How Did This Happen?
The Abridged Version
In January, 1979, Bryan and George started Hubert & Myers. They played a whole bunch of places for 5 years and released a couple albums. They broke up in 1983, and then in 1990 they released a third album. They are still friends and do stuff together, like go to baseball games or the theatre with their wives, or record music in Bryan's studio. The End.
The Unabridged Version*
One summer day back in 1978, George told a friend, Terry, about his dream of recording some of the songs he had written over the years. Terry was also a friend of Bryan, a musician and songwriter who had a home recording studio in lower Queen Anne, and she arranged for George to come over to Bryan’s place so the two could meet. George brought over his guitar and played a few of the songs he wanted to record. The two reached an agreement, and about three months later George’s first solo recording project of 13 songs, Feelin’ It, was released in early December.
While Feelin’ It was being recorded, Bryan was working as the assistant technician at Kaye-Smith, the largest commercial recording studio in Seattle (where Heart and Steve Miller were recording at the time), and in the late night/early morning hours he was able to use the studios to record his own songs. One evening, Bryan invited George to come to Kaye-Smith to help record Be Not Conformed, a song written by Monte, a friend of Bryan’s. Not only did they have a lot of fun recording it (which you can hear when you listen to it), recording in a major studio was a dream-come-true for George. Needless to say, there was no hesitation when Bryan asked him if he wanted to come and record another song at Kaye-Smith, That’s Me (a Hubert original). That was followed by Closer Together, a new song George had written. George was in recording studio heaven.
In late December, after all this recording fun had taken place, Bryan suggested the two of them form a group and start performing together, and George agreed. So, early one January morning in 1979 before work, George drove out to Bryan’s place to rehearse, and Hubert & Myers was officially formed. Many rehearsals later they played their first public performance in a parking lot at a Catholic bazaar. A few people strolling by paused to listen for a bit, but the most memorable part of the evening was discovering how heavy Bryan’s electric piano was. That inspired the decision for Bryan to start playing the much more portable Wurlitzer electric piano in concerts, which became a trademark Hubert & Myers sound, bed and prop.
A month or so later, they played at a Campus Life Burger-Bash, which became a defining event, albeit painfully. It was very different having a captive audience of high school students watching you vs. adults drinking a glass of wine as they casually strolled by, and out of a nervous effort to be funny they started to poke fun at each other. It didn’t go over very well. As they packed up their gear they discussed the show with Bill, the Campus Life leader George had known since high school. Bill knew it had been a rough night but also heard and saw potential. He suggested that instead of tearing each other down during the performance they should encourage each other. So the next time they performed that’s exactly what they did - to an extreme - and the audience loved it.
Something else happened before that next show that defined Hubert & Myers. A few years earlier Bryan had seen a musical group perform a skit, so they worked up their own version and tried it out at the next show. It was a hit, and the Hubert & Myers brand, “Christian music and comedy”, was established. They didn’t really know that was their brand until someone introduced them that way at their next show. By that time they were intentionally adding skits and humor to their performances, so it fit.
One example of how the comedy aspect evolved – the group’s mutual friend and initial sound assistant, Theresa (a.k.a. TK), reminded them at a rehearsal to make sure the ends of our words could be heard, which inspired the characteristics of putting hard “D’s” on the end of the phrase “by the renewing of your min-DAH” in the song Be Not Conformed. The hard D made its way into a few other songs as well, making it another H&M trademark.
Over the next couple years they honed their songs and routines at church events and camps. The place where they started to find their stride was at Camp Sambica on Lake Sammamish. Not long after that, they became something of a “house band” at The Way Inn Coffee House, run by Flint and Gary, which gave them a great opportunity to try out new songs and skits. Their “big break” probably took place when they opened for Randy Stonehill in front of a sold-out audience (2,600) at Meany Hall on the University of Washington campus in January, 1981. In spite of George breaking a string during the show and having to run off stage to replace it, the audience gave them a standing ovation at the end. They were both amazed.
During this time they had been working on finishing their first album, Be Not Conformed, and in the middle of 1981 it was released…on vinyl. The album included the three songs they had recorded at Kaye-Smith in ‘78 along with five others after Hubert & Myers had formed, a couple of songs from Feelin’ It, a few new tunes and a great song by Gwen Fleming that Bryan had produced. It was a unique collection of music that was well received, with a couple of the songs getting airplay on the Seattle Christian music radio station.
In January, 1982, Hubert & Myers decided to quit their day jobs and perform full-time. George had married Joy in 1981 and Bryan had married Barbara a year later so, thankfully, they had the support (literally) of their wives, which helped make this decision possible. A few tours followed, and in 1983 they released their second album, I’m Growing: An Encouragement to the Rest of the Crop. Some highlights over those years included opening multiple shows for both Barry MacGuire and The Archers, a Saturday Night Concert at Mt. Hermon near Santa Cruz, a show at the Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton where Chuck Swindoll was pastor, four shows in Sitka, Alaska, a Montana tour, and more memories, friends and people who helped them than they can remember (although Leaping and Crawling will always be a part of Hubert & Myers lore).
In the late summer of 1983 they felt things were drawing to a close, so in December they played a Farewell Concert at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus. George had a lot of other material he wanted to record so he spent quite a bit of time in early 1984 at Bryan’s studio, working on a second solo project, From My Heart to Yours. Later that year, George moved to Newberg, Oregon, to attend George Fox College. They stayed in touch and a couple of reunion shows took place over the next few years.
In about 1988 they decided to record another album, which was strange considering they weren’t performing together on a regular basis and George now lived in Oregon. (The effort was clearly not driven by an intelligent marketing plan or desire for commercial success.) Still, in 1990, after many trips for George between Newberg and Seattle, their third album, Breakaway, was released. It contained quite a few songs they had performed in concerts but never recorded.
Bryan had recorded a ton of songs over many years but never created his own official album until 1992 when Tunes was released. The album featured a number of people Bryan had recorded over the years along with a few original numbers. In 2000, George released his third solo album of original material, Slice of Life. Since then, the pair have recorded a few songs, played a few shows and, with a suggestion from and most of the work being done by Bryan’s daughter, Margaret, they now have this website so their history can be looked at, read, listened to, pondered, evaluated, critiqued, judged and, hopefully most of all, enjoyed by anyone who finds it.
*NOTE: If you actually read the entire unabridged version please consider yourself a Hubert & Myers fan..with our thanks and admiration. There is no fan club or reward, but we'd be happy to autograph something if you send it to us.