Lea family reach for the stars with their musical act (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Lea family reach for the stars with their musical act

HAD the name not already been taken, The Offspring would have provided an apt title for a band whose members include a mother and her two teenage children.

As it is, Park Street half consists of two generations from the same family, 47-year-old Mary Dodd and her children Mike, 16, and Lottie, 19.

The seeds were sown for Park Street three years ago when Mary put an ad hoc band together for the Musicalea Festival in her home village of Lea.

Since then the line up has evolved to include Mary on vocals and keyboards, Mike on drums, Lottie on vocals, Chris Unwin, 20, on bass, his brother Mike, 18, (both from Crudwell) on guitar and 16-year-old singer Jess Glossop.

The band is now establishing itself as a live act, performing covers from a 150-strong repertoire of songs that have been honed in rehearsal.

Their latest gig, said Mary, typified the diverse musical influences and tastes within the group, and included tracks by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Toto, Scissor Sisters, Joss Stone and Phil Collins.

Mary, who can think of no other band since the Partridge Family in the 1970s to include a parent and children, is an accomplished performer herself.

She first sang professionally at 19, and for six years was a full-time singer, performing on cruise ships, in hotels around the world and entertaining troops for Naafi Entertainments in Germany.

She has sung with Bath Camerata chamber choir (her main musical passion) for ten years and with the Three Tenors and is now a semi-professional performer singing at parties.

She said: "They (Mike and Lottie) have lived with music since they were born. They've absorbed it as with osmosis.

"It's a great enormous source of pride and musically it feels like working with anybody else - once we are on stage the mother, children thing goes out the window because we start to act professionally."

Self-taught drummer Mike, finds his friends reaction to playing with his mum a positive one.

He said: "They think it's a bit cool playing with my mum, but they think mum's cool because she plays in a band."

The group is about to record its first demo CD to help it attract more gigs, which ultimately, added Mary, is to help the band members pay their way through university.