Party with an anthropologist - Hector Qirko

Party it up on New Year’s Eve with an anthropologist.

Say what?

Yes, celebrate the New Year’s dawning with anthropologist Hector Qirko, who will lead his band, the Hector Qirko Band, on Dec. 31 at the Down Home in Johnson City.

“It’s our sixth year in a row,” Qirko said last week by phone from his home in Knoxville, Tenn. “We love it. We’ve got a lot of family in the area, so it feels like home for us.”

Home at the Down Home with the Hector Qirko Band on New Year’s Eve means a couple of things. For those looking to drink to a drunk without care as to who’s on stage, go elsewhere. Yet for those in search of good music, good friends and good times, then perhaps this show is for them.

Certainly come if in search of wide arrays of music.

“We’ll bring our mix of styles,” Qirko said. “We’re based on the Chicago blues style. We do a lot of R&B, some Latin things. We’ve done five albums, and they’re all different yet still based in the blues.”

So call the Hector Qirko Band a blues band with more twists than a pretzel. Hey, they’ll even toss in a polka tune on rare occasion.

“We just keep reinventing ourselves, which is one reason we’ve lasted for 25 years,” Qirko said. “People seem to like it. We like it. So we just keep adding to it, and that makes the show interesting. We mostly play pan-American styles, styles from Brazil, Columbia, and we’ll throw in some jazz, country and rock.”

Altogether, they play such as to compel lightning in the legs, danceable music seemingly made to cater to New Year’s Eve crowds.
“We’ll get you one way or another,” Qirko said.

Accomplished, sharp, talented – the four-man Hector Qirko Band exist as rarities. Neither local nor regional bands typically last through one much less two and a half decades. Thus, most such bands never hone their sound to the extent that Qirko’s has, which partially explains Qirko’s enduring popularity.

They’re just good.

“We play naturally tight because we have played together for so long,” Qirko said. “That makes for a really enjoyable experience for us. We play well together, and we like each other.”

And they like being heard, too, which can be a problem if playing New Year’s Eve in a club that caters to war-whooping yahoos who’d rather drink and yell it up than sip and sink into the music. That’s why Qirko returns each year to the Down Home.

“Down Home strikes a nice balance,” Qirko said. “You feel like you are being heard, and it’s a party, too. The Down Home is a home.”

Now for the record, when Qirko is home in Knoxville during the week, he works as a professor of anthropology at University of Tennessee. He loves academia. Yet like striking a balance on New Year’s Eve, he also maintains some yin and yang with coat-and-tie teaching on one side and turn-it-up music on the other.

“I love to play music,” Qirko said. “You know that bumper sticker that says ‘I’d rather be fishing’? Well, I just love to play music.”

IF YOU GO
Who: Hector Qirko Band
When: Dec. 31, 9 p.m.
Where: Down Home, 300 W. Main St., Johnson City, Tenn.
Admission: $16
Info: (423) 929-9822
Web: www.hqband.com

TOM NETHERLAND is a freelance writer. He can be reached at features@bristolnews.com.