With threatening rain clouds that hovered like a specter over most of the show, The Bacon Brothers took the stage at Long’s Park Ampitheater Sunday, August 13, performing selections from both their debut effort, Forosoco, and their most recent, Getting There.

Opening with "Getting There," the album’s title track, The Bacon Brothers — Michael and Kevin — spent the first portion of the show performing their acoustic hits before getting into their rock tunes with their band. Playing in front of one of Long’s Park’s larger crowds, the Kevin Bacon-friendly fans held out through the overcast atmosphere, ignoring the intermittent drizzle and holding out for the encore — a bizarre, but nonetheless sing-a-long inspiring version of the theme from Footloose, one of Kevin’s best known films.

Recently, MODE caught up with the elder Brother, Michael, to discuss all things Bacon — including music, life on the road, and what it’s like to be just one degree away from Kevin.

"One time an old friend of Kevin’s whose family was in the club business in Philadelphia heard a tape of some songs we had written and, ‘why don’t you get a couple of side men and come down and play the club, just as a goof, as The Bacon Brothers.’ And we said sure … and one job sort of led to the next."

And so it began.

Now, with two discs under their belt, Michael and Kevin Bacon have spent the past six years cementing their place in the music industry, finding commercial and critical success with both releases, and steadily overcoming the skepticism that their musicianship is little more than a side-project of a movie star — a skepticism that couldn’t be further from the truth.

"I think that a lot of the skeptical people realized that we do take it really seriously … and most people get that we are professionals and that we are competitive with any other band that is out there playing and selling records," he said. "We have an amazing back-up band, the two of us both work really, really hard on singing and guitar playing and making the show — and when someone lays down 15-20 bucks to come see us, we want to make sure that that see something that is really professional, something worth more than just coming to gaze at a movie star."

More than gazing at a movie star, indeed. Performing together, both formally and informally, since their youth, Michael and Kevin have spent much of the past decades honing their craft, all the while succeeding at their individual careers — Kevin, as an actor and Michael, as a composer. A trained musician from Lehman College, Michael has performed in numerous bands and has established a successful career as a composer of film and television, winning numerous awards — including two Academy Awards — and scoring such projects as The Kennedys, Losing Chase, and Peter Jennings’ The Century.

But just as satisfying as it is as a second career, the duo has learned that spending time as "The Bacon Brothers" is good for the Bacon Brothers. "I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to play music with Kevin," said Michael. "… and for both of us it’s kind of a nice place where we don’t have people telling us what to do or fitting into somebody else’s idea and it’s really about what we think is right totally — it’s a real sense of freedom … it’s also great to be sharing it with my brother because family — everybody’s busy — and we probably wouldn’t really see each other that much … it’s a great feeling to share a common project."

Between working on new material and scheduling tour dates around two very busy careers, the Brothers are also in search of a record label on which to release their yet-to-be-recorded third CD, which, when completed, promises to be filled with the story-telling rich songs featured on the first two discs — a fact that suits the Brothers to a tee. "Our basic philosophy is to let the song drive our arrangement rather than ‘this is what the band sounds like and we’ll fit the song into that structure’ which is a difficult thing in the music industry because they like to put things in little pigeon holes," he explained. "We have one really great luxury in that we can, rather than try to fit into someone else’s idea of how they would sell us in the music market —since it’s not our regular way of making a living — we pretty much do what we do best."

And while being in a band with your movie star brother can’t always be easy, Michael is more than thrilled that the band has taken off as well as it has. "I was real skeptical that it would really last and that we would keep at it because it just gets to be another struggle," he admits. "…There were a million different reasons why we didn’t do it, but once we played our first job a lot of those things fell away … and it’s definitely turned into a much bigger thing, it’s a business…"

Business. Fun. A little bit of both. Either way, Michael Bacon wouldn’t change a thing. "It’s still fun and that’s the bottom-line, we still really enjoy it and we find it rewarding."