People in the Neighborhood: Doug Koempel and Kevin Conner

Lifetime of music and song

There’s little doubt, Koempel was born a musician. Coming from a musical family, he began piano lessons from Barbara Temple at age 4.

“My mother used to tell the story of her having taken me to the West Union Messiah performance when I was five years old and when we returned home, I’d sat down at the piano and played the Hallelujah Chorus by ear,” he continued to reminisce.

As a junior and senior in high school, Koempel’s keyboard mastery resulted in him accompanying on the organ during the West Union Community Chorus Messiah performances under the direction of Marie Wood and Tom Canfield.

“One highlight was being selected as a featured performer at the Dorian Piano Festival at Luther College my senior year where I performed Chopin’s Valse Brillante in Ab Major, Opus 34, No 1 for the evening concert,” he recalled. “It was such an honor.”

Additionally, Koempel played trumpet, guitar, and bass. But something else was going on behind the scenes and it wasn’t classical.

In 1959, Larry Crandall had formed the Nob Prairie Boys, before renaming the group as The Runaways around 1964, and later rebranding it as The Rubber Band.

In 1966, Crandall was looking for a keyboard player for The Runaways.

“I ran into Larry at the West Union swimming pool and said, ‘I hear you’re looking for a keyboard player.’

“Larry responded slyly, “’Oh, do you play keyboard?’” Koempel smiled. “The band invited me to sit in with my two octave EMCEE keyboard toy organ that wheezed and sputtered.”

After one song, Crandall exclaimed, “We sound better already!”

So, at age 15, Doug began moonlighting with The Runaways playing at the Cameo, a subterranean club in Decorah. Then, in 1966, The Runaways met Leonard Matter, owner of Decorah’s Matter’s Ballroom, who booked them as the downstairs lounge house band exclusively from the mid-1960s until 1970, playing nearly every Friday and Saturday night.

In 1968, Matter arranged a recording session for the band at Coulee Studios in La Crosse where the band recorded their first and only record, “Five Foot Two” backed with “My Baby Left Me” – the latter being an original written by Crandall, Koempel and Tommy Stahr. At that time, the band changed their name to The Rubber Band so not to be confused with D.J. and the Runaways, a band with the hit record “Peter Rabbit.”

In 1968, Koempel enrolled at the University of Iowa studying pre-med.

“Every weekend, I’d take the bus from Iowa City back to West Union, then go to Matters and play with the Rubber Band,” Koempel noted. “Then on Sunday night, I’d take the bus back to Iowa City, dreading my Monday classes in comparative vertebrate anatomy and organic chemistry. Music was my life, so one day I marched into the dean of students’ office and said, ‘What’s the quickest way I can get out of here with a degree?’”

A plan was devised and in two years, Koempel graduated with a music theory and composition degree.

“I really enjoyed their electronic music studios, where I learned about recording, and early Moog and Arp synthesizers along with 20th century new music,” Koempel stated. “I’d been composing music since grade school, so I was elated to add this new dimension to my creative arsenal.”

Then in 1970 there was a turn of events which gave birth to the Memory Brothers.

“Larry Crandall and I had pretty much our fill of loud music and Matters’ rowdy teenagers – sometimes numbering over 1,000,” Koempel admitted.

Crandall worked on the road as a salesman for H&H Distributing in West Union at the time. He was not only taking food orders from restaurants and bars but also learning of venues interested in live music from smaller bands.

“Larry asked if I’d be interested in doing an unplugged gig – just acoustic guitar, piano and vocals à la the Everly Brothers,” Koempel continued. “So, our first booking was at the Pilot House in Guttenberg and we were a hit.”

The twosome developed a different style of music, more mellow, more intimate – playing smaller venues such as Heidelberg Gardens in Luana and the Kountry Manor in National.

In 1974, after Koempel graduated from U of I, Crandall quit his H&H job and they hit the road playing Ramada and Holiday Inn circuits as well as many clubs throughout Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. However, they needed a new name.

“Fans would say ‘You really bring back memories with that music,” Koempel related. “Our repertoire consisted of ‘Brothers’ music, such as the Everly Brothers, Mills Brothers, Statler Brothers, Righteous Brothers. So, we became The Memory Brothers, which has stuck for half a century now.”