Mike Tafoya is a Chicago-born rock guitarist, singer and songwriter whose career spans nearly five decades, from the biker-rock bars of the 1970s to the power trio that carries his name today.
The Boyzz from Illinoiz
In the mid-1970s Tafoya joined some neighborhood friends in The Boyzz, a hard-driving biker boogie band out of St. Charles, Illinois, billed on the road as The Boyzz from Illinoiz. Fronted by Dirty Dan Buck, with Tafoya and Gil Pini trading lead guitars, the band signed with Epic Records’ Cleveland International label and recorded its only album, Too Wild to Tame, in just two weeks in April 1978. Its cover, with Buck astride a motorcycle in a pose borrowed from Marlon Brando in The Wild One, became a classic of Midwest rock. Sessions for a second album were never released, and the band split.
The B’zz and American Bandstand
Out of the Boyzz came The B’zz, formed in 1980 by Tafoya, bassist Dave Angel and keyboardist Anatole Halinkovich, with singer Tom Holland and drummer Steve Riley, later of W.A.S.P. and L.A. Guns. In April 1982 the band appeared on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, earning the rare distinction of being the only unsigned act ever to play the show. Epic Records signed them soon after. Their album Get Up, produced by Tom Werman at the Record Plant in Hollywood, followed, and the video for “Get Up, Get Angry” made it onto MTV.
Still Rocking
Tafoya went on to lead the Raw Dogs and, from 2002, Tafoya’s Lost Boyzz, whose 2007 album Life on Rave Song Records was his first recording in a decade. In 2022 he launched a new power trio, Tafoya, with Craig Cederholm and Leslidiana F. Biocic, releasing the EP Freedom and its single “Shadows.” More than forty years after he started, he is still one of the most energetic guitarists on the Chicagoland scene.
Photographing Mike
Ed Peterson has photographed Mike many times over the years, in the studio, on stage and on video, including a show at the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles, the town where the Boyzz story began.
Photographs © Ed Peterson, Peterson Design. To ask about a print or licensing, get in touch.