FGCU Professor Mike Kennedy is not only a professor. Every syllabus week he tells his students that he has a “dark side.” His dark side? He is the bass player for a band comprised of multiple FGCU professors.
The Immokalee Road Band (IRB) is a four-person group, where Kennedy plays the bass guitar and harmonica, Professor Miles Mancini is on keyboard and vocals, Dr. Eric Otto is the lead guitarist and Steven Donaldson plays drums. The band formed 10 years ago and got its name based on the fact that all of the members at the time lived right off of Immokalee Road in Naples.
The band began naturally as Kennedy, Mancini and Otto were all members of the Communications department at FGCU.
“We started talking and found out that we all played instruments, so we just started jamming together,” Kennedy said. “We started out without a drummer at first, and our first ever gig was at a church fundraiser, which [Mancini] had a connection with.”
The band played a medley of Beatles songs, as the theme of the fundraiser was “A Trip to London,” and some of the songs they played remain in the band’s setlist to this day. After that gig, the group knew they had something, and started working through both university and personal connections to book more events.
The band played fundraisers and private events before booking a recurring gig at Old Soul Brewing Company in Fort Myers. This is when the band brought in their original drummer, Kennedy’s friend Jim, who he had known since 1972. Jim served as the drummer of the band for some time, but as the group’s booking dates got more consistent, it became harder for Jim to travel between Fort Myers and Buffalo, New York, where he worked as a physician. Because of that, the band brought in Donaldson to play the drums, but Jim still plays with the band from time to time when he is in the Fort Myers area.
The band plays a wide variety of music, from 1960s rock to modern-day pop music. Kennedy credits Mancini for the quality and diversity of the group’s setlist.
“Sometimes he’ll show me a song that I originally think doesn’t fit with the rest of our set, ‘I’ll say really? “(Hit Me)…Baby One More Time”’?” Kennedy said. “But then he’ll show me the arrangement and play it himself, and I get it instantly, and love the idea.”
Kennedy is a self-taught bass player and admits he never learned to read music, just how to remember chords and how to put them together to perform a song. Kennedy has been a part of multiple bands throughout his life, starting with his first one at age 17.
The band now plays monthly at Chocolattés, a coffee shop in Fort Myers, after being discovered by the owner while playing at Riptide Brewing Company.
“At first we were all a little skeptical, you know, moving from a brewpub to a coffee house, but truthfully, it’s the best gig we’ve ever had,” Kennedy said. “[Chocolattés] has a beautiful back room with a stage, theatrical lighting, and a whole sound system mounted in there.”
The band played a Halloween show at Chocolattés, where the entire band dressed up as the classic Universal Monsters. Kennedy dressed up as the Wolf-Man and joked that it made playing the bass a little harder.
“It was a little uncomfortable, a bit tough to see with adjusting and looking down at our music and our setlist,” Kennedy said. “It was a little bit of a challenge, but it was very fun.”
“Fun” is a word Kennedy used a lot when describing his music career and playing with IRB, as he thinks if the band has fun onstage, it will translate to the crowd. The group consistently likes to find new songs to add to their monthly setlist, which Kennedy thinks keeps everything feeling fresh. The band debuted their cover of the Prince classic “Purple Rain” at their Chocolattés show on Saturday, Nov. 16.
“Eric, Miles and Steven are just phenomenal people to play with, and there’s so much we can do as a group because of all the different music tastes,” Kennedy said. “Sometimes we perform songs I wouldn’t even think to do, but because of the versatility of the group, we pull it off.”
