2016 is not even three weeks old, and we’ve already seen a stream of high-profile rock & roll deaths: Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister, David Bowie and the Eagles’ Glenn Fry. (Former Mott the Hoople drummer Dale Griffin has also died after nearly a decade with early-onset Alzheimer’s).
Sadly, Cleveland has also had a rock & roll death in the last week. As with the deaths last year of Morticia’s Chair guitarist Jesse Kramer and Schnauzer drummer Jim Konya, this one went far too young — only in his 40s.
Akron’s Kevin Junior (Gerber) fronted the band Chamber Strings, which he originally formed while living in Chicago in the mid ’90s. He released a pair of widely praised albums, which pushed all the favorite critics’ buttons. His music harked back to the big-gesture orchestral pop of the ’60s and the flamboyant power pop of the early 70s and was copiously compared to groups like the Kinks and Big Star.
He fell off the map after releasing the second Chamber Strings album Month of Sundays in 2001, moving to Los Angeles. When he reappeared in Chicago and reunited the band in late 2006, the Chicago Reader wrote in an article titled “Heroin Hell” about his five years in the wilderness: “Hooked on heroin and reeling from the loss of one of his closest friends, he abandoned his band, lost his wife, wound up homeless in LA, and narrowly escaped his own death.”
But despite his hope of a new beginning in Chicago, it proved a tough climate for someone with his drug issues, which he talks about in harrowing detail in the Reader article. In 2013 he moved back to his native Akron to get a fresh start and to try to get healthy.
With the help of drummer/vocalist Dave Swanson, the driver behind the musically simpatico Rainy Day Saints, he reconstituted Chamber Strings with an all-star lineup of northeast Ohio musicians with a sympathetic feel for his music, including Swanson, Swansons’s Rainy Day Saints bandmates bassist Brian P. McCafferty and sax player/vocalist Marianne Friend, Breaker guitarist Don DePew and ex-Revelers keyboardist Andrej Cuturic.
They played about a half dozen shows in the area in the last two years, mostly opening to bands with similar musical roots. Junior also played some solo shows around Akron, and in December he posted a new song called “You’re Coming Home This Xmas,” which he recorded in Spain.
On January 11, he posted on Facebook “Gutted. A world without David Bowie in it….” and talked about how he had written the song “Flashing Star” on the first Chamber Strings album “after sitting on my couch for several hours listening to nothing but David Bowie.”
Gerber had had health issues in the past, including heart problems, as a result of his drug use (the Reader article has the gruesome details). But he died far too young at 46, with surely a lot of wonderful music yet to be made.
facebook.com/The-Chamber-Strings
One Response to “Akron’s Kevin Junior, Chamber Strings Frontman, Dies at Age 46”
J. Wood
I was just wondering if you have heard anything about a Kevin Junior tribute album in the works. He was one of my favorite songwriters and I would love to contribute a recording.
Best wishes,
Justin
Mouth Dakota