Stefanie Eulinberg grew up in Cleveland.
Note to aspiring rock stars: You can indeed make it big playing the lounge circuit. Just make sure you know the right people.
Stefanie labored for years in a variety of outfits, playing hotel bars, cruise ships, prisons, wherever the demand came for a pop cover band.
“I floated around just about everywhere,” she says.
She was floating in Milwaukee last year when the call came from her pal DJ Swamp, who was out on the road spinning for Beck: This Kid Rock guy in Detroit has a record on Atlantic, and he needed a drummer. Like, now.
After a flurry of answering-machine phone tag, Eulinberg connected with Kid Rock. “We’ve narrowed it down to three, and you’re one of them,” he told her — despite not having heard her play.
“Let’s face it,” she says with a laugh. “I’m a black chick. Who wouldn’t want something different like that?”
She shipped a tape overnight. Within days, she was in town, the latest, and final piece of Kid Rock’s TBT puzzle.
Quite an artistic leap, it might seem, from playing pop covers to bulwarking the bottom end of a gritty rock ensemble. But Eulinberg insists the musical transition was a cinch.
“The only thing I had to get used to was living with 15 guys in an RV,” she says.
Life’s gotten a little easier now that the Kid Rock caravan includes three snazzy tour buses. Like her TBT comrades, she’s getting used to being recognized out.
“It’s always the same three questions,” she says. “One: ‘You’re with Kid Rock, right?’ Two: ‘Where is he?’ And three: ‘Do you have any extra tickets?’ “