August 28, 2021

The Bands of David Bolyard – A Memorial Event has been postponed.  A new event for the memorial will be announced as soon as possible.

Family, friends, bandmates and admirers gather today to remember a very special Milwaukeean & musician!

John Frye Band. The Grey Band. Flat Rabbits. The Greens. Big Car. C-Food Buffet. Les Lokey. Mark Truesdell & The Lost Pioneers. Brian Burghardt Band. New, New Fossils. Bad Salad. Sixty Watt Sarah. King Daddy. Eat The Mystery. Riverwest Accordion Club. Sandmen. BTO (Bolyard Turner Overdrive). Voot Warnings. Dr. Chow’s Love Medicine. The Tritonics. Plus countless crack of dawn hours logged with The Praise Team at the Whitefish Bay United Methodist Church where, often after playing late into the evening with one of the twenty above-listed ensembles, Dave would reliably show up, sleep-starved but ready to play.

It is safe to say Dave lived to perform and play music. He was a singer, percussionist, horn player and drummer who took his bands and duties as a musician seriously. Whether you knew him as a fixture of the Riverwest music scene, a multimedia artist, a Frisbee (Guts!) player or the bald, goateed pilot of the neighborhood’s iconic, virtually indestructible, white 1993 Toyota Previa (ask us about that van’s timely, magical appearance at a Linnemans Peace Through Music show a few years back), you know that he inhabited all those roles fully and with style.

Dave Bolyard was about as memorable as they come, but when he left this world, he departed quietly, in the middle of a global pandemic that twisted our sense of time, obscured his sudden absence and prevented his tribe from gathering together to share stories, hugs and tears. Finally, on this night, we come together in person to remember him through song, our shared and treasured memories and to raise funds for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.