Undertakers reunite

GENEVA — It’s been a while ... some 38 years to be exact. Thirty-eight years since the Geneva-based band “The Undertakers” played their final venue. It was May 29, 1970 when fans shed “96 Tears” for one of the most successful area bands to date.
As if living out the lyrics of the song “Time Won’t Let Me,” band members headed off in 1970 to live their own lives ... time wouldn’t let them tarry any longer.
It was 1964 when Geneva High School students Ben Picard, JoDee Rust (Mika), Warren Mattox and Sherm Bixby came together as “The Comets.” After a short stint with the band Mattox moved on. Replacing him were Don Portwood and Kim Kimsey. At that time the band was re-named “The Mystics.”
“The name was changed to ‘The Undertakers’ when Bob Bailey joined the band,” Bixby explained in a telephone interview. “We practiced in Ben Pickard’s grandmother’s basement. She was nearly deaf and never knew when we left or when we came,” the band member recalled.
 Dan Peterson and his trumpet came on board in 1966. He left the next fall for Nebraska Wesleyan where he met up with Jim Walker. Walker, a Carleton native, also played the trumpet. Peterson felt the band could use more brass and asked Walker to come on board. From that point on, “The Undertakers” worked to feature their horn section which included Bixby on saxophone.
The year 1966 was also the year Ulf (Kongsgaard) Iversen arrived in Geneva, Nebr. from Oslo, Norway. The exchange student, who lived with the Bixby family, turned out to be a talented piano, guitar and harmonica player ... and he wrote music too. 
A third trumpet was added to the band in 1967 when Gerry Bunting of Hebron, another Wesleyan student, joined the group.
By this time, the band’s casket-shaped guitar case logo with “The Undertakers” scrawled across an ominous looking spider web was well known to area teens. The band was a hit, playing mixers, school dances, sorority and fraternity gigs, and county fairs across the state of Nebraska, south to Oklahoma and north into Minnesota.
Bixby recalled fondly (?) the band’s passenger bus “Fat Albert.” “It was an old school bus set up like an RV. We had bunk beds, a stove and fridge and ... maybe a privy. We kept our equipment in the back. I will never forget the time we lost the crankshaft in Ogallala.”
“The Undertakers” was a cover band, save a couple of original Iversen songs. A 1966 play-list reads like the Billboard Top 40: “Good Lovin’,” “I Know You Better Than That,” “Double Shot of my Baby,” “Gloria,” “Midnight Hour,” “For Your Love,” “Mellow Yellow” and dozens more.
It was summer 1967 when “The Undertakers” entered the Chicago studio of TerMar Records (an off shoot of Chess Records) and recorded two of Iverson’s songs, “Angel Girl” and “Got To Live Your Life.” In 1968, while searching for exposure, the group entered the pair of songs in KOMA radio station’s Dr. Pepper Battle of the Bands. “The Undertakers” won the event. Their prize; a recording contract which never came to be.
“The second place group got new suits and everything. Dr. Pepper reneged on the recording contract ... so we won and ended up wishing we’d come in second,” an indignant Bixby stated. Thus began Bixby’s well documented 40-year boycott of the soft drink Dr. Pepper.
Bob Davis, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln art student, joined the group in 1969. The addition of Davis’ blues-y voice highlighted the band’s R&B side.
As Bixby sees it, camaraderie was what brought and held the band together, “We are all still the best of friends,” he said.
Mika echoed the sentiment, “This reunion has become even more special than ever as we have formed an even closer bond as friends. We have had the pleasure of experiencing a lot of fun this past year as we make that journey to one more hour of being in the spotlight. We realize more than ever that what we once had in our band is living proof that dreams really do come true. And the music and friendships we have shared are more than once in a lifetime — they are a lifetime experience.” Mika, who played lead guitar for the band said, “I never really laid my guitar down. I may have been out of the band two years before I picked it up and was ready to go.”
Every ten years the band gathers for a reunion. At 20 years, Mika said the group appeared with Joe Dailey’s “Bottom Line” in Fairmont; at 30 “the Undertakers” returned to the Geneva Fairgrounds and opened for “Blackberry Winter.”
Members of “The Undertakers” are a successful lot: Kimsey owns a floor installation business in Minnesota and has played with the band “Impact,” Portwood is co-pastor at Lyndale United Church of Christ in Minneapolis, Peterson owns Frontier Insurance in Geneva, Dr. Walker is a periodontist in Lincoln, Bixby is an investment executive with Ameritas in Lincoln, JoDee (Rust) Mika works at Wegner Monuments in York and Evening with Friends in Milligan, Dr. Picard is assistant superintendent at Sunnyvale Elementary School in California, Dr. Bunting is a psychiatrist with the US Air Force and Kongsgaard is a physician and anesthesiology professor in Norway.
“We are saddened to say we have lost two members to rock ‘n’ roll heaven,” Mika said speaking of Bob Davis and Bob Bailey. “Playing at the 40th reunion will be Sherm Bixby, Ben Picard, myself, Don Portwood, Kim Kimsey, Jim Walker, Jerry Bunting and Ulf E. Kongsgaard. Danny Petersen’s health will not allow him to join us this year, but he has been with us as we have made preparations for this event.” 
Not too long ago Bailey’s mom found a large stash of Undertakers posters in her basement. Seems the group had printed new posters in June of 1970 — right before breaking up in July. Hence the stack of hundreds of un-hung flyers, many of which are finally being used as intended ... to promote the band.
On Saturday night, May 24, 2008 at 8 p.m. “The Undertakers” will rock the Fillmore County Fairgrounds in Geneva. Returning to their roots, as opening act for Alumni Weekend. Tickets for the event are $8 in advance and $10 at the door and are available at Century House Chiropractic in York and all Geneva banks. The band “Groove Puppet” is also on the bill. Sponsors for this years performance are: Geneva State Bank, Farmer and Son Funeral Home of Geneva, KAWL/KTMX and Art FX of Lincoln.
“The Undertakers” will “undertake” playing for another dance “Fillmore” style as they return to their roots four decades later.