Chuck Surack and Brett Kelsey, each of whom play multiple instruments, played together for nearly eight years in the Stardust Band, a local 14-piece big band that Surack started. Karin Martin, the bundle of energy from the Queens, New York, sang with The Answer for eight years before coming over to help form Prime Time.

Because of their versatility, Prime Time are comfortable performing in what seems to be every musical style except the exotic aliens lounge band in Star Wars — and you probably shouldn’t put that past them, either.

Prime Time came together only in April of this year. Already they have established themselves as the jack-of-all-trades in the local music scene, playing in venues from local clubs to private parties. On August 10, they appeared at the grand opening of Jefferson Pointe in Fort Wayne and were such a hit they were invited back on the spot to play a second set in the evening. They are available to play everything from concerts to weddings to corporate parties.

“The years we played in the Stardust band led to Chuck and me getting together,” said Kelsey, who plays trumpet, fluegalhorn, trombone and keyboards.

“I had been playing with The Answer for about eight years and these guys approached me to play with them. They tried to break my arm,” added Martin, with only a touch of overstatement.

The band plays what they call “all the fun songs, the songs people love to hear.”

“Our variety is way bigger than other bands you see in this area. We do big band tunes and we do jazz, county and rock — classic standards to things you hear on the radio today,” said Surack, who plays saxophones, flute and keyboards. “We’re not really musicians, we’re entertainers.”

“From a singer’s perspective, I’m glad I’m not stuck in one little thing. This band gives me a chance to be very versatile,” Martin said. She uses a wireless microphone to work the crowd, often getting them involved in the songs.

Older people in the audience at a Prime Time show sit alongside younger people. Each comes away happy, band members say, because Prime Time have a repertoire of some 350 songs. And they are willing to play them at the drop of a hat.

Let’s let the players speak for themselves, as if they were taking turns to solo in one of their shows.

Surack is the founder and president of Sweetwater Sound. He grew up in Fort Wayne and graduated from Wayne High School. He claims that the only time he was ever punished in school was for playing “Heart and Soul” on the piano after the teacher told the class to remain quiet.

After high school, he went on the road to play in various bands, touring the country as a very young but professional musician on the club and Holiday Inn circuits.

“After several years, I decided to return home and get a real job. I started Sweetwater in 1979 as a recording studio. We worked with a lot of the local bands and did a lot of corporate work,” he said.

The company grew from a recording studio to where it is today, which is a major recording studio and a supplier of recording and other musical equipment.

The fortuitous purchase by Sweetwater of a new kind of synthesizer, the first one which allowed the digital recreation of actual recorded sounds and voices, brought Surack into close contact with many major stars who wanted advice and assistance on the instrument’s use in their own recordings. Think Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton and more recently Paul Simon and Matchbox 20.

“All of a sudden all these people were calling us for technical help. I got album credits from Rogers and Stevie Wonder,” Surack said. The retail side of Sweetwater started in this support of Surack’s “friends” around the country.

Sweetwater even found a way to make B. B. King’s famed guitar Lucille digital.

Surack is self-taught on the instruments he plays, having taken exactly one saxophone lesson in his life. The technical/recording studio/computer side of his work came just as naturally.

Kelsey is a 1974 graduate of Elmhurst High School. He started playing guitar as a youngster but thought his fingers too short to play it properly so he switched to the trumpet. He began hanging around local jazz musicians such as Dick Quigley and absorbed as much as he could about the music and its mystique.

After he graduated from high school and attended IPFW for a year, he joined the Marine Corps to play in its various bands, spending three years of tough duty in Hawaii earning his stripes as a trumpet player.

“In addition to playing in Marine Bands, I sat in as a trumpet player in a lot of other bands,” Kelsey said.

Playing in a group as small as Prime Time has been a new experience for Kelsey, who cut his chops in larger bands, such as the local ITT Band.

“I think it makes you play better. We’ve gotten along very well,” he said.

He now lives in Warsaw with his wife and niece and works at Bhar Associates in Fort Wayne, a local manufacturer of injection-molded plastic parts mainly for the auto industry. He probably hears rhythms in that work that no one else does.

“If I had my druthers I’d play full-time, but that’s a hard way to make a living. I like the atmosphere in Warsaw and Fort Wayne. I don’t think I could thrive in Los Angeles or New York,” he said.

Martin did thrive in New York before moving to Fort Wayne in 1992. She was born and grew up in Queens on Long Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City.

“I’ve been singing since I was a little kid and my mother was my accompanist on the piano. I used to use a wooden spoon as my guitar and perform at family parties,” she said.

Martin lived in a German immigrant neighborhood and much of her childhood was spent singing in church and other local choirs, sometimes in neighboring Brooklyn. She played piano for a while, then learned to play a real guitar.

“I did some community theater and in high school I focused on musical theater. That was where I learned to dance. I also had my own little singing group in high school, kind of a barber shop group,” Martin said.

After moving to Fort Wayne, she began singing with The Answer.

“We were very successful and had quite a good following. I started working in radio advertising and doing free-lance voice-overs. I’ve been at Sweetwater for three years, where I sell time in the recording studios and, if I have to, do voice-overs,” Martin said.

According to Surack, Martin’s strength as a performer is her ability to emulate the styles and abilities of the singers who originally did the songs that Prime Time performs. That means she can evoke everyone from Bonnie Raitt to James Brown.

“I love performing and I love involving the audience. I like all kinds of music and that helps. I think my theater experience comes across in our shows because I love to get out there and sell a song and help people enjoy themselves,” Martin said.

If you want to find out for yourself what all this is like, you can find video and audio examples of Prime Time’s work at www.PTBand.com.

Prime Time is seeking a comfortable level of work in the area. They make themselves available to play at almost any kind of event, but each member has a day job and family responsibilities. “We don’t want to play every night and every weekend,” Surack said.

Prime Time already have spent prime time as a house band at Club Soda and played at Curly’s Village Inn, two Fort Wayne watering holes that represent opposite extremes in entertainment. Other recent gigs have included the Mangy Moose at Paula’s Seafood Restaurant, DID Fest on August 29, the recent Cap’n Cork Beer Tasting at Headwaters Park, Banana’s Steak House and Harvey’s. They also played at a lake house party near Churubusco. That should give you some idea of their ability to play almost anywhere anyone wants them.