The Lazy Blue Tunas Story

Back in 1972 Bob Keeley met Pete Bardolph when they were both students at Calvin College. They quickly became friends and formed a band with another friend of Bob’s. The band, Blue Sky, usually featured three acoustic guitars and three-part vocals. Occasionally they added a bass player, John Gelderloos, an old friend of Pete’s from Chicago. They played together for various college events and broke up when they graduated. Two of the members of the band left the area to pursue their careers.

Pete stayed in Grand Rapids and formed a new band with John and a local musician named Dave Marsh. This new band, Lazy, was primarily an electric band but became fairly well known from playing in clubs in the Grand Rapids area. Pete and John also became business partners when they opened Rainbow Music on Leonard St. After nine years together, Lazy broke up and, although the members continued to be involved in music and stayed in touch with each other, they had not been in a band together since the mid 80’s.

Pete and Bob kept in touch through the years even though Bob lived in New Jersey and Colorado before moving to Holland in 1989. At that point they played together occasionally for concerts at Bella Vista Church in Rockford, the church at which Pete is the music director, but they mostly played together for fun at home.

Pete occasionally did solo sets at clubs in Grand Rapids and thought that it would be fun to do the old three-guitar / three-part-harmony thing so he called his old friends Bob and Dave in January of 2001 and asked if they were interested in doing a set together. They readily agreed and Pete asked his bass-playing friend from church, Mark VanderKolk, if he would join the band as well. Mark and Pete had played together in a number of places, one of which was on a mission trip to Trinidad. They called that band the Tuna Puna Trio.

All the pieces were in place and the group made their debut at the One Trick Pony in February of 2001. Pete made an off-the-cuff remark that we were called the Lazy Blue Tunas, taking one word from the name of each band that we’d all played in with him, and the name stuck. Not wanting to leave an old friend out, John Gelderloos was asked to play bass at the second gig in May of that year and John and Mark have been alternating at bass ever since.

In addition to being a Tuna, Dave Marsh is a Procurement Quality Engineer for X-Rite Corporation in Grandville. Bob Keeley is a professor of Education at Calvin College. Pete Bardolph and John Gelderloos own Rainbow Music in Grand Rapids and Mark VanderKolk is the owner and manager of Accu-Temp Mechanical Services in Grand Rapids.

When asked to describe their music, Dave Marsh said “The Lazy Blue Tunas are a four-piece group made up of three acoustic guitarists and an electric bassist. We feature three- and sometimes four-part harmonies while covering a variety of material from performers such as The Beatles, Poco, Sam Cooke, The Hollies, Richard Thompson, Danny and the Juniors, Beach Boys, Bare-Naked Ladies, Eagles, Wilson Pickett, and The Soggy Bottom Boys. But don't mistake us for an easy-listening folk group - the Tunas love to rock.”

See the article about us from the October 24, 2002 edition of the Holland Sentinel