Our Dumb Blind Luck story starts in San Francisco…

All of us (with the exception of Mark), had been friends in San Francisco.  Over the years we all played with different people around the Bay area but never formed into a band.

Cut to Clearwater, Florida. It’s now the 90’s. Cookie Leonard (vocals, violin, and keys) and Bob Forrest (vocals and guitar) had started playing together as a duo. Getting together to play songs for fun, appearing at local coffee houses, weddings, funerals, parties – you get it.  Discovering that they were both good songwriters, they got busy and worked up a number of originals that became the foundation of DBL.

As luck would have it, it wasn’t long before Mike Alkema (bass and horns) also arrived in Clearwater from SF and became the third member playing trumpet and flugelhorn. We still needed a bass player. Cookie asked Michael to learn bass and he busted his chops and now holds down both horn and bass in his own inimitable style.

Mark Stevens (drums), originally from Michigan, was introduced to the band through a friend and fellow musician.  Trouble was, we already had a drummer at the time. Mark persisted and eventually won us over to become the fourth member of the band.

Max Harvey (guitar and harp),  our newest member, arrived from SF via Los Angeles. Cookie ran into him one day and asked him to sit in on one of the band’s rehearsals. We liked his guitar and harmonica playing so much we asked him to stay.

That’s our story in a nutshell.  Just good friends creating a groove!