PHD

Background Info

P.H.D is Cyndi Price on vocals, Ted Hoffman on vocals and electric and acoustic Guitar, Wayne Day on electric and acoustic bass, and Doug Siekman on drums. Listeners have compared their sound to the classic vocal bands of the sixties, like The Beatles, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and The Mamas and The Papas, and certainly, all of those bands had a hand in influencing their sound, as well as a lot of newer bands. P.H.D. Got their start in the early spring of '95, when Ted Hoffman moved to Excelsior Springs, Missouri, from Anchorage, Alaska in association with his job with the National Weather Service (click the gratuitous lightning photo).

Fueled by a love of coffee kindled in the caffeine-driven Northwest, and his passion for playing the guitar, Ted ended up at the only coffee house in the small Kansas City "bedroom community", playing mainly for the fun of it (after years of ulcers from playing in clubs). There he was joined by Cyndi Price, a veterinary technician from Independence (who had been singing harmony parts from the back of the room). The two's harmonizing attracted the attention of a woman (Hazel Day) working at the video store next door, who urged her husband Wayne to go over and join in the open jam. When Wayne's knack for finding a third harmony part blended with Cyndi and Ted, the threesome became more or less addicted to singing together. Honing their repertoire in the refreshingly unrestrictive atmosphere of the coffee house, they went through several incarnations with various players, but the nucleus continued to thrive. Little by little, original music started to appear in addition to the group's "unplugged classic rock" sound.

Weather Photos by Corey Elliot

Click the CB (cumulonimbus cloud) for more weather photo links!