The members of Ernie and the Automatics hold a unique place in Boston rock annals. Not only are they perpetuating the city’s rich musical history, they’re an integral part of it. At once fresh and familiar, the sextet’s blues-powered, R&B-infused brand of rock & roll brings a bracing double shot of vitality and immediacy to Beantown’s proud tradition, as EATA forcefully shove classic rock into the 21st century.
Guitarist Barry Goudreau and drummer Sib Hashian were former members of the multi-platinum selling band Boston. Goudreau left the group after its first two mega-selling albums and formed RTZ with keyboardist/vocalist/harmonica player Brian Maes, bassist Tim Archibald and Boston frontman Brad Delp. Subsequently, Maes and Archibald spent six years in Peter Wolf’s House Party Five, plying Wolf originals and material made famous by the J. Geils Band. Saxophonist Michael “Tunes” Antunes spent most of his career playing with John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, best known for their hit “On the Dark Side” and their work on the soundtrack to the cult classic rock film Eddie and the Cruisers. Collectively, these five veterans have sold north of 32 million records. The band is rounded out by guitarist and Berklee graduate Ernie Boch, a fixture of Boston’s modern-day rock & roll community.
Formed piece by piece in 2006, the band sprang out of the friendship between Boch and Hashian, who kept suggesting to the younger musician that they hook up and play some music. Once Boch had fought back a case of nerves at the prospect of transitioning from playing in a series of “shitty local bands” to jamming with the onetime anchor of what was once the biggest band in the world, he accepted Sib’s invitation and wound up having the time of his life. Hashian was equally jazzed, so much so that he gave a shout to his former bandmate Goudreau, and the three played live for the first time on the air at the local rock station. From there, the nascent band grew organically, adding Archibald, then Maes and finally Antunes. The chemistry of this unit was palpable—and no one could deny what a blast they were having making music together. Soon thereafter, while working up their version of the blues chestnut “Spoonful” at a band rehearsal, they realized that they’d be better served channeling their massed creativity into original material rather than limiting themselves to covers. So it was that they began cranking out originals inspired by and mirroring the sounds of their roots in classic rock and electric blues.
