The Band
Three players, six decades of hits, and more than eighty years of Austin stage time between us. We are a live three-piece cover band and party band based in Austin, Texas, and we know how to rock a house.
Rik Avalos and Bob Michaels came up on the same 6th Street circuit in the ’90s, playing the same Austin clubs a night apart. Rik fronted Dirty Oliver. Bob played lead guitar for the Rave and Slippery Fish. Sonny Sanchez has been the drummer in Sounds Under Radio since he co-founded it in 2004. Between the three of us that is more than eighty years of stage time, almost all of it in this town.
The name is the two of them. Rik and Bob, Ricky and Bobby, which is where Ricky Bobby comes from. That the racing film landed on the same two names is a joke we were happy to take, and we play it for what it is worth on a gala night. But it started as their names, and both of them are on the contract.
What that buys you is a band that reads a room. We know when the floor is about to fill and which song pushes it over the edge. We know when to talk and when to shut up and count off the next one. Three sets, back to back, and no dead air while somebody hunts for a cable.
People come off the floor sweating and a little hoarse. That is the whole point. Everything we play is a song you already know every word to, in the original key at the original tempo, so nobody has to politely pretend. By the third set the room is usually louder than the PA.
We are a live three-piece. Rik and Bob trade guitar and bass through the night and trade lead and harmony vocals, and Sonny sings behind both of them from the kit, so every chorus carries one lead voice and two backing voices. When an arrangement needs horns or strings or a synth line three people cannot cover, that part comes off the original master recording and sits under the band. Everything else is played live in the room.
We own the whole rig, PA and stage lights, and we haul it to every show. Backyard birthday or thousand-person ballroom, the setup is the same and so is the energy. We know how to rock a house. Decades of doing it in Austin is where that comes from.
And nobody sits down. This is a dance band and a party band, not background music. Both frontmen are on their feet all night, jumping around, trading solos and instruments, pulling the crowd into every chorus. Motown and soul, funk, classic rock, ’80s new wave, ’90s alternative and grunge, hard rock and metal, Texas blues-rock and Texas country, all in one night. If you want a playlist, hire a playlist. If you want an Austin party band people are still talking about a month later, book us.
The Whole Night
All of it, if you want. Most people book us for the dance floor and then find out we can carry the ceremony, the cocktail hour, dinner and the microphone too. One band, one load-in, one point of contact, and nobody handing the night off to a stranger halfway through.
Whatever you want played, we play. There is no fixed ceremony package: you tell us the songs and where they land, seating music, walking in, the moment itself, walking out, and we learn them and hit the cues. All we need is the list and the timing far enough ahead to rehearse it properly.
An acoustic set while people arrive, find the bar and start talking. Sonny moves to percussion instead of the full kit, so the room stays a room you can hold a conversation in.
A softer set through dinner and toasts. Still live, still us, just pitched under the conversation instead of over it.
Rik and Bob share the microphone the same way they share everything else in this band. Whatever your night has to get through, we call it: wedding introductions and the first dance, a gala program and the auction, corporate awards and the speakers, birthday toasts, a raffle draw, a last call. Two hosts, so the room never waits on one person to finish a sentence, and the running order stays on time without anyone chasing it.
Up to three sets, back to back, around forty-five minutes of music each. Six decades of hits in the original key at the original tempo. This is the part people text each other about.
We own the whole rig and haul it to every show, so a backyard and a ballroom get the same production. Where a venue has its own system, we plug into house instead.
Ask about the setlist, the show, or what we need from your venue. If you want a date looked at, I can send it straight to the band.