User:Dutchofumbrellabed/sandbox

Umbrella Bed is a 2-tone pop-ska influenced band from the United States. Formed in 1995 it is best known for infusing a very wide diverse horn sound seamlessly into a pop-song format and manic live performances. Instrumentation regularly includes french horn, multiple trombones, saxophones and trumpet against the more traditional bass, drum, guitar and vocal format.

Always prone to using alias names, the original line-up included founder Mel Tepid (bass, vocals), Hellrocket (vocals, trumpet), Dutch Buddha (drums), Eva Washburn (frenchhorn, vocals), Al Teagarden (trombone) Billy Franklin (keyboards, vocals) and Ringo Alaska (saxophone), Archemedis Cap. Dan Frankowski was briefly the bands lead singer for its first four months of existence -- a short enough period that band alias names had not appeared yet. Five records have been released, King Size (1996), Monkey & Rivets (1998), Last Band Standing (2005), One Small Skank (2005) and Go (2008).

Career formation and early years Coming off several failed alternative music framed bands in the early 1990’s, Tepid recruited Buddha to start a “ska” band claiming he had dream that they did so. Drummer turned guitar player Archemida Showercap also quickly joined the fray, while friend and sometime band member from other projects Franklin joined and helped recruit Washburn and Teagarden along with mutual friends Alaska and Frankowski. The project quickly coalesced using the 2-Tone ska sound as its overall framework. As a highly trained trumpet player but not a vocalist, Frankowski was asked to give up lead vocal spot and slide into a trumpet only role. He left the band immediately and Hellrocket joined paving the way for the bands initial local success in its home base of Minneapolis/St. Paul and the entire Midwest of the US. The band fell into a burgeoning ska scene with such mid-west stalwarts at Suspect Bill and the Jinkies filling all-ages events at the famed local Minneapolis club, First Avenue. Umbrella Bed played support role for many of the local acts but quickly jumped into its own headlining position while it independently released it’s first disc, a quickly thrown together 18-track disc entitled called King Size. Principle tracks were layed down in a dizzing two days at a small, short lived basement studio called the Tranberrys in early November of 1996. Horn parts and vocals were layered on over the next few months The Twin Cities area’s top music rag, The City Pages, voted UB one of the “Best New Bands” of 1997. It was also the first year the band was nominated for a Minnesota Music Award, a feat accomplished many years in a row, although they only ever were nominated.