By FINN HARTNETT

Staff writer

Becoming a musician had to do more Kurt Shobe’s hometown of Independence, Kansas than anything else.

“I was lucky to be born there,” he said. “There were a lot of musicians in that area.”

Independence stood kitty-corner from some of the country-music hubs of the ‘70s: Tulsa and Wichita were to one side, Joplin and Springfield to the other.

Rodney Lay, a “local legend” and stalwart of Roy Clark’s variety show “Hee Haw,” was from nearby Coffeyville. (Shobe later joined a band with Lay’s son, Rod Jr. “He had a 1964 Stratocaster,” Shobe said. “That’s about the only thing I remember about him.”)

Shobe got his first break at 17 after meeting Pete Williams, a local guitarist, at Hille Music Store in Independence.

Williams took Shobe under his wing, giving him guitar lessons and inviting him to tag along with his merry band of thirty-somethings.

The band, rounded out by lead singer Larry Brockway and keyboardist Fuzzy Barber, would “pile up in a car and drive over to Joplin,” Shobe said. They performed at a variety of energetic bars and clubs.

Shobe joined the band as a backing guitarist, though he wasn’t nearly old enough to be inside the performance venues.

He sat in back rooms during breaks to avoid questioning while the band brought him cans of Mountain Dew.

“I still drink Mountain Dew every gig,” Shobe said. “It’s the worst thing you can drink for your voice, but it’s what I’m used to.”

The shows were formative for young Shobe, and he looked up to his bandmates.

“They taught me how to do it at a professional level,” he said. “Many musicians, particularly at the level of playing the bar, they’re there for two reasons: get drunk and get laid. … These guys weren’t like that. They were all adults. I was really lucky.”

After Shobe enrolled at Emporia State, he formed a band with a few friends called Detour.

“It paid better than Hardee’s,” he said. “Band money was basically grocery money.”

Shobe began as a guitar player and backup vocalist before becoming lead singer and leading the band to modest success.

According to Shobe, Detour went on tour with country singer John Anderson and, a year later, the pop duo The Bellamy Brothers.

Shobe said he was exposed to a more hedonistic lifestyle with Detour, sometimes skipping classes three weeks at a time to tour.

But despite periods of truancy, Shobe enjoyed school. He graduated with a degree in physical science and eventually got his master’s in geology. Shobe even taught high school and college science after graduating.

“They used to call me an over-educated redneck,” he said.

Marion resident and Hillsboro police officer Dwayne McCarty is largely responsible for formation of Shobe’s current band.

McCarty is a longtime friend, having previously helped Shobe book shows at Sher-Bowl Lanes.

In 2017, he messaged Shobe’s wife on Facebook, asking whether Kurt was interested in forming a new band.

Along with drummer Andy Edwards and fiddler-guitarist Chip Quane, Shobe and McCarty joined forces to form Steel Skarecrow.

The band’s name, Shobe explained, is a back-country nickname for a windmill.

“It’s a very country name,” he said. “But we wanted something that had a little edge to it, too, because Chip was doing rock ’n’ roll stuff, and we were doing some southern rock and what-not.”

As with every band, Steel Skarecrow has had its share of turnover. Edwards left first, and was replaced by drummer Alan Makovec.

Other members of the band didn’t get on well with Makovec, and the band went on hiatus for a year, re-emerging in 2020.

Rollin Schmidt took over for Quane. McCarty was replaced by Kristopher Howell. Drummer Mark Clemons took Makovec’s place to form the band’s current lineup.

The quartet has performed more than 350 shows together since then, Shobe said.

While the band had experimented with different styles in the past, stabilization of its members has coincided with that of its musical identity.

“With the current version of Steel Skarecrow, we’re pretty much straight country,” Shobe said.

It’s somewhat of a reversal from the normal band trajectory. Typically, a group begins with a defined style, becoming more experimental as the years go by.

But the band’s evolution speaks to the kind of man Shobe is. He always has liked order.

“Chemistry is predictable,” he said, speaking about his teaching days. “It’s not much different from music. Music is ordered, too. Everything’s based on 1-2-3-4; everything’s based on meter. To do a song properly is a very ordered process.”

Shobe performed in a Topeka-based jazz band briefly, a period which he said left him “always kind of confused.”

“My life is ordered,” he said. “I’m the guy that straightens out the carpet when it gets a little sideways.”

That’s why a life spent in music has meant so much to Shobe. The steady rhythms; the powerful, driving chords; the bouncing crowds. It is chaos, but it is the least chaotic chaos there is.

“When you’re on stage and everything is right where it’s supposed to be, and the music is there, there is nothing like that feeling,” he said.