Who is Bill Hubauer?

Keyboardist/guitarist Bill Hubauer played on, produced, or mixed every ApologetiX CD since "Jesus Christ Morningstar" (1998). The founder of the Christian progressive rock band Ten point Ten (tenpointten.com), he first met ApologetiX when the two bands did some touring together in 1997-98.

Although he played a handful of concerts with ApologetiX from 2000-03, Bill first began touring with the band on a regular basis in early 2004, contributing both keyboards and guitar to the ApologetiX live experience. He has also played electric fiddle when the band performed "The Devil Went Down to Jordan" in concert.

Bill replaced Karl Messner as lead guitarist and producer for the band in September 2007 and impressed crowds often by playing guitar and keyboards during the same song -- and playing both instruments excellently.

Shortly after ApologetiX added Tom Milnes and Tom Tincha on lead guitars in late 2008, Bill retired from active road duty with us. He has since became an official touring member of progressive rock musician Neal Morse's band, a position that has taken him all over the world. Nevertheless, he still occasionally fills in for us in a pinch at live shows.

Bill began producing ApologetiX in the fall of 2007 on the album Future Tense and continued through Wise Up and Rock. Since then, the band has taken a more active role in producing itself, but Bill continues to do our mixing, and he occasionally contributes instrumentation.

Although Ten point Ten has been on hiatus for many years, Bill plays both keyboards and guitars for Ten point Ten and produces their CDs, too. He is also one of their vocalists, with a singing style reminiscent of Peter Gabriel and a killer falsetto. He attended Berklee College of Music in Boston. His musical influences/tastes include (but are by no means limited to) Kansas, Styx, Yes, Genesis, Rush, Supertramp, Spock's Beard, The Dixie Dregs, Chick Correa, Dragon Force, A.D., Steven Curtis Chapman, Rich Mullins, DC Talk, PFR, Limozine and, to a lesser extent, Z'nuff.

PERSONAL STUFF
Born into a U.S. Navy family in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Bill grew up near Clarion, PA, and also worked for a year in New York City. He lived in the Pittsburgh area when he first joined ApologetiX, although he now lives in Clarion again. He and his wife, Bonnie, have four children, Aaron, Nathan, Sarah and Jonah.

"The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) was a real turning point for me as far as my reliance on God," he says. In addition to the Gospels, Bill names James and Proverbs as two of his favorite books of the Bible.

A self-confessing "computer nerd," Bill is a big fan of pretentious pseudo-intellectual progressive rock music and believes Sid & Marty Kroft's characters really do live in some alternate dimension that he hopes to visit someday. "Beware of Sleestak," he warns. Bill agrees with ApologetiX lead singer J. Jackson that the defining moment of Live Aid in 1985 was Simon LeBon's vocals on Duran Duran's performance of "A View to a Kill." He stayed up way past his bedtime to listen to the radio world premiere of Styx's "Paradise Theater" in 1981 and thought Dennis DeYoung's hair was perfectly acceptable until he entered the Fro-zone.

Although he doesn't like to talk much about it, Bill once toured with one of Billboard Magazine's Top 500 artists of the rock era.

VOGUE-LY FAMILIAR
From 1985-86, Bill played keyboards for a Western Pennsylvania-based vocal group called the Vogues, best known for their two #4 hits in 1965, "Five O'Clock World" (also used as the theme for "The Drew Carey Show" and on the soundtrack for the movie "Good Morning Vietnam"), and "You're the One," and their two #7 hits in 1968, "Turn Around Look at Me" and "My Special Angel." The group had three other Top 40 hits,"This Magic Town," "Till," and "No Not Much."

Even more impressive is the Vogues' success on Billboard's adult contemporary charts, where they are ranked #121 all time, with a #1 hit and 17 Top 40 hits. It's interesting to note that 12 of those were remakes of older hits by other artists, although three of their four biggest pop hits were original. We believe this makes Bill Hubauer the keyboardist who is affiliated with the most combined adult contemporary and Christian alternative hits that were actually remakes of former hits :)

Does this mean we can expect an ApologetiX parody of a Vogues song in the near future? Probably not if Bill has anything to say about it. His musical tastes steer more toward a band he was in from 1991-94, Leftoverture, a tribute band that covered the songs of the progressive 70's rock band Kansas -- songs like "Carry On Wayward Son," "Dust in the Wind," "Point of Know Return" and "Play The Game Tonight."

However, Bill does say this about his Vogues period: "This was a good time for me. This was the first successful 'musician for hire' band that I was in. I also met my wife during this period, so I have fond memories of that." Better to have Vogue memories than vague memories, we suppose.

Bill also played with two spin-off groups from the Vogues -- Racon and Wagner in 1986 and Shades of Time in 1988. He did not however, have anything to do with En Vogue, the female R&B vocal group that scored six top 10 hits from 1990-96, including the #2 hits, "Hold On," "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It), and "Don't Let Go (Love)." Nor did he play on Madonna's #1 hit from 1990, "Vogue." Furthermore, he has never appeared in Vogue magazine.