MEET THE BAND
Mark O'Keefe - Lead Guitar & Vocals
With the arrival of The Beatles in 1963, Mark was smitten by the bug! It took several months but convinced his parents he wanted to get serious and take guitar lessons. By 1965 Mark, his younger brother and friends started their first band called “The Parliaments” (it sounded English!). In 1966, at age of 15 and the oldest one in the band, The Parliaments played on a live local variety television show called “Be Our Guest”. This appearance was on the day before the new school year started and they were the talk of school the next day!
Also in 1995, Mark won an area-wide guitar competition sponsored by Q102 radio and Jimmy Buffett tour. The prize for this was to perform live on stage with "Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band" at Riverbend Music Center and a Gibson Les Paul autographed to him by Jimmy Buffett after the performance and a video!
Mark’s musical interests are varied. As well as doing commercial recording projects for Cincinnati Bell, he has been a featured guitarist on some CD projects and performs as the featured guitarist.
Mark joined and helped revamp BluMillion in 2023 and has enjoyed working with these fun musicians!
John Berger - Keyboards & (a few) Vocals
John has been with BluMillion since 2023.
His interest in music started when he was in 2nd grade. The school gave everyone a musical aptitude test to recruit people for the High School Band. John qualified for free music lessons, and chose to take up drums. He played drums in the High School Band, and also for a local dance studio that had a Majorette training unit. (He just did it to meet chicks.) By the time he was 17, he had marched in all 3 of the Thanksgiving Day parades you see on TV. He said, it's not as glorious as it looks. It was really Cold !!!!
John taught himself to play piano in High School and started playing the organ at home. He still has a real Hammond Organ in his living room.
About 2020 his neighbors invited him to jam in the basement with their family band. They got pretty good and played 2 gigs at a campground on the Ohio River. That band soon fell apart, but he had the itch to get back on stage. 2 years and 3 startup bands later, he met Mark O'Keefe, BluMillion's lead guitar picker. Mark invited him to try out with BluMillion.
The rest is history. They're making great music and having a bunch of fun.
John says, "If we're not picking on each other something's wrong".