The “Monkey Business” band struggled for about 9-10 months to get off the ground, but it wasn’t until Kevin joined up that things took off and they started playing out in April, 2006. “We had a good run for 4 years, playing out nearly every weekend on average.” Then when Scott left in August, it was fun working with Roger, who is really a million laughs! Good times.”
Kevin leaves Monkey Business with his last gig slated for Saturday, November 21, 2009.
Talk about diversity! The year was 1997, and the Cedar Rapids music scene was either blues-based or country. Kevin got to expand his musical vocabulary by joining the ranks of Cedar Rapids band “Tan Yer Hide”, consisting of former rockers turned “NEW” country musicians. Kevin’s main responsibilities included covering all of the “fiddle” and “pedal steel” parts, but gravitated towards more “classic-rock” parts as the Cedar Rapids club music scene began to change back toward mainstream and “classic” rock formats. “Tan Yer Hide” warmed up for country acts such as “Curtis Day” and also rock dinosaurs “Molly Hatchet” during this 2-year period.
After 4 years gigging steadily with the band, Bassist Scott Bekebrede announced in the Spring of 2009 that he would retire from the band to do other activities, like rest and get sleep, but would play out the band’s schedule through August, or whenever we felt a suitable replacement was ready to take the reins.
Enter bassist Roger Lambert. It was less than a week of our posting an ad online with bandmix.com that Roger contacted Monkey Business through an email. He was currently playing in a band called “The Trux”, but wanted to play out more than just once or twice a month and saw that we played out quite a bit more than that.
After a week or two of leaving the 5-peice grouping, Ken realized he had committed “Monkey Business” to playing a benefit gig, but he no longer had a band. He contacted Scott Bekebrede and his old friend Byron Wooten to join him in putting together an hour worth of entertainment for the benefit gig, which they did.
It was a great chemistry between the three, and they performed brilliantly as they played their first and only performance together. When asked if he was going to “come out of retirement” and start gigging again, Byron was unable to commit.
Fortunately, Kevin Simnacher had recently become available again, as he found himself “band-less” at about this time. So together, these three musicians banded together on a quest for grand scale assault on the Cedar Rapids area bar scene. The world may never again be the same.
The next incarnation of the band included two ex-members of the band “Results May Vary”. Drummer Ben Davis and Bassist Scott Bekebrede joined Mario and Ken and now Ken was trying his hand at the role of “Lead Singer/Front Man”. They tried out other lead guitarists to fill the “Byron” void, and found Kevin Simnacher, ex-Lead Guitarist of “Tan Yer Hide”/”Fighter”/”Ratler”/”Big Spender” bands. This particular grouping left Ken missing drumming and then after 3 months Kevin jumped ship to join progressive rock cover band (the short-lived “Idol Threat”) Ken decided to bow out at this time as well.
EARLY BEGINNINGS…
According to Mom Heinzerling, from the time he was a small boy, Ken Heinzerling was always “monkeying around”, which eventually evolved to “monkey business” in his teen years.
“Monkey Business” was always on young Ken’s mind throughout his early twenties as he searched for a way to goof off and get paid for it. Ken spent a lot of time hanging out with musicians throughout this incubation period. In his subconscious mind, he was still working out the details of his his master plan.
One day it occurred to Ken to become a musician. Of course… he had heard Dire Straits’ song “Money for Nothing” so many times over the years, but now it made more sense than ever! He had sat in on drums during band rehearsals of some of the guys he was hanging out with before, so he knew he could do it. Plus, he had voice training and experience singing from his school years. It all seemed to make sense that he take a crack at it now.
Ken’s first band, “Blind Lab Rats” lasted for about 3 years before certain events found the members going their separate ways. That was when “Monkey Business” was born.
