If you’re just joining us, please read part one of the naming of the band series.
Now that Tommy had his very rockabilly sounding name, we had to come up with a name for the band! We knew it had to be something that stopped people in their tracks. Silly, absurd, however you call it, we knew once we came up with it, there was no going back. But what would we call it?
We decided that the name had to have a familial feel, again harkening back to the old days of groups like Sly and the Family Stone, Bill Haley and his Comets, and so many more. We originally thought “family” could have a nice ring to it. We thought about what kind of family and were stumped.
It wasn’t until I mentioned the drinking song where “we are the members of the rum family” was a line, that we knew we were on the right track. We were close. We decided to keep rum, as it very much hearkens to the islands we called home. I drank lots of rum at the time, so it felt appropriate.
We went back and forth with a few other synonyms for “family” until we got to “syndicate.” It brought us back to the old days of rumrunners and prohibition. The crime family aspect had a twist we weren’t expecting until we decided to look up what we just decided was our new name: Tommy August & the Rum Syndicate.
Stay tuned for part three: the story of the Tom August!
