One of many possible narratives

After several years of guitar lessons with the wonderful teacher Robin Stone and time served in the Lexington, MA high school jazz combo, Ken’s musical career began in earnest when he majored in music in college. It was not the degree in jazz performance from a small liberal arts music department (which included archaic studies of classical voice leading and other rules he continues to break) so much as playing bluesy rock in the bars of Maine with a band of fellow students that convinced him that music was a terrible way to make a living, and yet the only thing he was any good at. School was followed by three years in Paris, France, where music was supplemented by cooking and other over and under the table endeavors to make ends meet. Three years of unpredictably movable feasts having taken its toll, he returned to Massachusetts. There, with college friend, Mike Roy, and Parisian acquaintance, Stefan Redtenbacher, he formed the backbone of the Funkdis Co., a band that lasted three years, bringing the late nineties funk and disco retro-rage to many bars in Boston and around New England on a weekly basis. During this time Ken studied (more!!!) jazz guitar with the renowned Bruce Bartlett, Boston area guitar guru (currently teaching at that music school whose name everyone hesitates to mention), and taught guitar to a couple dozen students a week. When the Funkdis Co. had reached its apogee, with nowhere left to go but to seedier bars, the band called it quits and Ken headed west to sunny California. There he attempted to go straight and earned a PhD in French from UC Irvine, but ended up writing his dissertation about jazz as a cultural force in France and continued to keep his chops up playing jazz trio gigs at local bars and sitting in with the UCI big band, lead by Charles Owens. A year in Paris doing “research” involved renewing musical contact with klezmer clarinetist Ron Grun and performing jazz gigs at various venues, including the venerable Petit Journal. Escaping from the cultural destitution of So-Cal, Dr. Husbands settled in Oakland in 2005. In The Bay Area he has been performing regularly on solo guitar and as a sideman at numerous public and private venus. See the news page for gigs and current projects.

Variation No. 1

Ken's earliest musical memory is of sitting under the piano as his father practiced Bach cantatas...

Variation No. 2

A shy child, Ken always dreamed of becoming a rock and roll star...