O'Fallon Continues Jammin' With Fanfare

The O'Fallon Jammin' summer concert series enters its final few weeks with a performance by the popular St. Louis band, Fanfare.

The outdoor performance runs from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday in , 308 Civic Park Dr. Bring blankets or chairs for seating on the lawn around the bandstand. Admission and parking is free, concessions will be available for purchase.

Fanfare was formed in 1975 by Vincent Golomski and some of his classmates from the music department at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE).

"I come from a musical family," he said. "Mother had all her children playing different instruments—my sisters played accordion, I played piano, dad played drums."

Golomski started playing piano at age 9 and was playing in bands while in seventh and eighth grades. He joined his father's polka band at age 14. "I'd always wanted to be in a band from The Beatles on," he said. "I've always played in a band."

After high school, Golomski went off to college where he earned degrees in piano performance and music education at SIUE. It was there that Fanfare was born.

Like most bands, there have been lineup changes over the years. Fanfare currently consists of Golomski on keyboards, Kittie Moller on vocals, Jim Huckelberry on guitar and Lanny Boles on drums.

Huckelberry has been with the group 17 years, and Boles has been with the band for the last six years. Both musicians spent some years playing in Nashville, TN before returning to St. Louis.

Like Golomski, Moller has been with the band from the beginning.

"We needed a vocalist and a mutual friend of ours recommended her," Golomski said. Not only did Moller pass the audition, but within a couple of years, she and Golomski were married.

Fanfare plays a wide variety of music. At its website—www.fanfareband.com—the playlist is broken down into the categories of party/dance, Motown/soul, rhythm and blues, disco, classic rock, country, standards and jazz, and big band. The band covers artists ranging from Chuck Berry to Cee Lo Green to Norah Jones to Patsy Cline.

Does the band have a preference?

"We all grew up with Motown, soul music, R&B and blues—we tend to like to do that a whole lot," Golomski said. "That's more our niche. That's what we like the most."

How do they decide what to play at any given show?

"It depends on what the crowd looks like and what the venue asks us to do," Golomski said. "What people like at the time."

Fanfare needs to know a variety of music because it plays to a variety of audiences. "We do nightclubs, conventions, parties, lots of park concerts in the summer, kids' concerts during the school year. We do 250 shows a year and perform year-round."

If you would like to take Fanfare's music home with you, the band will be selling copies of its latest CD at the concert for $10. Fanfare: Live in Concert was recorded last summer during a series of shows the band performed on the side stage at The Muny.

The O'Fallon Jammin' series runs most Tuesdays through August and continues with Trixie Delight (Aug. 23) and concludes with Mirage (Aug. 30).

For more information visit http://www.ofallon.mo.us/dept_tourism_Jammin.htm.