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With area blues-rock band Deep In It’s 2019 win of the Texoma’s Best “Live Music” award, the group has now won the title two years running, despite having two main lead vocalists over the time period.

And that doesn’t include their performances with legendary singer Malford Milligan off and on from the summer of 2018 to June 2019, when he left for Europe to do a tour that will keep him on the continent through early summer 2020.

The current version of Deep In It includes bassist and singer Brian Beck, lead guitarist and singer Derrick Kuehner, rhythm guitarist Robert Duncan (Beck’s father) and drummer Billy Pennington.

The band was formed six or seven years ago by Kuehner and Beck with members coming in and out. Kuehner left for a while, and the band began playing out about two and a half years ago with singer Chris Rodriguez.

Kuehner rejoined two years ago and Pennington joined a little later. The band for all practical purposes has played almost every weekend for the past year and a half. Deep In It’s next area show will be at Larsonfest 2019, a three day annual event that honors area music fan Don Larson who passed away in April 2018. The first festival in 2018 raised over $10,000 for CASA of Red River.

Deep In It will be the next to the last band to play on Larsonfest’s Country/Blues Night from 6 p.m. to 11:35 p.m. Friday Oct 4 at Stick’s Place. The event continues from noon to 10:45 p.m. on Oct 5 Saturday with Rock Night and then 2 to 7:35 p.m. Sunday with Metal Night.

“Don was always at shows and it didn’t matter if you were country, rock & roll, blues or metal, he came out,” said Beck. “We played Larsonfest last year and it was great. To get that many bands under the same roof to do something for someone is great.”

While the band describes itself as blues rock, “we also have a country flair,” said Duncan. It really kind of depends where they are playing what they will play.

“In smaller towns they cater to country, and we started playing more country over the past year,” said Beck. They can rotate in about nine or 10 country songs including Keith Urban and Brooks & Dunn.

Deep In It is really a blues and rock band,” said Beck. “We usually play 3 ½ hours a night which is about 40 or 50 covers and originals. More of our shows are rock. If we play the Pub, we don’t play country.

“We play the hard rock and blues, the really jamming stuff we handpick,” said Pennington.

Winning Texoma’s Best for 2019 really meant something to the band, they said. “We lost pretty much the front man of our band in late 2018. Derrick and I took it, but he gets most of the burden of the vocals,” said Beck.

From December 2018, Deep In It has been the current quartet, and it’s worked, they said. “After we lost Chris, we kept playing and people liked it, so we continued on, said Beck.

Kuehner said it was a nice confirmation to win Texoma’s Best again, with two different singers.

Deep In It was the first band to win the Best Live Music category in 2018 and said there were more bands included this year against venues like Iron Horse Pub and Boulevard Nightclub.     

In 2019, the band estimated they will play around 60 shows, taking short breaks for family time.

Their next scheduled area show after Larsonfest will be at the Pub and then they will play a Four on the Floor show at the Kemp Forum on Nov. 16. Four bands will set up and play a set and then everyone jams together. The show also includes Everything In Between, Downtown Royalty and Therapy.

Looking down the road, three of the four members of Deep In It have full-time jobs, while Duncan is retired. “We love doing what we are doing, and of course if something interesting came around, it would be something to think about it,” Beck said.

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