Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon ... and His Band

April 18, 2009— -- Kevin Bacon is not just a prolific actor. He's also a dedicated musician. For the last 15 years, Kevin and his big brother Michael have played in a band called the Bacon Brothers.

"GMA Weekend" anchor Kate Snow caught up with the Bacon Brothers recently to find out more about their music careers.

Kate Snow: Tell me about growing up together. I know you are nine years apart. Musically, what were the influences? Where does your music come from?

Michael Bacon: Well, our household was extremely musical. Our parents weren't musical themselves, but they loved it. They had a very elegant hi-fi system. We'd fall asleep. They'd have the FM radio on with classical music. They loved folk music and Broadway shows, and my sisters were Elvis Presley fans. Philly is a big R&B music town, so there would be just a lot of influeneces. So I came more out of acoustic folk music, and Kevin probably a little more in the British invasion.

Snow: Who's idea was it to form the band?

Michael Bacon: It was actually Kevin's friend. His best friend from Philly.

Kevin Bacon: We can't even take credit for forming our own band or naming it.

Michael Bacon: He came up with the name, and asked us to come down and play. He was working at a club, and he said get some guys and come down and play. It was really for a one-off.

Snow: Just for fun?

Michael Bacon: Oh yeah, totally, totally. Certainly for no other reason.

Kevin Bacon: We had been writing songs a lot and trying to pitch them to other people. We had this idea that, you know, we'd get together, write songs and like a country song would be recorded by someone. Or maybe we'd be able to get it into one of my movies. And so we amassed this collection of songs, and we had them on one demo, and he heard the demo and said, "Well now you are the Bacon Brothers. Come play this show."

Snow: Can you ever see music replacing acting?

Kevin Bacon: I really like doing both of them so much. And I really like directing. And I really like producing. I mean, there's so much stuff that I like doing that to think about having to just give something up, that just doesn't interest me. I got a restless mind. I'm always kind of thinking about the the next thing.

Snow: Do you hate when people yell "Footloose" and want to hear that song?

Kevin Bacon: You know, when we first put the band together, I said to Michael, "We have to embrace the beast." And from the very first gig, we started playing "Footloose." We were playing two acoustic guitars and had a bass player and a percussionist. And so, there was something kind of amusing about it -- you know, to have just two guys, you know, singing it, and to have me singing it, and it was a lot of fun. It's a great song. People loved it. Put smiles on their face.

Then about three years ago, I guess it was, now I said, "You know what, guys? What would you think about not doing 'Footloose' tonight?" And everyone was like, "Whoa. You're kidding. Oh, no. What's gonna happen? The sky is gonna fall." And we didn't play it. And a friend of mine who has seen the band a whole lot of times said, "Wow. That was so cool that you didn't play the song." He's like, "Thanks a lot." It was really fun. And all of a sudden, there was this weight almost lifted from us.