One of the most popular performers in the area has to be Mean Gene Kelton and The Diehards. Gene has been on the scene for a little over 20 years. He’s been paying his dues regularly, playing everything from honky tonks to the Balinese Room in Galveston, as well as large festivals. He has also become a hit on the biker circuit and has more than just a few rallies under his belt. In fact, it’s easy to see why they have become Texas’ #1 Biker Rally Band. When Gene takes the stage, you know it’s time to party.

His gut-wrenching guitar commands your attention and his heart-felt and provocative lyrics stir your senses and soon works you up into a frenzy. It’s not long before you find yourself on the dance floor grinding and shaking. “Although he may be new to some of you, a good deal of us have known about Gene for a long time. “In fact, Gene should have been signed to a major label long ago, but as fate would have it, he has done quite well on his own.

His songs “My Baby Don’t Wear No Panties’ and “The Texas City Dyke” from his CD Most Requested, have become big hits and a couple of his most requested songs at all of his shows. Gene has recently released his new album Mean Guitar, and that too has become a big hit locally. In fact, after over 20 years in the business, it’s time for Gene to have that “overnight success”. The last two years in particular have been very good to Gene.

“The past few months have been real exciting,” Gene tells us. “All of a sudden there’s been a real influx of media attention. We just performed live on KPFT, of course, I’ve done that a couple of times in the past, but it just seems that a lot of things have just come together right here all of a sudden. “We just did a show for Channel 8 television here in Houston, and last night we taped another television show for the Houston Blues Society. They’ve put together a series called “The Many Faces Of Houston Blues’ and were one of twelve acts that I know of that they have taped for this TV show they’re putting together, and they’ve already got some interest from Channel 8, as well as PBS nationally. It’s going to be an awesome Blues show based out of Houston. So here lately there’s been quite a bit going on.”

There is certainly a lot going on with Gene right now. Besides reaching a television audience now, Gene has had his songs played on numerous radio stations across the U.S. “There’s been a lot of airplay,’ continues Gene. “We seem to be picking up a lot more radio stations across the country and a daily basis now. I get emails just about every day about being added on. I haven’t sat down and added up all the new stations that we’re on, but at last count we were being played on over 200 radio stations across the country.”

The radio stations aren’t just playing Gene’s novelty songs, they’re delving deeper into his CD’s to spotlight all of his great material. “It depends on each DJ and the format of his show,” explains Gene. “Fortunately a lot of them hear more than just a couple of songs that they like, so they will go deeper into the CD and sometimes they will play the whole thing. “But there are some shows out there, like Mr. and Mrs. V’s show on KPFT in Houston, that is a straight-ahead Blues show, so they tend to play more of the Blues songs off the album. There’s some shows that feature Southern Rock and I have some songs that lean that way. There are some Rockabilly shows out there and they have picked “Going Back To Memphis’ off my first CD, Most Requested, which is kind of a 50’s Sun Records style of song. So it just depends on the DJ and what kind of show they have. There are even some Comedy stations out there now that’s playing a couple of songs from my first CD, like “The Texas City Dyke,’ “My Baby Don’t Wear No Panties,’ and “My Blow Up Lover.” “That’s pretty much what’s going on now.

“We’re getting a lot of attention from the media all of a sudden and that’s very much welcomed at this point. With the more media attention you get, then that leads to the attention of a lot of other things about our band. The big guys at the record labels or radio stations start noticing and then there’s, ‘Well this guy’s making some noise down in Houston, we might ought to check it out’. And on the other side of it, you got your fans out there and it creates a bigger fan base on this end. So that’s what’s going on right now. The band is doing great, we’re playing a lot.”

Playing a lot is hardly the word to use, Gene Kelton and the Die Hards are playing all over the United States, especially at Motorcycle Rallies and shows. With his style of playing and his great original songs, it’s no surprise to us. “We’re doing a lot of motorcycle rallies. We’re playing quite a large number of them,’ continues Gene, “and now over the last couple of years we’ve started performing way out of Texas. We’ve had invitations from Illinois, Indiana - we’ve performed twice in Indiana. We’ve got an invitation from Maryland - we’re going to play there next Spring. We also just finished playing four nights at the Myrtle Beach Bike Week in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The motorcycle situation going on right now has been very good for our band. I’m in the age group that a good deal of motorcycle riders are in. A lot of guys that are in my age group have raised their families and they’re in some point in their lives where finances allow them to go out and buy a $30,000 motorcycle. Most of these guys are 40 plus into their early 50’s and they’re buying these big motorcycles and hitting the road. It looks like all of our “Easy Rider’ dreams are coming true.”

Motorcycles and guitars, both of these things have influenced Gene over the years. In fact, it was a movie that Gene saw when he was 10 years old that started his interest in both and really got the ball rolling for him.

“When I was about 10 years old,” Gene tells us, “I went to see a movie at the Yale Theater over on Washington Avenue. It was basically a biker movie starring Elvis Presley called Roustabout. I’m 10 years old and I just got my first guitar at the time. So here’s this cat up on the screen with his black leather jacket and his guitar and motorcycle, doing all these exciting things and I said, ‘that’s what I’m gonna do.’ As years passed, the motorcycle liked to have killed me. I still walk around with a steel pin in my leg… my motorcycle legs. I almost lost my legs, so I said, ‘well, a guitar doesn’t hurt quite as bad.’ So while I was laid up in the hospital for quite a lengthy stay, I got them to bring my guitar up to the hospital. I would sit there and work on all my licks and when I finally got out of the hospital, that’s when I started playing music. I just concentrated on music. I still love bikes and I guess that’s why I get along so well with the bikers. I tell them that my guitar to me is what their motorcycle is to them.”

Over the years Gene’s music has evolved tremendously, but his roots are still set in the styles of music that a lot of us grew up on, Blues and Southern Rock. His influences ranged from BB King and ZZ Top to Lynyrd Skynyrd and all the blues legends combined. “That’s basically where I am,” says Gene. “I’ve evolved from that into taking those styles of music, with my love of the Blues and blending it together with my own lyrics. I do what I love and hope everybody else likes it as well.”

Gene played his first gig at the age of 17 with a band out of Liberty, Texas. Their first job was at a little place on McCarty Drive and the band made a whopping $13.
“There were four people in the band and they made $4 each and gave their manager a dollar. When Gene got out of high school in ‘72, he started working construction jobs, even though his primary interest was playing music. Within a year Gene found himself playing music full time. He realized that it was mainly just a numbers game.

“If you get out there and knock on enough doors, you’ll eventually get enough gigs to make a living.” He did that for a couple of years and still had to subsidize his income working other jobs. “I was in a learning stage,’ explains Gene, “and you make a lot of mistakes. One week I’m playing music and making what I thought was good music - if you were making a $100 a week back then, you were rich. The following week I’d be out there trying to work a construction job because I didn’t have a gig lined up. I ended up getting married and when I got married... within a year my wife told me she was pregnant. So I thought, ‘maybe it’s time that I not try to play music, maybe it’s time I got a real job and a haircut’. So I did that. It don’t mean I didn’t play. I kept an acoustic guitar around the house that I would play on. I didn’t play with anybody for about five years. Man, it just eats at you, it haunts you in the middle of the night when you have that urge to go get that guitar and play something.”

“During those years I started writing songs, just out of the need to create. After five years I went down and bought myself an electric guitar and amplfier. I just thought, ‘well, I will feed this urge I have by getting with some guys and working little weekend gigs’. And so for about another five years I worked weekend warrior gigs. That was even more frustrating than not playing at all, because I wanted to have a really good band, and in order to have a really good band, you had to practice. Well, we were all married and we all had kids and we all had day jobs. I soon found out that a lot of guys just want to do it as a hobby. They’re not real serious - you learn a song, and then ‘that’s good enough for now’. And so you go to a gig and you play the VFW, The Moose Lodge or The Elks Lodge on a Friday or Saturday night and you end up with a half-ass show. It’s not anything to be really proud of. Most of the time you do have a good time. Everybody’s having a good time and that’s what it’s all about, but I wanted more out of it. I didn’t want to be a weekend warrior, I wanted a great band. I wanted something I could be proud of.”

It wasn’t long before Gene was about to embark on what was going to be his future occupation, being a fulltime musician. In fact, it was really going to be forced on him, sort of indirectly. He was about to loose his last fulltime job at a radio station. “About ‘83, I was working at a little radio station in Baytown,” says Gene. “I was kinda messing around with music part-time on the side, and I got laid off the job. In fact, everybody at the station got laid off. I found myself unemployed in December of ‘82. So in the first part of ‘83, you could not buy a job in Houston, Texas. The oilfied had gone to hell, the economy had gone to hell, and so here I was completely unemployed. No way to make money. I had just remarried. I was just married a week to my second wife and I’m unemployed. Talk about the blues. A month later my wife is laid of at her job, so here we are, two newlyweds, and both of us are unemployed. Things got tough real fast. That is a true testament to your devotion for each other, trust me.”

Gene looked around and there was only one thing left to try. He picked up his guitar and started hitting the local bar circuit in Baytown. The local bars weren’t really hiring too many bands in those days, but Gene wasn’t going to let that stop him. He would go and ask if they would just let him play for tips. With no money out to the bar, they decided it was a great idea. Gene would go from bar to bar and play for tips. He was building himself a following and the tips were getting better, but he had a family to support.

Those few dollars were gone before he even got his hand into the tip jar. Gene could see that he was drawing in more people to the clubs and the clubs were making more money, so he hit them up with another idea. He wanted to make at least a hundred dollars a gig, so he asked them to make up the difference between the tip jar and what they were making. If he only had $80 in tips, they would chip in another $20. If he made $100, they weren’t out anything. Well, it worked. He was finally a fulltime musician, and making a respectable amount of money.

Gene finally evolved from solo performer to finally fronting a full time band. Now, with two albums under his belt and over 200 radio stations playing his music, Gene is finally where he always wanted to be. Over the years he’s gone through several band members, and even played with his two sons for a number of years. “They perform on twelve out of the 15 songs on his first release, “Most Requested.” Gene is now performing with what he calls his “best lineup ever. Everybody shares the same vision and they all know what is expected of them.”

“I have now have two of the best players I’ve ever had in this band,” says Gene. “Curtis Craig is the drummer and Rick Maxwell, also known as King Biscuit is our bassist. Curtis Craig calls himself Dr. C.C. We tour as a three-piece band.

Curtis Craig comes from Arkansas, and started playing drums when he was 5 years old. Hid dad was a professional musician. By the time he was 10, he started playing with his dad’s band. Through the years Curtis and his brother Wendell Craig had a band and they were playing big showcase gigs. So Curtis, now at 40, has been playing over 30 years of his life.

Rick Maxwell comes from Port Neches, Texas. “He has played bass for about 30 years and has worked periodically for people like Percy Sledge, B.W. Stevenson and Jerry LaCroix.”

The fourth member of the band, even though she doesn’t perform on stage with the band is Gene’s wife, Joni. “Joni handles all the marketing, the website, some of the booking and even sets up at Gene’s concerts selling T-shirts, cd’s and compiles the mailing lists among many other duties. “She is definitely the woman behind the man.”
Also performing with Gene Kelton and The Die Hards on a part-time basis is Monica Marie.

“The most recent addition to our show is the dynamic Monica Marie” adds Gene. “Her band, the Blues Cruizers, won the Houston Blues Society’s International Blues Talent Competition two years ago and earned the title #1 Blues Band in Houston. While her band is currently on an extended break, we have invited Monica to do a few shows with us. We nicknamed her our ‘Little Blues Bombshell’, because she literally explodes on stage. She moves like Elvis, kicks like Bruce Lee and sings a song with the power and passion of Janis Joplin!

“Response has been fantastic! I’m talking standing ovations! I’d put her on stage with Tina Turner or Susan Tedeschi anytime. She has the voice, the moves and the looks to match. “Why some major record label hasn’t already picked her up and shot her off to stardom is a mystery to me. Since we have been promoting her through our emails which goes out weekly to over 4000 Die Hard fans and music industry contacts, we have started getting alot of DJs from around the United States and even a couple of foreign countries asking for her music to play on their shows.”

Without a doubt, Gene Kelton and The Die Hards are one hard working outfit.