Kevin “Bucket” Burkett

Kevin "Bucket" Burkett was raised in the backwoods of Missouri ("Missour-uh," he will correct you), where gigging is something you do to frogs, at night, with a spear. Some of his early gigs went about the same way.

Fresh out of the orphanage, young Kevin walked into a pawn shop with fourteen dollars in quarters and asked for the finest instrument money could buy. He has played the bass ever since.

He did try other instruments. But every time he took a solo on guitar, trumpet or, briefly, the triangle, the room went quiet and people actually listened, and he found that deeply unsettling. On bass, he discovered, he could solo in total comfort, wrapped in the warm, familiar murmur of people ordering drinks. He never looked back.

And what a soloist. Patient, melodic, the kind of solo that builds slowly and rewards anyone who leans in to really listen... Speaking of which, Jason and Tracy spent a weekend up on Orcas Island, and if you've never been, go. Take the early ferry. Get a coffee. Drive up Mount Constitution, look out over the San Juans and tell us that isn't the most beautiful thing you've ever... Sorry. Where were we? Bucket's solos. Right. They're wonderful, we hear.

Before The Hot McGandhis he did a stretch in a country band, where he mastered the two notes every country bass player needs, the root and the fifth. He has been looking for a third ever since. Then came funk, several bands of it, where he picked up slap technique, sunglasses worn indoors and the habit of calling every song "a groove."

And then there was the Tom Petty band. We don't talk about the Tom Petty band. (We talk about it constantly.) It was, by any measure, the low point of his career, a free fall from which many believed he would never return. To his credit, he won't back down.

These days he also anchors Shady Bottom with Tracy and Jason, second Fridays at the Sea Monster Lounge in Wallingford, proving once again that he will play with just about anyone.

Nobody can agree on how Kevin became "Bucket." He says it's because he carries the band. Others point to the shape of his head. Either way, he is the backbone of The Hot McGandhis, and like any backbone, you only notice him when he goes out. We love him dearly. Please don't talk during his solos. We've got that covered.