Buffalo Music: Original lineup reconvening for Sportsmen’s Tavern show

By Robert J. McLennan

If someone told me there’s a band coming to Buffalo and they do traditional bluegrass and old-time music, Texas swing, jazz standards, rock and roll, originals, and country and western, that would get my attention. 

Right away, Folkfaces and the Skiffle Minstrels would come to mind, but then add to the recipe that it’s a combination of multi-instrumentalists, four strong singers with songs arranged in a complex fashion with intricate lead lines and four-part harmony and you got … the Pointless Brothers.

The Pointless Brothers are reuniting for a performance at the Sportsmen’s Tavern on Sunday, Nov. 16, at 5 p.m. 

The band developed a loyal following of fans and musicians during their heyday of 1976-1984, which included a seven-year residency at the Central Park Grill, where they alternated appearances with another legendary Buffalo band, The Thirds. 

The Pointless Brothers are Judd Sunshine on the acoustic and electric bass; Charlie Ranney on banjo and rhythm guitar; Peter Seman on fiddle, harmonicas, mandolin and penny whistle; and Mike Stern on acoustic and electric guitars, mandolin and fiddle.

“I say with kind of pride we were doing ‘Americana’ before anybody coined that name.” Sunshine commented when we discussed the band’s music.   “Mike Stern introduced us to Bob Wills, and we all just loved it, so we did a lot of Bob Wills, and we’ve been getting together trying to remember what we can.  We did a lot of Old & In The Way, a lot of Commander Cody, some country standards. The four of us came from different musical angles, and it was a nice mix.  And we were able to connect.”

It was a very different era when the Pointless Brothes played their early shows. 

“Back then the drinking age was 18 and one of the places we played was the Circus Bar in Black Rock, where Grant meets Military, and they were very liberal about allowing underage kids in the bar,” Sunshine said. “Somehow we developed a following of prep school kids from Nichols and Nardin and Canisius and it really helped us. We were doing this for a living, and that led to all kinds of private club parties.  We’d do the Yacht Club, the Canoe Club in Canada, and that turned into great gigs for us. 

“Bars today don’t pay a lot, but for us back then if we could go do a gig at the Buffalo Canoe Club in Canada and get five or six hundred bucks, it was like ‘Wow!’  And then it led to their college gigs, we’d do frat parties at Colgate or Cornell.”

Sunshine said he was thinking of leaving town in 1977 to try his luck in another city, but then they got a gig at The Library on Bailey Avenue and he reminisced, “My fate was sealed. Now I’m a lifer, it’s crazy.” 

The band put out one recording in 1982, an EP on Tommy Calandra’s BCKM Records (one song from the EP, “Hyperspace,” is also on the BCMK compilations, “Airwaves”), but now some of their music is on Bandcamp and YouTube.

RELATED MEDIA: Here is the Pointless Brothers’ medley of “Rolling in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” and “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” from a June 1980 show at the Central Park Grill.

The original Pointless Brothers ended in 1984 when Seman moved to Chicago and Paul Norris (Slim) replaced him in the band.  Since 1984, the Pointless Brothers have done occasional shows for private events and community concerts with fill-ins like the Panfil Brothers and Doug Yeomans.  However, the last time the original band played together was in 2012, appropriately at the Sportsmen’s Tavern. 

Sunshine said, “It means a lot to me get this group together again.  Peter lives in Chicago and we’ve been friends since high school and have remained very close. We always speak a few times a month. It was an effort to coordinate a date when he could travel here that would match up with a venue like the Sportsmen’s.  And Mike observes the Jewish sabbath so he’s unavailable from Friday night until sundown on Saturday.  And we’re old folks, so matinees on Sundays are a better choice than a late show on a Saturday.  And then there is the Bills schedule to consider.

“To put that jigsaw puzzle together was an effort, and you know Mike and Charlie are in their 70s. I’m in my late 60s, you know; we’re running out of time!  I think about all the people that are gone, I mean again we’re not getting any younger and we’re losing people left and right.”  He mentioned losing contemporaries from the 1970s and ‘80s like Willie Schoellkopf and Joe Head.

Another loss was Ted Lambert, who died in 2014. He played with the “second generation” of Pointless Brothers. 

“Ted Lambert played pretty much anything, great banjo player, great guitar player, fiddle, mandolin, singer; he was the total package.  The last time we got together, Teddy was on stage with Slim,” Sunshine said.

Sunshine has been listening to tapes of the band’s music and he’s put together a Youtube channel, where you can check out videos such as this 20-minute set from WNED-TV circa 1981.

“I listen to our music and when we started out, we would spend three or four days on one or two songs,” Sunshine said. “You know, Mike and Peter would do harmony stuff on guitar and fiddle, we’d do four-part harmonies; we worked really hard, and to resurrect some of that we’ve been rehearsing for weeks, me and the other two guys.”

Asked what he was most looking forward to, Sunshine said, “the whole reunion aspect. I hope I have enough time to say hi to whoever is coming to the show.  I’ve been in touch on Facebook with (one of the people from) one of our first regular gigs back in ‘77. We played a place called Pandy’s in Depew, which wasn’t really a music bar but it became our home for about a year. And so the owner’s son, who lives downstate, said he was coming up.  I’m just looking forward to seeing people I haven’t seen in decades; it’s gonna be a trip.”

Meanwhile, I asked Judd how he feels about his daughter, Jamie Sunshine, being such a talented performer in the Buffalo music scene, a drummer, singer, marimba player and more. 

“As you know, she’s extraordinary and, just to also say, that whole generation of these kids are so good.  And she respects what I do,” he said. “But, you know, my joke is I used to be my own person, but now whenever I go out, if I say my name, it’s like, ‘Oh, you’re Jamie’s dad?’  That’s fine, she’s a real talent.  She’s my first call for just about any gig I do.”

When I was in my twenties during the prime of the Pointless Brothers, I don’t think I ever saw them, but I do remember being amazed the first time I heard Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys and Dan Hicks & the Hot Licks.  And in the subsequent years my appreciation for what the Pointless Brothers do has led to that description of the band in the first paragraph being right in my wheelhouse. 

On Nov. 16, the Buffalo Bills play a 1 p.m. game, but after that I plan to be at the Sportsmen’s Tavern for an exciting reunion of a band that started nearly 50 years ago.  As Judd Sunshine said, “We’re not getting any younger.”  Grab this opportunity to experience the Pointless Brothers.

Robert J. McLennan is vice president of The Buffalo Hive Board of Directors.