By Kevin Osborne
Photo By: Joe Lamb

Elliott Ruther and Marvin Hawkins spend much of their day the same way many employees working for government bureaucracies do — attending budget hearings and committee meetings, taking constituent telephone calls and doing research on legislative issues.

How Ruther and Hawkins spend many of their nights, however, is an entirely different matter.

Both men work for Cincinnati City Councilman John Cranley. Ruther, a high school classmate of Cranley’s, is his chief of staff; Hawkins is a legislative aide.

Outside City Hall, the staffers are familiar faces among music lovers who frequent the city’s concert venues, bars and nightclubs. Ruther and Hawkins are semi-professional musicians and regularly play gigs around town, an activity that stands in sharp contrast to their button-down day jobs.

Ruther, 33, is a singer/songwriter who plays guitar and is known for his songs that mix Folk with a Beatles-esque Rock sensibility. Hawkins, 31, is a singer who plays drums, keyboard and bass, specializing in Funk, Hip Hop and Soul.

Hawkins performs both with his band, Marvin and the Experience, and as a solo artist. He’s also toured as a member of others bands, like Admiral Walker, as a musician and backup vocalist.

Working at City Hall, with its political machinations and testy officials, has actually helped their musical careers to a degree, they say — albeit in different ways.

“Sometimes the day job can be very inspiring for what you put out at night,” Ruther says. “Music can be a release for a mood or a message you want to get across.”

As an example, Ruther cites a song he wrote two years ago while his boss was in the midst of a budget battle over funding for a mass transit agency. The tune, entitled “Upon Reading the Minutes of the SORTA Board,” harkens back to the 1960s style of political songs produced by Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.

For Hawkins, the job has allowed him to learn how to be a better negotiator and get along with a wide variety of people, skills that are essential in the music industry.

“Music has always been my passion,” Hawkins says. “This job has given me my game face. Politics and music go hand in hand. Some of the best politicians are people in the music industry, honestly.”

Hawkins is a 1993 graduate of the Cincinnati School for the Creative and Performing Arts. While there, he received training in ballet, opera, drama, instrumental music and both classical and musical theater. He started his first musical group in 10th grade along with fellow classmates Nick and Drew Lachey, who later went onto gain fame with 98 Degrees, the popular late 1990s boy band.

After high school, Hawkins had parts in several Off Broadway productions and, beginning in 2001, a nine-month stint in Asia and the Pacific Islands. During that period, his credits included some major label recordings, a television special with Japanese pop artist Hira Ken and performing the Korean FIFA World Cup Soccer Team theme song.

Meanwhile, Ruther gradated from St. Xavier High School and spent much of his time focusing on politics, including helping manage Cranley’s congressional campaign last year. Music has been more of a sidelight for Ruther, although he’s played at the MidPoint Music Festival and Jammin’ on Main and has performed with several local musicians, including the bass player from Heartless Bastards.

About his City Hall job, Ruther says, “It’s a little unusual, but it speaks a lot about John. There were two things that forged our friendship: We’re both Democrats, and we both dug The Beatles.”

Despite their similar interests, Hawkins met Ruther only when the former interviewed for a job with Cranley or, as Hawkins calls it, auditioned.

“I say ‘audition’ because everything I do is an audition,” he says.

It turns out that City Hall is a veritable melting pot for the musically inclined.

Besides Ruther and Hawkins, other municipal workers with musical backgrounds include Ryan Adcock, son of former Health Commissioner Dr. Malcolm Adcock and an aide for Mayor Mark Mallory who’s a critically acclaimed singer/songwriter; Ed Cunningham, a worker in the Buildings and Inspections Department who’s leader of the Comet Bluegrass All-Stars; and Pat Ewing, an economic development officer who also performs locally.

In fact, there are so many musicians in City Hall’s marble and granite offices that they teamed up shortly after hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans to do a lunchtime concert at nearby Centennial Plaza to raise money for hurricane victims.

Additionally, Ruther and Hawkins have teamed up to promote creating a local museum celebrating the history of King Records. The record label, started in 1943 by Syd Nathan and based in Cincinnati, is best known among music historians for recording early work by Country crooner Hank Williams and “Godfather of Soul” James Brown.

The record label also is known for showcasing such early “hillbilly music” singers as Homer and Jethro, Grandpa Jones and the Delmore Brothers and such Soul performers as Valerie Carr, Jack Dupree and Hank Ballard & the Midnighters.

Ruther and Hawkins have tried to convince investors to renovate King Records’ former recording studio in Evanston and have talked to Funk musician Bootsy Collins and restaurateur Jeff Ruby about including a King Records area in a possible eatery the two are planning downtown. Other sources said likely locations for such a business are the former Uno’s Pizzeria across from the Aronoff Center for the Arts or a spot on West Fourth Street.

Ruther recently videotaped Chuck D., of the legendary Rap group Public Enemy, for a planned documentary on King Records while the group was in town for a concert.

“We wanted to generate some attention and connect with folks who knew about the town’s musical history, and a lot of that has to do with King Records,” Ruther say. “It’s a great story that’s pretty much under the radar screen. The roots of so much of the music that I dig came from here. If there’s anyway I can celebrate that history, which is bigger than all of us, I would be happy to.” ©