July 12, 2007

Press release for upcoming shows at the Seville Quarter in Pensacola, FL on July 27 & 28

Rum Punch Bandits Roll In To The Quarter

The Rum Punch Bandits, a Charlotte, NC Jimmy Buffett tribute band, are scheduled to perform two shows at Apple Annie's in the Seville Quarter on July 27 & 28. The seven piece band rolls in to town fresh off of a performance at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, MD for the AT&T National, a PGA golf tournament hosted by Tiger Woods.

So what should fans expect from this gulf-n-western band....an evening of Buffett tunes saddled with several originals and covers of artists that have inspired them throughout their careers including The Who, The Rolling Stones, Jerry Jeff Walker, The Grateful Dead, The Band, Bob Marley, John Hiatt, Robert Earl Keen, Guy Clark and more.

The band got its start as a trio in November of 2000 when lead singer Kevin Loop and percussionist Bob Robinson accepted a two night stint at Half Shell Harry's Raw Bar  in Augusta, GA. The only drawback was there was no band at the time. With two weeks to prepare, Bob and Kevin recruited DeWayne Allen as their bass player and began rehearsing nightly. The gigs went off without a hitch and the Rum Punch Bandits were on their way.

In 2002, the Bandits asked lead guitarist John Griffin to join the band with the intentions of beefing up their sound. Griffin, a veteran musician who was fronting his own band, The Rockaholics, fit in perfectly with the group. That same year, DeWayne left the band and JT Layton was brought in to handle the bass guitar duties. Layton, a master guitarist and keyboardist from The Rockaholics, would eventually serve as guru and mentor to the band, much in the same fashion as Garth Hudson of The Band was to his mates. Layton would eventually move to keyboards fulltime when Donny Martin was brought in to handle the bass line. Eddie Pernick, a Brooklyn, NY native with rock royalty in his blood (Lenny Kravitz is his first cousin), joined the Bandits as their first drummer. The last piece of the Bandits' puzzle was completed in 2006 with the addition of Scott Dowless, a scorching lead guitarist who would ultimately take the band to heights they'd never seen before.

Since the addition of Dowless, the reputation of the Rum Punch Bandits began to spread and their gigs were getting bigger and bigger. They recently performed, as mentioned, for the AT&T National golf tournament, have opened for Jimmy Buffett three times, headlined the 8th Annual Stars Fell on Alabama parrot head convention in Orange Beach, AL back in March, and they anchored the Memorial Day weekend festivities at Wintergreen Resort in Virginia.

So if you plan to catch one (or both) of their shows at the Quarter, wear your best tropicals and prepare to get leid as the Rum Punch Bandits promise a show you won't soon forget.