Brian Kilcourse in 1972
At first glance, working for a small IT consulting firm and playing in a full-time touring jamband may seem like two jobs that have little, if anything, in common. But for Brian Kilcourse and Steve Rowen, partners in technology advisory company Retail Systems Research (RSR) and veterans of the jamband circuit, the groove is where you find it.
“RSR is like a band with four distinct personalities and creative styles whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” says Kilcourse. “There is a great deal of give and take we must engage in and subordinate our egos to the brand. The brand is everything, drop the ‘r’ and the band is everything.”
“With four fairly opinionated people, we use the same process in devising a strategy for a client as you would in writing a song,” agrees Rowen. “Eventually, someone gets everyone to see their way. You learn when to be passionate. It’s like when you’re writing a song with your bandmates, if the bridge doesn’t matter to you but it matters to the bass player you let him have it. The process is surprisingly similar, but not as much fun,” he adds with mock woefulness.
Adding to the band atmosphere surrounding RSR is the fact that partner Paula Rosenblum is a onetime professional vocalist and partner Nikki Baird is known to strum some mean chords on her guitar. However, Kilcourse and Rowen both bring serious jam band bona fides to the business, albeit from different generations.
Like many musicians who grew up in the 1960s, Kilcourse’s infatuation with rock began when he first saw The Beatles. Unlike many of his generation who had to settle for watching them on a black-and-white “Ed Sullivan” broadcast, Kilcourse witnessed them up close and personal at The Hollywood Bowl in 1964.
“I was blown away,” recalls Kilcourse. “I said, ‘I have to do this.’ Of course, being about 13 at the time, I was more excited by the stadium full of screaming girls.”
Inspired by fellow lefty Paul McCartney, Kilcourse soon picked up the bass, although he had to learn to play right-handed so he could borrow instruments. After receiving a permanent draft deferment in 1972 that made him “suddenly free,” Kilcourse joined the jamband Mistress, which toured the nation for a few years, opening for major acts including Fleetwood Mac and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Some people may also recognize the name of Mistress’ lead guitarist Greg Douglass, who later played with performers including Hot Tuna and the Steve Miller Band.
When Mistress broke up in the mid-70s, Kilcourse, at this point married, decided it was time to get a “real” job. “In those days, you could get a job in an IT organization by fogging a mirror,” he says. So Kilcourse got a graveyard shift IT operator job whose main prerequisite was staying up all night, which he observes “any musician worth their salt can do with no problem.”
Steve Rowen today
Rowen grew up in the 1980s and 90s and didn’t have to worry about draft deferments, but as someone who played in college jambands for four years and wistfully listed to tales from a friend who had left school to perform full time in jamband Dear Liza, he had no hesitation when asked to fill in as Dear Liza’s vocalist/lead guitarist for a two-week tour right after graduating from the University of Maine in the late ‘90s.
“I got the call on a Sunday, auditioned that Monday and was in a van driving across the country Thursday,” says Rowen. Two weeks turned into two-and-a-half years of playing 300 dates a year, opening for acts such as Blues Traveler and earning a spot on the 1998 HORDE Tour that also featured Ben Harper and Smashing Pumpkins. When the group disbanded shortly following their good friend Bobby Sheehan’s untimely death in 2000, Rowen also decided to enter the “real” world, joining a dotcom start-up specializing in developing software for musicians.
Rowen and Kilcourse both progressed with their IT careers, Kilcourse becoming the CIO of a major West Coast drugstore chain and Rowen becoming editor of a technology trade publication where his path crossed with Kilcourse’s. Quickly bonding over their shared love of music and performing history, the two decided to go into business together in 2007 with the founding of RSR.
Both have also continued their musical careers on a part-time basis – Kilcourse released three albums with country crossovers Slim Chance and the Fabulous Questionnaires in the 1990s and just released an album with psychedelic blues rockers The Guilty Saints. Rowen is currently recording a solo album and is also involved in a friend’s snare drum distribution business.
In addition to similarities in the creative process, Kilcourse and Rowen see some other similarities between the jam band and IT consultant lifestyles. Rowen notes that both Dear Liza and RSR provide the experience of operating a small business.
“There’s nothing I come across that I can’t tie back to a lesson learned on the road, like how to develop a market presence without over-saturating,” he states.
“I love the moment everyone is plugged into the same power source,” adds Kilcourse.
“Working in IT, you can achieve the same high find the same place and hit the same level of communication, it’s an awesome feeling.”
Of course, working in the “straight” world does offer some advantages over the unpredictable life a touring musician. “We were lean, mean, rock n roll machines, but we were starving,” says Kilcourse. “As a touring musician I’ve never worked so hard for so little; we worked for free or damned near close. Anyone who believes the life of a touring musician is like the movie Almost Famous is engaging in fantasy.”
As examples of this hand-to-mouth existence, Kilcourse recalls “raiding” supermarket produce sections and “boiling the crud” off his bass strings because he couldn’t afford new ones.
Rowen closes the conversation by offering perhaps the definitive statement on how life as a consultant differs from life as a rocker. “I still go on road a lot, but go to bed and wake up earlier, and also get a hotel room to myself,” Rowen comments. “I miss the van and the incredible experiences I had driving 100,000 miles a year, but I don’t miss the smell.”
