Linda Bolley sings and plays drums in Susi French Connection, and she and Becky perform together in the string band Just Roxie (where she plays guitar). A Michigan native, Linda came to Georgia in the early 90s with her band Straw Village, and has gone on to perform with Lee and Greg in The Gentle Readers and with Michelle Malone, among many others. She is a Capricorn and astrology enthusiast who will probably ask you the hour and minute you were born. She gets carsick, so always has to drive (fine by the other band members). Linda prefers cats to dogs, wine to liquor, and women who look like Jennifer Anniston.

Greg hails from Atlanta where he graduated from Druid Hills High School and then Georgia State University with a music degree. He currently also plays with Jackson County Line and Atlanta Rush Hour (yes – Rush 1974 – 1984. So good). At some point when he was young and small, he played a gig with Linda in Straw Village, and she recommended him as bassist for The Gentle Readers, where he spent years growing taller and stronger while experimenting with various men’s facial hair looks, including the soul patch and the van dyke. He’s a Libra—a peacemaker—and is SFC’s de facto musical director, remembering arrangements, chord variations, and accents that most of us only have a hazy recollection of. He lives in Kirkwood with his wife Sarah and Lucy the hound, whose DNA revealed, is part Mexican Street Dog.

Keyboardist Allen Broyles has a wall of guitars, basses, and mandolins, a drum set, and a Steinway in his home studio, where the band rehearses. He plays them all, and one night, after watching a Beach Boys concert on PBS and tossing a couple back, he got online and bought a Theramin. Everything Allen tackles, he does with intensity, whether making pizza in an outdoor oven, photography, paddling, cycling, or finding the perfect spicy sausages to pair with Scotch. As a member of the Josh Joplin Group, Allen was known for bringing a B3 and a full-size Leslie to shows because nothing sounded as good. He’s a Leo – the Lion – a fire sign – and brings intensity and good humor to all he pursues. For coin, Allen is an educational consultant, and he reads a lot about childhood brain development. Whatever.

Becky brings a strong west coast vibe to the band, having relocated to Atlanta from her native Seattle, also in the early 90s. She’s from a family that sang together, and it shows, as she can harmonize with mating squirrels if need be. A ridiculous multi-instrumentalist, Becky plays pedal steel, ukulele, guitar with Just Roxie, drums with Sonia Tetlow, and everything else in SFC. She is an American of fine lineage, descended from the Harriet Beecher Stowe line, and is a Taurus. Incidentally, this writer particularly enjoyed this description of that sign: “A Taurus born on April xx is a sleek, sophisticated individual with a flair for the good life and a love of glamor….Like many of their fellow Taureans, people born in April have an enormous love of good food. Yet, because they value their looks, these people are likely to adopt a regular workout regimen.” (from How Stuff Works)

Lynne is younger than the other members of the band, and she’s from England (Newcastle), where her dad is a rocking guitar player and her family still lives. She came to Georgia State University in an exchange program, met a fellow, and stayed in Atlanta where she runs her own PR company and is active in the local visual arts community. Lynne is a true artist – she writes and journals and keeps a list of future tattoos she’d like to get – on her quest for the truest form of expression for the world’s most complicated concepts. But man – she loves to sing and it makes total sense she is a Cancer, ruled by the moon. She believes in voodoo and almost always wears dresses. That’s what she brings to the band – style and passion and a hint of mystical. They’re getting old and inflexible and they needed it.

Speaking of old and inflexible, Lee does all the band’s scheduling and setlist making and whatever else is not much fun but keeps the train on the tracks. She refuses to play anything by Steely Dan and runs around like a border collie, ensuring everyone has enough stage space. What she lacks in musical proficiency she more than makes up for in organizational intensity. To offset her need for order, Lee does improv at Atlanta’s Whole World Improv Theater and is in a polyamorous relationship. No – that last part is a lie, actually. It just sounded spicy. Lee’s a Libra (it’s hard keeping those scales balanced) and an Indiana native whose interests include Atlanta Braves baseball and “Air Disasters” on the Smithsonian channel.