THE SOLIDARITY SERIES, VOLUME 2:
THE KIDNEY BROTHERS AND BILL WATSON

Contemporaries of Pere Ubu and best known for their work with the Numbers Band, Bob and Jack Kidney (The Kidney Brothers) were also key members of David Thomas' late '90s Mirror Man extravaganza. Early members of the Ohio generation - which included Rocket from the Tombs, Devo, Pere Ubu, Tin Huey, The Dead Boys and the Waitresses - the Numbers Band (aka 15 60 75) was formed in 1969, in Kent.

They quickly became established as a local fixture, playing for four nights a week in a series of local clubs. With periodic changes of personnel, they continued to do this over the following decades, still performing sporadically today.

"This group," Davd Thomas wrote, '"nspired everyone, regenerated everyone, and was a nagging doubt in the back of everyone's minds....the Numbers are better than you can ever hope for." 

Bob and Jack play their own kind of stripped down, guitar-based, narrative songs - stained dark with deep, bluesy roots - and a gravitas born of five decades of concentration and club audiences. In 1990, Robert Kidney survived a kidney transplant, and in 2012 he was awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award for Music.