It was the summer of 1996.
My wife and I were returning from our honeymoon in the Canadian Rockies and western Canada. As we stood in line to check in for a connecting flight in Winnipeg, a group of three musicians were also in line, one of them with a guitar. As it turned out, they were sitting in the row in front of us on the plane.
I eavesdropped on their conversation.
They spent much of the flight talking about logistics for the various gigs they would be playing in the Chicago area. It sounded like an extensive number of dates they had booked, and they appeared to be a rather serious operation. I finally had the nerve to ask them what the name of their band was.
They said: “The Guess Who.”
Taken aback, I said “The Guess Who? I grew up with your music and I love so many of your songs. Are any of you the original members?” The oldest one of the three said,
“I’m Jim Kale. The original bassist.”
I asked him if he still enjoyed touring after all those years. He pointed to the bags under his eyes and said it’s tiring being on the road and hard being away from family, but he would rather be doing it than any other job in life – and it was pretty much all he knew. At that point he would have been in his 50s.
He told me that they had a show coming up at Ribfest in Naperville, and gave me their card, which simply had the band logo and a website address.
A quick check on Wikipedia tells me that Jim Kale continued to lead and tour with his version of The Guess Who on the nostalgia circuit for 20 years after that encounter, with several versions of replacement players, sometimes including original drummer Garry Peterson.
He initially received permission from Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman to use the name for a reunion concert in 1978 in which neither was interested in participating. He then toured under the name for decades afterward, and even leased the name to other musicians when he stopped performing.
Bachman and Cummings, who had not been happy with the situation for years, finally had enough and took it to court, eventually getting back control of the name last year.
This sort of scenario has played out countless times in the music world.
A band that has had at least modest national success breaks up for whatever reason. A few years down the line, a little older and with less options, the outfit starts back up again and hits the town festival circuit, where there is money to be made, and crowds for which to perform.
Maybe the new lineup has just one original member, or maybe all of them or somewhere in between. In some cases, eventually no members from the group’s heyday are left, and the band, now just an empty husk of its former self, carries on anyway.
The six original members of Molly Hatchet that recorded their most successful album, 1979’s Flirtin’ With Disaster?
All dead. The band is still touring.
In general, towns interested in drawing a decent crowd for their event don’t seem to be too concerned about who is actually in the current configuration of the band, as long as they can promote a well-known name.
The events in question are often free, so the crowds are just happy to hang out and being that they often skew older, maybe hear music by a band or artist they remember from their younger days.
It’s easy to be cynical about the whole thing, and judge musicians who appear to be eking out every last penny from an act’s past success, sometimes under dubious circumstances.
And as a musician myself, I don’t know how I would feel about performing the same songs from 40 or 50 years ago thousands of times for basically the rest of my life.
Would it take every ounce of joy out of making music and just feel like punching the clock?
Maybe. But it’s not all business.
There are moments of connection between artist and audience that even decades after the hit records, are still very much real and sincere. Here are some that I have experienced or witnessed, as a face in the crowd at various local town gatherings.
• Years ago, when my wife and I were dating, a “Greatest Hits” album by The Grass Roots played an important role at a pivotal point in our relationship.
In particular the song “Sooner or Later” had significant meaning for us.
When we heard that the band was playing at Taste of Joliet, we knew we had to go, despite the fact that we had two weddings to attend that day, and Joliet was about 50 miles away.
It turned out that the version of The Grass Roots we saw featured just one original member, singer/bassist Rob Grill. It didn’t matter. We sang along with all of the songs at the top of our lungs and when they busted out “Sooner or Later” we were ecstatic.
• Flash forward to the 4th of July, about 2007. It was our first summer in our new home.
I walked outside and from the end of our driveway, I could hear the unmistakable sounds of the talk box guitar riff from “Show Me the Way” by Peter Frampton, faintly playing live somewhere in the distance. How I knew it was him and not just a cover band, I cannot say.
I just knew. I ran into the house and told my wife, and we decided we would try to track down the origin of the sound.
We kept walking in the direction of the music, and it took us to an Independence Day celebration in a large park in the town next to us, where Frampton indeed was performing. He was the opening act for the fireworks.
We sat on a cement embankment in a nearby parking lot to listen to the finale, “Do You Feel Like We Do”, and then turned around and walked home. I will never forget the surreal experience of hearing Peter Frampton’s talk box guitar from our driveway.
• Just a couple of summers ago, my daughter and I rode our bikes to the dollar store to get a bag of tortilla chips.
My daughter went into the store while I stayed outside with the bikes. Our town has an outdoor concert series every summer, featuring a number of fairly impressive names from days of yore. It was taking place just across the way, in the parking lot next to the library, and I could hear a female vocalist belting out a song with which I was not familiar. I had forgotten what the line-up was for that summer, so I checked on my phone to see who was performing that night.
It was none other than Ann Wilson of Heart doing a solo show.
I told my daughter that we had to stay and listen to at least one more song.
The next song turned out to be “Magic Man” and I was psyched. Did her voice sound like it did when the song came out in 1975? No, it did not, and it would be unreasonable to think that it should.
But she sounded great and could still totally deliver on that scorcher of a song. It was truly an unexpected gift to hear her.
I was just totally caught up in the moment…
…that is until I was dragged back to reality by a strident voice.
“Can we go now?” my daughter asked impatiently.
Sigh…
• Every year on the day after Thanksgiving, our town has its annual lighting of the Christmas tree, in the same spot as the summer concert series.
For the last several years, they’ve booked name acts to come and play before the official plugging in of the lights, followed by a fireworks display, and the arrival of Santa on a fire truck. Most of the bands are from the 60s, groups such as:
The Buckinghams
The Ides of March,
and Paul Revere the Raiders – all hitmakers in their day.
And I won’t soon forget the year Gary Puckett ended his set by having the audience robustly sing the chorus of his biggest hit
“Young girl, get out of my life. My love for you is way out of line. Better run, girl. You’re much too young girl.”
Yikes. Not exactly a moment of civic pride.
Late November in Chicago ain’t for wimps. Most of these guys are in their 70s or early 80s and they’re up there, bundled up in the bitter cold putting on a great show.
• Last year, The Cryan’ Shames, a local band that had some lower chart appearances, but were very big in Chicago in the 60s, were booked to play.
I alerted my brother Greg, who was a big fan of the band back in the day. He was immediately in and met me there. We made our way to the stage, as close as we could get. When the band came on, Greg was positively giddy.
“That’s Toad!” he exclaimed, pointing to the lead singer. “And there’s Hooke!” he said, pointing to another one of the original band members, who, true to his name, had a hook instead of a left hand.
Just seeing Greg so amped up was enough, but the show was actually quite impressive. Toad’s voice was pretty much shot, but the band rocked hard and routinely broke out into 6-part harmonies that were spot on. It may have been one of the best performances I’d seen at the tree lighting. And for Greg, I imagine the excitement he felt seeing the band wasn’t much different that what he had experienced when he first heard them – nearly 50 years ago.
Just a few of those magical moments brought to you by your local town…
…and an aging, perhaps patched together version of the acts you knew and loved.
Because nostalgia never gets old.
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