President's Day Chat

As a young rocker, Tim Archibald rented practice space in a grimy basement studio near Kenmore Square. When it rained, he used milk crates to protect his bass from flooding. The veteran musician, now 49, faces different challenges with his new band, Ernie and the Automatics.

"Sometimes," said Archibald, "they're backing the plane in when we're in the middle of practice."

Ah, the travails of CEO rock. The Cessna belongs to South Shore auto magnate Ernie Boch Jr., a 50-year-old guitarist who formed the Automatics two years ago to reclaim the rock 'n' roll fantasy he abandoned for the far more profitable family business. The band practices under the jet's tail section in a hangar at Norwood Memorial Airport.

And the Automatics aren't the only local rockers with corporate links. Knowing that many business leaders moonlight as guitar heroes, Berklee College of Music has launched "Executive Sessions" to show off their playing. The concert series, which runs through June at the school's Cafe 939 on Boylston Street, features Boch's band on Thursday night.

The purpose is twofold: to spread word of the new performance venue and to create a soft-sell for potential new donors.

"This is a brilliant fund-raising idea," said Paul Bessire, deputy director of the Institute of Contemporary Art. "I wish we had thought of that."

For the most part, the late-blooming but extremely well-funded rockers were eager to sign on. (Celtics co-owner and drummer Wyc Grousbeck took a rain check, asking to wait until the team's season is over.) Some bands have more experience than others. The Loomers, who kicked off the series in April, have an album on iTunes and have been finalists in Fortune magazine's Battle of the Corporate Bands. SIX, which plays in June, has never had a club gig.

"This thing is cracking up to be a battle of the bands, and we're particularly daunted by being up against Ernie Boch," said Walter Ogier, 51, the former CEO of Arbios Systems, who plays guitar for SIX. "But the most daunting part of this is thinking we're going to have Berklee students in the audience."

Berklee president Roger Brown, a drummer and the former chief executive at Bright Horizons, said the series is not meant to be a competition, and the school is not trying to use it to raise money, at least not directly. But he likes the idea of strengthening connections between the college and some of the area's deep-pocketed music lovers.

None of the groups are getting paid, with proceeds benefiting the school's scholarship programs. In addition, Tom Simons of the Loomers actually paid for the band's gig, making a $2,500 contribution through his marketing communications firm to Berklee. The Boston investment firm of Giles McNamee, whose Rockhoppers play Café 939 next month, was a $5,000 sponsor for a Berklee event over the winter. Boch, a Berklee graduate and trustee, didn't make a gift connected to the concert series, but he confirmed a recent $1 million gift to the college, the largest ever made by an alum.

Normally, fledgling rock bands ride in vans, scour Radio Shack for a cheap PA system, and hit up their parents for cash to record a demo. CEO rockers play by different rules. Loomers guitarist Simons, 55, has a dozen guitars. His favorite of the moment, a Rusty Steel Deville, lists for more than $4,000.

The executives say they don't do it for the money. They do it as a release from their regular, high-pressure gigs.

"Some guys go out and play golf," said Jon Cahill, 41, principal of a Cambridge design firm and lead singer of the Limitations, who play Café 939 May 22. "This is what we do."

The biggest challenge the corporate rockers say they have is finding time to practice. After a long day at work, Simons will plug his guitar into headphones so he can hone his chops without disturbing his sleeping wife.

Simons says everybody playing the executive series is good, though there is a range of styles and experience. The Limitations, for example, formed to play '80s covers, though they've added Matthew Sweet, the Stone Roses, and Oasis to the mix. Ernie and the Automatics is a Blues Brothers-styled soul revue. They've also recorded a set of original songs and hope to release it this summer.

While not all members of the bands are chief executives, most have high-ranking positions. SIX includes Ogier, a self-described "out-of-work" CEO; Scott Gilmour, a Fidelity Investments senior vice president; Wendell Wickerham, president of his own consulting firm; and Bruce Lauterwasser, a senior manager at Raytheon Co.

Ernie and the Automatics is the exception. Boch, the rhythm guitarist, signed on two former members of the band Boston (Barry Goudreau and Sib Hashian), former Peter Wolf sidemen (Archibald and Brian Maes), and Michael "Tunes" Antunes, a member of John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band. The saxophonist also had a prominent acting role in the 1983 cult movie favorite "Eddie and the Cruisers."

The band sometimes gigs twice a weekend and recently opened for Chuck Berry and B.B. King. With a nod to Boch's day job, the Automatics wear matching mechanics shirts onstage.

When they signed on, Archibald and Maes say, old friends would come up and razz them for selling out for an easy paycheck. (Boch does pay well, they acknowledge, though they wouldn't say exactly how much. Boch himself puts all of his profits back into Music Drives Us, a foundation that gives scholarship money to aspiring musicians.) Over time, they say they're proud to have shown the skeptics that not only can the CEO play, he's smart enough to share the spotlight with his road-tested colleagues.

"In my industry, I'm at the top of the food chain," said Boch. "Here, I'm like the bag boy."

Boch's airplane hangar isn't built for a rock band - sound resonates more than the musicians would like - but it is comfortable, with a full-service kitchen off to the side. The Automatics have even taken the Cessna to a gig on Martha's Vineyard.

"This is his plane," said Antunes, "but when we come in here, it sort of changes to our plane."