By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Drummer Travis Aukerman and keyboardist Galen Bundy have their roots in the regional jazz scene.
Making a career of music requires flexibility. For Bundy that has involved playing in church as well as clubs.
For Aukerman that includes working with other performers as a music director helping them shape their sounds. He also passes along the lessons he’s learned on the Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan scene as a teacher.
Aukerman and Bundy have negotiated this early career path together in the past 10 years.
‘We weave our way through these soundscape forests that we create on the fly.’
Travis Aukerman, Bunkerman
Now working as Bunkerman, the improvisational electronic duo will perform Sunday, Nov. 26, at 6 p.m. at Grounds for Thought as part of the free monthly concert series sponsored by Grounds and BG Independent News and hosted by Dustin Galish.
Aukerman and Bundy first met while studying jazz in college. Aukerman, who grew up in Toledo and then moved to Sylvania where he attended Northview High School, got his jazz studies degree from the University of Toledo. Bundy, who grew up in Georgia, got his degree in jazz piano at Bowling Green State University.
Despite being at different schools, both were students of the late pianist Tad Weed.
Aukerman recalls first meeting Bundy. The pianist didn’t talk much, the percussionist said, but Aukerman said he made up for it. They hit it off. Bundy still isn’t very talkative, Aukerman said, but the two have developed a deep musical communication.
They’ve worked together in the rhythm section of a number of groups. When Bundy premiered his first album and played it live in the Toledo Museum’s Glass Salon, Aukerman was there.
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They played together the 2023 Black Swamp Arts Festival as part of guitarist Alex Anest’s organ trio
But they wanted to develop their own project with just the two of them.
That was about a year ago. They didn’t even have a name. Then they were booked to open for the Ann Arbor jam band Pajamas. The band asked what their opening act wanted to be called. It was Bundy came up with Bunkerman, a mashup of their two surnames. They weren’t sure about it but used it for the show. They’d played one song when the audience started chanting: “Bunkerman!” Bunkerman!”
That decided the matter.
Like the name the music is a mashup of their musical influences.
For Aukerman that started, coincidentally with jam bands. He loved the loose, spontaneous feel. That led him to the source, classic bebop, and beyond.
Bundy first heard that classic jazz sound at home courtesy of his parents’ record collection. That moved him in the electronics of early Mile Davis, the freeform grooves of Ornette Coleman, and the genre-defying sound of avant hip hopper Flying Lotus.
All that and more, including Beatles covers, the occasional jazz standard, and explorations of Brazilian rhythms, finds its way into Bunkerman’s stream of consciousness performances.
The duo format gives them the flexibility to explore. They don’t talk much beforehand. The music is arranged such that they can find inspiration in the moment.
“We have the opportunity to go anywhere at any moment,” Aukerman said. “If I hear something we’ve never done before I just go with it. … We weave our way through these soundscape forests that we create on the fly.”
