Back in 1994, Live Animals began in a Chadron basement as nothing more than four guys with a desire to have fun messing around with the instruments that were scattered around the “Funk House” basement. After a few weeks of jamming the quartet came up with the name “Live Animals” and set of roughly eight songs that would become the core of their sporadic performances for the next 30 years.

After a few months of warming up the stage for Chadron favorites Flannel Sunday, Live Animals (LA) members unplugged the amplifiers and went back to their normal lives of college and work. The benefit of keeping their set list simple was that it was very easy to pick right back up where they left off. LA members would continue to get together and play as often as they could.

In 2002, members Ted Garner and Ben Ehlers were living in Omaha and Lincoln respectively. Finding new members Joe Reiners and Jason Ray, they would relaunch LA and begin playing gigs in Lincoln and Omaha.

28 years after their first performance, after shuffling through a total of no fewer than nine members, Dick Burns returns to the fundamentals that made them a Black Hills favorite right out of the gate – a solid, tight trio focused on fun songs played well plus a healthy dose of impish goofiness – a party band.

Dick Burns was conceived not as a group of musicians that would play music to entertain audiences so much as hosts of a cooperative effort between player and listener, an interactive exchange of energy, and the band feels like they got away with something special for years. Playing at The Uptown Grill and Filly’s in Rapid City, The Back Porch in Spearfish, Durty Nelly’s in Deadwood, The Sinister Grin in Chadron, and a couple dozen other, mostly now defunct, clubs in the region as a cover band, they were able to slip in their original music among popular alternative rock songs from the 80s and 90s. Audiences were hearing Dick Burns’ own music at every show they attended.