Best R&B Band or Solo Artist
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40.00% Todd Harrold*
Others with Votes:
1999 Winner: Brand New Bag
1998 Winner: n/a
1997 Winner: G-Money Band
* On the ballot
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Sometimes, just sometimes mind you, good things come from bad things. Drummer Todd Harrold is a case in point. For months, he thought he had tendinitis and suffered extreme discomfort. Then came the bad news: He had rheumatoid arthritis, a far more severe auto-immune disease that attacks the joints. But, hey, if life hands you oranges ... “I had to change my diet completely. I’ve been taking pills. No more cheeseburgers. Now everything is baked chicken, baked turkey and salads. I lost 30 pounds,” Harrold said. And, after 26 years of playing, Harrold had to learn a new style of drumming and find out if he could continue to perform. He worked on the new style, softer and less aggressive than before, with a lighter touch. In December, he put together a new band “just to see if I could still play.” That’s how he ended up with his current group, which plays regular Thursday night gigs at Bill’s Bistro. “They treat us with a lot of respect there. They’re good people,” Harrold said. The new band members include some good people, too, such as Michael Patterson on bass and Jim Steele on “an old electric piano from the 70s we bought for him.” Harrold has played in various bands since 1991, after studying the drums with the seriousness of a classical musician at Julliard. For three years during the 1990s, he toured extensively and even signed a contract with a major record label in 1998. “That did not go terribly well. We did a CD but the label did a lot of re-recording and re-mastering. We worked on it for 14 months and they held onto it for a year. By that time the band had broken up,” Harrold said. So, he returned to Fort Wayne and played with the late, lamented Brand New Bag. The Bag featured his wife, Stephany Harrold, on lead vocals. Stephany accepted her husband’s Whammy because the band was busy playing at Bill’s Bistro that night. “We broke up Brand New Bag because Stephany did not want to be the front person. Now she does backup and some vocals. She’s a great singer, but not all that comfortable to be the MC,” Harrold said. The Todd Harrold band will be in the studio this month, working on a new CD. It will contain several of Harrold’s songs, as well as covers such as Neil Young’s “Down By The River.” |
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