The Known Unknowns - D.C.'s only band sort of endorsed by Donald Rumsfeld.
Okay, let's back up. The Known Unknowns have a variety of influences, starting with rock and pop and stretching all the way to country, punk, and folk, and that comes out in a range of original music that keeps us and hopefully our audience excited to hear what we might come up with next.
The origins of the band are long and rambling, involving several previous bands, 3 doctorates in the physical sciences, and some guy named Starr blurting out "Man, if only someone here had some drums I could totally rock out" at a party less than 24 hours before Adam, Bryan, and Colin were meeting up to see if playing music together was actually a good idea. Poor sucker never saw us coming. Oh, and then Ray and Johnny showed up, and Colin moved on to more alluring musical pastures.
The origins of the name, and especially that tagline up top, are more interesting. The exact quote, at a Department of Defense news briefing on February 12, 2002, was:
"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."
Now, as the good scientists that a couple of us still think we are, we recognize that there is actually nothing wrong with the above statement. (Just as there is nothing wrong with saying that a woodchuck would chuck no amount of wood since a woodchuck can't chuck wood.) Nevertheless, the press was reportedly left bewildered, and a follow-up briefing was necessary to explain what the heck he was talking about.
Flash forward to November 2006, one Dallas Lawrence, fiancée to Sarah Borrud and Director of Public Liaison for the DOD - and now a Super Friend of the band (just this once we do not mean one of the Wonder Twins) - learns that we're considering this for our name, and gets very, very excited. He asks for a photo of us with our first gig's info on it, so as patriotic Americans who did not want to mess with anything resembling a request from the Pentagon, we dutifully sent it. Then, as legend has it, weeks pass as our military-industrial complex churns on. Meanwhile, with the help of modern technology (ok, Kinkos) the image is blown up to jumbo size and mounted onto a poster board made from the crushed yurts of our nation's enemies. (See, everything's recycled.) Dallas then brings this now-monster-sized shot of us into the Secretary of Defense's office, intending to leave a note with what he thought the SecDef should write on it. As he enters the inner sanctum, he is greeted by a departing Donald Rumsfeld, who, with only 48 hours remaining as Secretary of Defense is heading home for the night. Noticing the 3 foot by 4 foot poster emblazoned with his now famous phrase, Dallas decides to present it to him in person. After building some rhetorical bridges by mentioning that two band members share an alma mater with him, he reads Dallas's note, tosses it, and the next day instead inscribes:
To "The Known Unknowns"
-Adam, Bryan, Colin, & Matthew
That is a whale of a lot better than being "unknown unknowns"
Best wishes-
Donald Rumsfeld
Dallas presented this to us at our debut gig on December 15, 2006, which also happened to be Secretary Rumsfeld's last day in office. And we're not even making this up.
