Pony earlier this year. He also heard them play as Blue Sky in the 70s. They were good before, but they're even better now, he said.

"They were relatively tight back then," he said. Even so, in the intervening years, they've grown as musicians, he added.

"I thought those guys had progressed a lot in terms of their musicianship. I think Bob's technique is phenomenal. Pete's too."

He said the men would take a Beatles song like "I Am the Walrus" and put a bluegrass spin on it.

"I do like what they do with a tune," he said.

Keeley has kept busy leading music worship at 14th Street Christian Reformed Church and playing on his own.

"I've spent the past 25 years listening and playing. And even when I haven't been playing I've been thinking about it," he said.

The members of the band are a little more carefree than they were as college students, at least when it comes to the music, Bardolph said. After playing in bands for enough years, the time comes to let go of fanatical perfectionism, he added.

"Looking back now I was a little more uptight. You always want your performance to be perfect, but you learn over time that everyone screws up. You don't have to put every note under a microscope."

One thing that has changed since the 1970s is how the band members line up a set of songs.

Back then it was easier to cover popular music that would please a diverse audience, Bardolph said.

"You go back to the '60s and every time the Beatles came out with a new song, the whole world would agree it was a cool song," he said.

These days folks tend to differ as to what passes for good music.

But Bardolph believes that the music favored by the Tunas, be it the Beatles, Motown or blues, is still universally accepted fare.

"A lot of the songs we did way back then have stood the test of time," he said.

One Trick Pony is at 136 Fulton Ave. in Grand Rapids. Pete Bardolph will play a solo set beginning around 8 p.m. The Tunas will play from 9 to 11 p.m., and will return to One Trick Pony on Dec. 12.