John Duffy (musician)
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John Duffy (born February 11, 1959, in Philadelphia) is an American musician.
Duffy spent his teenage years playing in garage bands before in 1979 joining the South Jersey experimental punk/lounge band The Leisurematics. This band also included Ben Vaughn of T.V. music fame, and Steve Iannetti. The Leisurematics played regularly at CBGB and in Philly at J.C. Dobbs. Vaughn went on to a very successful solo career, while Iannetti has remained involved in music performance and distribution, having released a number of solo recordings since 1980.
In 1980 Duffy went to Los Angeles, playing bass in The Spoilers, who had the misfortune of being on Rocket Records, which went belly-up when Elton John left for Geffen. Next Duffy appeared briefly in The Marina Swingers before joining the legendary Powertrip with Jeff Dahl (ex-frontman of The Angry Samoans) and John Bliss (also of the Marina Swingers). This line-up was augmented by ex-Wurm Ed Danke and later Mike Bailey on guitar. Despite touring and releasing a well-received album, Powertrip eventually went belly-up as well, Duffy getting sacked shortly before the album When We Cut-We Bleed was released. Jeff Dahl went on to a somewhat successful solo career, doing especially well in Japan and Europe.
Duffy then started a garage-pop band Easter with Danny Phillips from the venerable L.A. punk outfit "ANTI". Easter went through several drummers, guitarists, and bassists, before settling on a line-up of Danny Phillips(a.k.a. Danny Dean) on vocals and guitar, John Duffy on vocals and guitar, Chad Carrier on bass, and Korky (Ollerton) on drums. Easter avoided the L.A. pay-to-play club scene by starting their own underground club "The Winklepicker" in downtown Los Angeles, and playing at local high schools at lunchtimes. Citing personal reasons, Duffy suddenly left Easter in 1986 to be replaced by Mike Ness. Easter went on to release a fairly successful L.P. and got their 15 minutes of fame on MTV's 120 Minutes, as well as some airplay on KROQ in Los Angeles. Duffy later surfaced as bassist for Jeff Dahl on and off again, touring and releasing albums before avoiding the music scene for a few years to raise his children.
In 2006 Duffy (lead vocals, tin whistle, and mandolin) and Carrier (guitar and vocals) started the celtic-traditional-rowdy-pub-drinking songs band The Shillaly Brothers adding drummer Craig W. Tyrka, accordion man Fred Studier, and the phenomenal ukulele man Rex Bailey in 2007. The Shillaly Brothers play regularly in Los Angeles and Long Beach, and are planning to release an album in mid-2008. Their sound is described as "Tom Waits-meets-The Clancy Brothers", with Duffy's unmistakable gravelly baritone belting out reworked versions of traditional Irish folk songs, as well as some new material Duffy wrote in 2007 for the band.
