Bring on the Funk

DAD BY DAY, MUSICIAN BY NIGHT: GUITARIST OPTEKAR has it all. “The only thing I’m really missing out on is sleep,” he says. Named one of RockWired magazine’s “25 Guitarists You’ve Gotta Know!” in 2012, Optekar plays what he describes as “horn- driven, sweat-soaked blues,” in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based band Tweed Funk.

Optekar took up guitar after hearing several track teammates playing “American Pie” during his freshman year at Dartmouth, but he put his music career on hold to work in engineering and software before returning to the professional music scene in 2006. He admits the music world can be frustrating at times. “It’s about persisting and not losing your vision of what you’re trying to do,” he says.

That persistence has paid off. Optekar has been a founding member of two Wisconsin Area Music Industry Award-winning bands: Hounds Tooth (2006-10)—which produced two CDs and played 140 shows across the upper Midwest in 2010 alone—and Tweed Funk, founded in 2010. “Dancemaker,” from the band’s second CD, Love Is, just earned Big City Rhythm & Blues Maga- zine’s Coolest Blues Song of 2013 Award (listen to it at www. tweedfunk.com). Optekar cites blues authorities Freddie King and Buddy Guy—whom Tweed Funk opened for in 2012—as two of his greatest influences.

Tweed Funk is working now on a spring release, a song col- lection the band hopes will launch them onto the national music scene. Still, Optekar hasn’t forgotten his roots. He returns with the band to Hanover to play for the “On the Green” reunions event on June 14. “I’m excited to come back,” he says. “Playing at Dartmouth will be coming full circle.”

Guitarist Optekar brings his blues licks to Hanover in June for reunions. <<<<

"To put it simply, we’re horn-driven soul-blues with showman style to it,” says the musician of his band, Tweed Funk.