The 6V6 story begins with Russell Miller, growing his own bass player.  Russell has been playing guitar and singing since 1970, and most of it has been the blues. Although versatile enough to cover any style of music, he would rather sing in his blue eyed soul style to a new arrangement or tune, that swings through chord changes just a little differently than you might have heard before.  It is a fresh style, and one that keeps you dancing, but impossible to realize unless you have a top caliber bass player capable of stealing lines from the likes of Ray Brown or James Jamerson.  That’s where 17 year old Aaron, his son, has contributed since he was old enough to perform.  His incredible ear was soaking up lines and grooves from everywhere and handily applying them to his chosen trade, the bass.  Father and son enjoyed playing together so much, drummer Gene Duncan, longtime band-mate of Russell’s, was pressed into service to build a little three piece blues band.  Gene is one of those consummate players for whom the only important thing is how good the band sounds.

After their demo CD managed to garnet airplay from the great blues DJ, Frank Black at WGLT in Normal, IL, a subsequent professionally produced CD brought appearances on nationally syndicated “Blues Deluxe” radio show and web based ABSBluesCast.com.  6V6 began to push a little farther from home doing blues festivals as far north as Wisconsin and as far south as Kentucky.  Having opened for the likes of Buddy Miles, Big Mike Griffin, Walter Trout, and Jimmy Thackery led to a memorable evening of Aaron sitting in with three members of the Fabulous Thunderbirds.  Last year 6V6 took top honors against seven top local bands in the Blues Blowtorch Society’s Central Illinois Regional Blues Challenge.  This sent them to Memphis to compete in the International Blues Challenge, and they represented the blues well.

The most recent addition to the band is Randy Hoffman, a seasoned bluesman having played with some top local and regional bands.  He can comp the jazzy guitar chords and carry the blues rhythm right to the audience.  The subsequent release of their new CD, Fire Bottle, has been placed by GLT and 101FM Teneriffe, Australia, in the Top 25 rotation as submitted to Living Blues Magazine, and has again been featured on Blues Deluxe and ABSBluesCast.com.  We have both CD’s available on CDBaby.com.

You may find 6V6 in some dark, out the way club, or soaking up the sun at regional blues festivals.  Wherever, we can guarantee you’ll be grooving big time on our blues.

Contact: Randy Hoffman at rd.hoffman@verizon.net or 309/662-2780