Things have to start somewhere.
The Kissers, Madison’s venerable Celtic rock band, started one night in the late 1990s when two good friends, Ken Fitzsimmons and Kevin Youngs, shared a bottle of whiskey and played songs by The Pogues into the wee hours.
At one point Fitzsimmons said, “We should start a band doing this!”
The Kissers have endured ever since — in various incarnations and with some breaks — including playing a central role in a rock and roll history show inspired in part by a book on World War I that Fitzsimmons read not long after the band formed.
Fitzsimmons had always loved history, but his knowledge of the 1914-18 global conflict was limited. The more he read and learned about the war — from its terrible death toll to the controversial late entry of the United States to Wisconsin’s role — the more he saw a story that needed telling.
Fitzsimmons envisioned a multimedia show — music, lights, video, storytelling — that would debut in 2008 on the 90th anniversary of the end of the war. His vision, however, was ahead of his ability to access the technology that could make it happen.