Rik
@rikster1
San Antonio, TX USA
Joined Jan 1, 2010
Growing up in the late 70’s/ early 80’s in the birth place of southern rock, Jacksonville, Fl., Rik Blanz couldn’t help being influenced by some of the legends of the genre. Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Johnny Van Zant Band, and Molly Hatchet were just some of the “local bands” that would stop in and jam with his band, Asylum. After playing the local Jacksonville scene for a few years, Rik was picked by Bobby Ingram, formerly of The Danny Joe Brown Band to play guitar in his solo project dubbed The Bobby Ingram Project. After years of intense writing and perfecting a stage show they were signed by a CBS affiliated label PARC records and recorded an album as China Sky in 1988. In 1990, Rik joined Molly Hatchet and toured extensively in the United States, Europe and Canada and was able to share the stage with such legends as Pat Travers, Foghat, The Outlaws, and Savoy Brown. Eventually, singer Danny Joe Brown’s battle with diabetes took its toll on the band’s ability to tour and Rik was forced to make a choice of continuing with an uncertain future with Hatchet or settling down and making a living doing the only other thing he knew… construction. He chose the latter.
Rik moved to Maryland and married the love of his life Laura in ’92 and worked in Washington, DC as a foreman for a construction company and playing music for fun with Bad Monkey until 2004 when he was offered a job as a superintendent for Actus Lend Lease building homes for our military heroes and their families at Fort Campbell, Ky. While there he started a band called Broken Toy with long time friend, Abe Rutherford, and was inspired to start writing music again.
In 2007, Rik transferred with Actus to Camp Lejeune, NC where he set up his home studio and started exploring the art of engineering and producing. It was here that he met retired Navy Corpsman, Shannon Book; the two have since collaborated on a wide range of music from Modern Rock to Modern Country. “I’ve been fortunate enough to perform and tour with some of my childhood heroes over the years, but I’ve never been so inspired and honored to create such great music with a true American hero as Shannon Book” says Rik. They are currently producing their own CD.
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