The band renames itself The Six and brings Karen aboard

The band’s decision to bring Karen Karen aboard and rename itself The Six marked a shift from the Dunne Brothers as a family-named act toward a six-member group whose sound and public identity reflected its expanded lineup. Karen’s keyboard playing helped prompt the change; an unexpected Philadelphia festival booking then turned the question of a new name into an immediate practical problem.

From touring partners to bandmate

At the end of 1970, the Dunne Brothers played at the Pint in Baltimore while Rick Marks, lead singer of The Winters, was in attendance. Impressed by their raw sound and taken with Billy Dunne, Marks offered them opening slots on several dates of The Winters’ northeastern tour. The groups joined the tour, and the Dunne Brothers found themselves not only learning from The Winters’ sound but also paying close attention to its keyboardist, Karen Karen.

The connection became personal as well as musical. When Graham Dunne first asked her name, he followed her answer by asking for her last name. Her response prompted him to repeat the name as a question, and the resulting joke stuck: the band and others called her Karen Karen thereafter. She clarified that her last name was Sirko, but the doubled name became the one by which she was known in the group’s history.

Billy Dunne heard in her playing an added layer of lushness in The Winters’ arrangements. Rather than simply wanting a keyboardist with similar qualities, he and Graham Dunne began to think that the band needed Karen herself. Her contribution therefore altered the group’s conception of its sound at the same time that her presence altered its membership. The change was not just an extra musician joining an established act: the brothers’ recollections describe a developing recognition that the person whose playing they admired was the person they wanted in their own band.

Karen’s decision to leave The Winters was also shaped by the conditions she encountered there. She said she was tired of bandmates trying to sleep with her and wanted to be treated as a musician. She also liked Camila Dunne’s presence around the group. Camila drove to weekend shows when she could, sometimes spending four hours on the road before entering venues whose floors were sticky and whose backstage areas became a temporary gathering place. Karen regarded Billy’s relationship with Camila—and Camila’s inclusion in the touring scene—as a better atmosphere. Her choice to join was thus connected both to the music she could make and to the difference she perceived in the social environment.

Why the old name no longer fit

A few weeks after Karen joined, she argued that the band needed a new name because Dunne Brothers no longer described a group of six. The objection was straightforward, but it opened a disagreement over how to present the band. Billy Dunne resisted changing a name under which they had already built a following. Eddie Loving recalled that he had also been saying a new name was needed, while Warren Rhodes remembered the members tossing around comic possibilities, including Dipsticks and Shaggin’.

The group’s inability to agree supplied its own argument for a name that did not privilege one member or one pair of brothers. Pete observed that six people would never agree on a choice; Eddie answered by proposing The Six. The suggestion made the group’s number its name, turning the difficulty of reaching consensus into a simple description that everyone could use. It also displaced the familial emphasis of Dunne Brothers without requiring the members to settle on a more elaborate identity.

The name’s possible sexual echo became part of the later debate over what it meant. Warren Rhodes remembered its resemblance to the word sex as obvious, while Graham Dunne said that resemblance was a significant part of the appeal. Billy Dunne denied that it had motivated the choice, and Karen Karen said she had not been thinking of any such implication. The recollections do not resolve the disagreement; instead, they preserve competing accounts of whether the name was a plain reference to the group’s size, a joke, or both.

A booking makes the name official

The naming question became urgent when Karen received a call from a Philadelphia booker. The Winters had withdrawn from a festival there, and the booker asked whether the band wanted the opportunity to play. Karen accepted while making clear that they were no longer called the Dunne Brothers, but she could not yet supply a replacement name. Asked what should appear on the flyer, she promised that the six of them would be there. The group still had to decide what those six would be called.

Karen liked how The Six sounded, and the festival gave the new name a practical destination: it had to go on a flyer and identify the band to a promoter and audience. The timing joined two changes that might otherwise seem separate. The name had become inadequate because Karen had expanded the lineup; the booking required the group to make its new identity legible beyond the band itself. The Six resolved the mismatch in a form that was immediate, collective, and usable.

The first shows as The Six

The group played the Philadelphia show under the name The Six. Rather than remaining a one-off solution for the festival flyer, the name accompanied a run of further opportunities: another show in Philadelphia, then bookings in Harrisburg and Allentown, followed by an offer for a New Year’s Eve performance at a bar in Hartford. The band’s early movement under the new name was therefore tied to the same regional circuit that had brought it into contact with The Winters.

The transformation did not instantly make the band prosperous. Billy Dunne recalled that they were earning little money, even as shows accumulated. When home, he spent what he had on dates with Camila Dunne, sometimes borrowing from Graham Dunne or Warren Rhodes to take her somewhere nice. Those details locate the group’s new identity in a modest working period, before the name itself could suggest commercial success. The Six began as a practical answer to a changed lineup and a booking deadline; its first consequence was not sudden wealth, but a clearer name under which the band could keep playing and build a following.