Biography

One of the leading soft rock acts of the '70s, the Blue Jean Committee rode the wave of the California sound with its multi-platinum album Catalina Breeze, even though the band was based out of Chicago. The Blue Jean Committee was formed by guitarist and lead singer Gene Allen (born Eugene Skrowaczeski) and bassist and harmony vocalist Clark Honus. Allen and Honus were the sons of men who worked for competing Windy City sausage companies, and met while attending a school for prospective meat-packing employees. Honus was a star wrestler in high school, but when he saw that Allen's rock band was making him popular with the female students, Honus proposed they form a new band together. In 1967, they began playing out as Gene & Clark, playing tough blues-rock material, and after a couple of years together decided it was time to cut an album. The duo booked time at Chicago's Capstone Studios, and when one of the engineers made a comment about their denim-heavy wardrobe, it inspired their new name, the Blue Jean Committee. The Blue Jean Committee self-released two blues-based albums -- St. Stanislaus' Matinee and 221 Pulaski Parkway, featuring originals like "Hey Miss," "Wind Off the Lake," and "Goodbye Dan Ryan" -- that fared poorly commercially, before Honus had an epiphany that the group should embrace the soft rock sounds that were coming out of the West Coast. After attracting the attention of powerhouse manager Alvin Izoff with their stellar harmonies (in particular Honus' striking falsetto), the Blue Jean Committee struck a new record deal, but rumors began to spread that they were leaving behind their blues influences and giving up eating meat (the latter not founded in fact), leaving them persona non grata in Chicago. Undaunted, the BJC holed up in Capstone Studio and wrote and recorded their next album, Catalina Breeze, in the space of 72 hours. The album was a massive commercial and critical success, and six tracks on Catalina Breeze became hit singles, but tensions quickly grew between Allen and Honus, and when the band was booked onto an all-star bill in Los Angeles without knowing it was an animal rights benefit, Allen had an on-stage meltdown that broke up the band. Honus, who had copyrighted the group's name and owned its publishing, enjoyed a long and successful career marketing the BJC's name and catalog, while Allen returned to Chicago, left music behind, and worked in the sausage industry; he began playing low-key solo shows after the Blue Jean Committee's entry into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Or at least that's how it seems if you believe everything you see on cable TV. The truth is, the Blue Jean Committee is a fake band that was dreamed up by actors and comedians Fred Armisen and Bill Hader, who were the stars and co-creators of Documentary Now!, a satiric series on the IFC cable network devoted to classic documentaries, which are in fact parodies created by Armisen and Hader. The show's introductory season closed with a two-part episode devoted to Gentle & Soft: The Story of the Blue Jean Committee, a film about the fictive soft rock band (with Armisen as Gene Allen and Hader as Clark Honus) that included cameos from musicians Daryl Hall, Kenny Loggins, and HAIM, as well as Eagles manager Irving Azoff, playing a character clearly based on him. The Blue Jean Committee first emerged in a Saturday Night Live sketch in 2011 (at which point they were soft rockers from Western Massachusetts and featured Jason Segel on keyboards), and in 2014 Armisen and Hader cut a new version of the song performed by the BJC on the show, "Massachusetts Afternoon," which was released by Drag City Records on a split single with a song by another nonexistent band Armisen conjured for SNL, the Fingerlings. After the Documentary Now! broadcast in September 2015, the Blue Jean Committee appeared live on the NBC chat show Late Night with Seth Meyers, and late in the year an EP of tunes Armisen and Hader wrote for Gentle & Soft were released on an EP titled, of course, Catalina Breeze. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi