Farmington Hills-based Delta Twins Up for a 2012 Detroit Music Award

The "twins" in the Farmington-based Delta Twins band aren't really brothers – at least not under the skin.

Bob Young and Tom Kozanecki met in 1998, while playing at Faith Bible Church. Their friendship developed as they got together on Monday nights to "philosophize, think deep thoughts and drink good beer" and led to them form a band.

Fourteen years later, Delta Twins also includes Young's son, Josh, 15, 18-year-old Jake Burdock, and drummer Leland McCann. And the band is realizing a dream; they're nominated for a 2012 Detroit Music Award in the "Outstanding Blues Artist" category.

Young said he and Kozanecki performed religious music in churches, for youth groups and the Detroit Rescue Mission, until 2009. 

"I knew it was time to do something different," he said. "There was something inside me that said it was time to stop singing to the choir."

Delta Twins, Young said, "is about what unites us, rather than holing up in our little camps ... We're people of faith, but anybody who writes a song is a person of faith. We want to see good things done in the world."

To that end, the Delta Twins are in their second year of supporting the Canton Firefighters charity fundraiser spaghetti dinner. Funds provide relief to families who have experienced a house fire. They also helped found Crossroads Church in Farmington and The Junction, a live music venue that started in the Old Winery/Powerhouse building on Grand River and recently moved to a Livonia location. 

Young booked the acts for The Junction and also volunteered to book acts for , when the coffee shop opened last year in downtown Farmington. Through some of those acts, Delta Twins began making connections with more popular venues like AJ's Cafe in Ferndale (now closed) and Solid Grounds in Northville and started playing festivals. Young also ended up booking bands and running sound for Art on the Grand, an art festival in downtown Farmington.

Stars in the Park, Aug. 2

Later this year, Young will see another of his dreams realized as the Delta Twins will be part of this year's Stars in the Park concert series, playing Aug. 2 in . He said the first time he saw the park's amphitheater, he wanted to play the venue. 

There are other goals the band has set and met since 2009, Young said, and getting a Detroit Music Awards nomination was among them.

"If we could get nominated for one of those," he said, "the visibility of what we're doing grows. That's an important thing, more people can hear our music and find something potentially helpful in it."

Delta Twins has for three years been nominated in the first round – which anyone can do – but this year, for the first time, the band cleared the second round of competition. 

"I don't have any grand illusions," Young said, noting the band is up against Detroit legends like Thornetta Davis and Johnnie Bassett & the Blues Insurgents. "The fact that there were enough people in the music community that thought enough of us to include us in there, I'm blown away." 

Hear Delta Twins music by visiting their YouTube channel or deltatwins.com