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The Big Squeeze
Professional quality live performance and recordings is the main goal of this enterprise.
We are a classic rock and soul band with a horn section and a New Orleans flare. We can fit the music we play to the music you want for your event. Holidays are our specialty – we can play a wide variety of tunes for every holiday, theme-based corporate event, tribute shows or special family celebration.
We consider ourselves to be the “Holiday Inn” band of the region. We play the tunes, styles, volume and energy level to meet the needs of your event. Regardless of whether it’s a concert venue, private affair, or even a club date, we tailor our playlist to accommodate the listeners and the client. Special songs for any event or holiday – listening crowd or just wanna dance – we can make it happen.
Classic rock and soul, country or love songs, dance party favorites, we can do it all. Check out our list of covered artists and add any kind of oldies, jazz standards, or ballads by request to fill your musical needs for your event. That’s what we do.
Involving many top musicians from the Chicago and Northwest Indiana region has been our pleasure.
Working on writing and recording original music and creating meaningful musical events guides our path. Some clients who are fans want the originals in sets. We can do that. Not interested – no problem. We’ll play the covers you want to hear from our playlist that fit the best for your party.
Most of our live performances are private or corporate events, however, we do have some public performances scheduled for the remainder of 2024. the Big Squeeze Band will be performing at Smokey Jo’s Scratch Kitchen and Ale House in Crete, Illinois on the following dates in 2024:
I am sure excited that The Big Squeeze Band will be returning to Smokey Jo’s for more shows in 2025. Dates TBA
This is a powerful 8-piece band which is made up of many all of my best musical friends.
Here’s the list of players:
Ken MacDonnell – Barry Sperti – Daniel Kent Lemmon – Rich Farias
Terry “Sonny Lee” Tritt – Steve Koerber – Lou Curalli – Tom Hahn – Grant Nicholaus
We will be playing classic rock and soul horn band covers for your listening and dancing pleasure. The band will also be performing many of the songs from our most recent album release “Late Bloomer” as well as a few other tunes from our songbook of original music.
Danny and The Big Squeeze performs live:
Friday November 9th 2024 – Smokey Jo’s – 7:30 pm
Saturday, March ??TBA, 2025 – 7:30 pm – Smokey Jo’s
There may be opening acts scheduled to perform ahead of us. Those start times will be announced as they are determined. Please go to the Tour Dates tab to view all performances for the year.
Charter Members:
Danny Lemmon – Keyboards: Mainly a piano and organ guy. Well versed in jazz, rock, popular, and country styles.
Lead Vocals: Mature tenor voice. A wide variety of material can be covered. Basically the entire songlists on this website.
Trumpet: Experienced in Orchestral, Brass Quintet, Jazz and Rock styles
Guitar: Just your basic strummer here, but good for acoustic situations and campfires.
Mandolin: Working this instrument into the show little by little
Daniel Kent Lemmon – Drums: Strong young player with experience in many styles and venues.
Guitar and bass: Can play well enough to get musical ideas communicated and recorded. Excellent addition to the acoustic set.
Keyboards: Always looking for that “special” effect.
THE BIG SQUEEZE BAND:
Danny Lemmon and Daniel Kent Lemmon with:
Steve Koerber – Guitar and vocals
Rich Farias, Ken MacDonnell – bass and vocals
Kent Lemmon – Saxophone, Flute, Keyboards and vocals
Barry Sperti – Saxophones and vocals
Terry “Sonny Lee” Tritt – Saxophones, flute, keyboards and vocals
Tom Hahn – All Saxophones and flute.
Lou Curalli – trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone, and vocals
The band may also use additional horn players, percussionists and vocalists depending on the venue and budget of the client.
The Lemmon Brothers Band:
Features Danny Lemmon and Daniel Kent Lemmon with
Kent Lemmon: Keyboards, saxophones and vocals
For booking information and pricing on The Big Squeeze Band – The Lemmon Brothers Band – or solo performance – please go to the “Contact” tab on this website to send a message.
The Lemmon Brothers Band Summer Tour 2023 begins over Memorial Day weekend in southern Illinois.
Saturday, May 27th – The Barn and Bottle Winery – Altamont, Illinois – 2:00 pm
Sunday, May 28th – The BarN St. James – St. James, Illinois – 4:00 pm
Monday, May 29th – American Legion – Keyesport, Illinois
Then the tour continues throughout the summer. See the “Tour Dates” tab for our complete schedule.
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Lemmon Tree Studios Recent Work
The studio has been busy this month! In addition to tracking for the new Danny Lemmon album, I have had the pleasure of recording more demos for our songwriter friend, Don Srebro.
Mike and Shelly Gajdik have also been tracking for their new album with new versions of a couple of old favorites and several songs not previously recorded. This will be an album full for beautifully crafted songs and studio performances of which I am pleased to be a part of.
The Songwriter Nights continue to be well-populated with excellent local songwriters and performances. Here’s what’s coming up:
Announcement: The 2nd annual Songwriter Encore will be held Sunday, 1/5/25 at The Spot Studio.
Details will be posted soon.
Both venues provide at relaxed acoustic setting for the Songwriter Night events with a full bar, full menu of excellent food and a friendly staff. Both venues are also ALL AGES when accompanied by and adult.
These are not an open mic events. I have been able to book area songwriters to perform sets of original music throughout the evening and promote the artists scheduled for each month’s event. I just love this event. There is such great songwriting talent in the area and now this talent can be displayed in an acoustic setting for all to hear.
In Lemmon Tree Studios, presently, we have been tracking for a new project of original music. The working title is The LLC (Lemmon-Leach Consortium).
“Studio Sundays” – Coming to Lemmon Tree Studios in 2025
We are scheduling recording sessions for songwriters to make demo recordings of songs they may not have recorded yet. These recordings are considered “Demo Plus” to be used for copyright registration or promotional purposes.
Recording projects: Together with Rich Farias on bass and Daniel Kent Lemmon on drums, Carl Leach and I have been tracking for a project of recently written original songs. We are are just getting started, and with our playing schedules being fairly heavy we do not have a target date for completion.
In recent months, Lemmon Tree Studios has released the first of what we hope are many recording projects to come out of our new recording studio. The “Late Bloomer” album is out and available for listening in many forms. Here we present another 14 original Danny Lemmon songs of various genre and instrumentation. Some of the finest musicians in the area appear on the album. The complete listing of players can be perused on the Music tab on this website.
Since we have found what we plan to be our “final resting place” here in DeMotte Indiana, the atmosphere and sound of the studio has been developing nicely. Three of the tracks were recorded at The Spot Studio before we were set up here at Lemmon Tree. All songs were mastered by our good friend Bob Savage out in Crete, Illinois.
I’ll send a few samples out via email once mastered so please sign up for our email list to receive the free samples and other benefits to our fans for our live shows coming up. Just go to the contact tab and request to be added to the emailing list.
We decided to put up a few of the covers we recorded for promotional purposes. They came out quite well over all. We hope you enjoy them. You can here some of them here on the music page of the web site. We are not offering the recordings of the covers for sale at this time due to copyright and licensing issues. Fans can purchase the Favorite Covers CD at shows or by contacting Danny directly.
We do have the “Late Bloomer” album rendered to CD form if you prefer that format for listening. If you would like to buy one please go to the contact tab and I can mail one out to you. Of course, we will have copies to sell at our live shows. The CD’s are $15. If you would like to purchase the debut album “Homemade Lemmonade” as well, we can sell them both as a set for $20.
Both CD’s are also available for purchase at The Record Bin locations in Hobart or Michigan City Indiana.
All recordings may also be streamed on Pandora, Spotify, Google Play, I-Heart Radio and have been shared with many other streaming stations that I am not even aware of so just search “Danny Lemmon Late Bloomer” wherever you stream.
Danny Lemmon on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4xljYu54nJWZgsjBkYJC0a
YouTube Link to Late Bloomer Album https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=danny+lemmon+late+bloomer
On Pandora – Search Danny Lemmon Late Bloomer or Homemade Lemmonade
On Google Play Search Danny Lemmon Late Bloomer or Homemade Lemmonade
The album and most of the singles are available now as downloads from Amazon, I-Tunes or CDbaby for the usual price of $9.99 for the album and $0.99 per song. Sales have been steady over the first few months.
We have also started tracks for a Christmas “album” that we hoped to have finished by December 2023. A couple originals included here as well as treatments of some cover Christmas and holiday tunes.
Thanks for those who have offered suggestions, helpful critiques, and encouragement. All are taken under serious consideration!
Check out recordings of our new songs. Here’s a couple to get you started. All originals recordings are available for listening on the “Music” tab of this website.
Just go to the MUSIC tab on the home page to hear all songs.
