Dennis Gurley returns with The Eggmen to Fall Into Arts Festival

KENNETT, Mo. - Live music aficionados who attend Saturday’s Fall Into Arts Festival should come prepared to enjoy a lineup of fine performers, including Caruthersville’s Dennis Gurley and the Eggmen.

On the heels of a recent debut CD release, Hear Now, Gurley and the Eggmen, Matt Adams and Dale Friday, make their way to the stage at 2 p.m. and are slated to offer up aural candy until 4 p.m.

The trio is “dedicated to melody and harmony,” and when it isn’t wowing audiences with slick vocals and tight musicianship, Gurley is on his own performing solo shows, he told The Delta Dunklin Democrat.

“We do a lot of harmony vocals with guitars and bass,” Gurley said. “We don’t use drums.

“And we play mostly songs from anywhere from the 60s to now,” he continued. “We don’t do a lot of new ones. We do a couple of things that we like, you know? But it’s all catchy. Our audiences know just about every song, and we’ll probably do an original or two, you know?”

Hear Now is sonic bliss that features Gurley’s smooth vocals and keen rhythm guitar work; Friday’s bass grooves, keys and vocals; Adams’ 12-string and six-string lead guitar and vocals and the group’s Beatles-esque harmonies

“We’re starting to get a good response out of that, too,” Gurley said of Hear Now. “Matter of fact, I play at Bistro 1121 at Blytheville every Tuesday night.

“So I’ve been down there 16 years and this guy followed me outside,” he added. “He said he had bought the CD and he’s a pilot on a boat over in Nashville. And he said he really liked it. And he said, ‘I really mean this, I like every song. Every song is different. It don’t sound like, you know, every song is the same.’”

Hear Now is a collection of a dozen original pieces that cross Pop, Rock, Insurgent Country, Folk and Americana genres and two covers, The Bee Gee’s 1968 offering “I Started a Joke” from the Idea LP and the title cut from Lucinda Williams’ 1992 release, Sweet Old World.

“I like Lucinda Williams,” Gurley said. “She’s kind of in that Americana model.

“She wrote ‘Passionate Kisses’ and ‘Change the Locks’ that Tom Petty done,” he explained. “And, we did this cover of ‘Sweet Old World’ about three or four years ago and we liked it. I seen the other day it’s the 25th anniversary of that song, which I did not know. And Lucinda is gonna re-cut that song for an anniversary thing. Everything else on Hear Now is original, you know. And not bragging. Those originals are just as catchy. They’re just as catchy with melody and good lyrics as the cover songs. Yeah.”

The group formed about five years’ back, its unique talents planted firmly in Delta swampland. Both Adams and Friday were longtime session players at Gurley’s Alley Trax Recording Studio, a business that claimed success for nearly a quarter century, prior to their stints as Eggmen.

“I was in a rock band back in the day called Jet,” Gurley said. “We played around the Kennett area for a long time.

“And I’ve just done music my whole life,” he noted. “Mr. Friday has 50 years’ experience and Matt Adams, they used to come to my studio and play on sessions for me. Matt teaches at UT Martin. He’s a guitar guy at UT Martin over there in Union.”

Although Adams understands music theory and the math of harmony, the trio refuses to let that knowledge stand in the way of a good time.

“We just play, you know?” Gurley asked. “I just play.

“It’s all the music I grew up with, you know, all those groups that I loved,” he insisted. “I guess they just ingrained in my mind, you know, my ear.”

Clearly Gurley is no stranger to Bootheel audiences. Patrons of Kennett’s Downtown Bistro might have heard Gurley and the Eggmen in the past.

“We were playing a lot at the downtown Bistro in Kennett,” Gurley said. “I don’t think nothing about mixing in an original with covers, or covers in with originals.

“We have a song called ‘In a Rainbow World,’” he added. “That’s kind of a folky-rock pop tune. And we have one about texting called ‘Everybody’s Doing It.’”

Which should appeal to parents and their kids.

“I went to the dentist about three or four years ago,” Gurley said. “Two girls are sitting on the couch across from me and I didn’t know they knew each other.

“They were texting,” he continued. “After a while, they got to looking at each other, kind of laughing. Well, I figured out they were texting each other. They weren’t talking to each other even though they were sitting next to each other. So, I thought ‘that’s getting to be bad right there,’ you know, no human interaction. So, on the way home with my mouth numb and everything from the novocaine, I wrote that song in my head. You know, ‘We’re doing it in the bedroom, doing it on the couch,’ you know, and my wife said, ‘You might wanna start setting that song up because it sounds kind of risque.’ I said, ‘well, they’ll figure it out. Everybody, everybody’s, everybody’s doing it.’ Everybody’s texting. So we’ll do that one for sure.”

Don’t miss out on a heaping helping of Dennis Gurley and the Eggmen.

Hear Now is available on most streaming services, as well as hard-copy CDs with companion Eggmen logo coffee cups.

For more information about the group, log on to dennisgurleyandtheeggmen.com.