good enough, you know what I mean? But I certainly strive for – if I put my name on something - I really strive for it to be something that I’m proud of. Excellence.  I prefer that to being lazy about it.  I guess that he might have instilled that.

“I really do appreciate the fact that he worked so hard all those years. He’d leave early in the morning, go to work and provide for his family. That might sound like a common or very easy thing to do but you know how many really bad parents there are out there who totally don’t take care of their children and don’t look out for them? So, I’m happy that he was a good Dad.”

When I asked Bruce how his Dad influenced his career, his reply comes back around to the inherent kindness of his Mr. Kulick’s nature.

“I think that I take after him in some ways. I’m kind to people, in general.  I mean, I have my cranky moments, too. But, I prefer – I think honey works better than spice and I think that’s something my Dad always kind of felt. So, I don’t know if it’s something he taught me or if it’s something that just came natural to me. I will say that I was always happy to see him be jovial in the offices, even as old as he was. He’d come to a doctor’s office and he was so funny and sweet. 

“Everybody would always say, ‘Your father is SO sweet!’ You know, that kind of thing.  Even the nurses – unless he was obviously in pain, then he would sometimes get a little cranky – they, in general, thought he was a really sweet man.”

Bruce’s style of music isn’t exactly in the vein of Sinatra or Welk so I asked Bruce what did his Dad comment most on about his son’s work?

“Well, it was interesting. With my last record, BK3, when my parents listened to it, it was my father who said, ‘That’s Bruce singing!’ You know, I was really impressed that he knew. My mother wasn’t sure and she had to check the credits.  She told me that, actually.

“We didn’t really talk about the record.  It was pretty common for Bob and I to go, ‘Here’s the last CD. I hope you like it’ kind of thing. Because I know they know how to work their CD player but we didn’t know how much time they really would dig into a rock record. They would probably rather listen to Sinatra or something.

“Most of the time they watched TV even though music was a big part of their lives, they weren’t the type to put on a favorite record or something like that. They had certain artists that they were fans of.  But, I found that (his Dad recognizing Bruce’s voice on BK3) really, really interesting and I was really glad that he was able to tell my mom, ‘That’s Bruce singing!’ That was pretty remarkable for me to hear.