"We have played The Lizzie Rose and that's why we're coming back," emphatically stated Mike Williamson of Beach Boys tribute band Sail On which will dock at The Tuckerton music venue on July 19 for a 7:30 p.m. show. "We played there as what they call a "Routing date;" it's a very small, very intimate hall which caters to original music and regional local voices but it looked so cool. I don't handle that side of the business, I'm a little bit more on the musical tech side, my business partner Matt Thompson does all the booking stuff and I don't know how he came across it but he said, "What about this place? It looks like a cool thing; maybe we can do it as an acoustic show?" So, we took a shot at it because it was on route and we had some time in the tour schedule and so we took it. It was really fun, it was really great because normally we don't get to do anything that is that intimate or that close. Most of what we do is the Summer festival thing, small theaters, parks, community concerts but nothing that is like a music listening room. So, it was fun for us as a departure; you could tell we were very atypical for the venue but it was well received, we had a blast, it was really great, it was a cool, quirky place to play and we really enjoyed it. So, Matt just kind of bookmarked it in his mind, thinking hey, if we ever get back up in that region of the nation we might just come by there again and lo and behold it worked out for this summer that we're gonna be back by there on the coast and we get to go by again and we're looking forward to it."
Tribute bands are all the rage these days and fortunately for Sail On their niche in the market isn't particularly crowded. So; how did they all come together and settle on the Beach Boys?
"The short answer is; we are all just fans of the music, the music of the period, specifically the Beach Boys," Williamson began. "We all got together essentially because of that similarity. We're all from different places, Paul (Keyboardist Runyon) is from Charleston, Matt is from Indiana, Wyatt (Funderburk bass/vocals) actually grew up in Mississippi and I'm from Georgia and we're all from the South so it's not like we were anywhere in the same home town or anything like that. Paul, Wyatt and I were in an original music project that was kind of a Beach Boys and oldies music pastiche in the 2000s era. We were all just fans of the music and we were working on an original music project together and the Beach Boys influence loomed very large; when we played live shows we would cover a Beach Boys song here and there and we'd all been in various capacities before we got together doing things similar to that; even Matt, when he was at Berklee he did a project on the harmonies of Brian Wilson, I think it was as his senior thesis. We all had an interest in the music beforehand and then we got together working on a different project but the idea was always kicking around; hey what if we did a whole set of Beach Boys? In the tribute band market there weren't many, at least when we started and there have never been, historically since tribute bands have become a market commodity, there just never have been many Beach Boys bands. The reason why is the same reason we never took it on in the beginning; because we knew it was a daunting undertaking to say the very least. Anyone familiar with the music at all knows that for its idiom, it's very sophisticated; probably the most sophisticated pop of that time or for any time. So, we were always a little shy to take it on but it kept coming up and coming up so we thought, there really is no one else doing this so maybe we should give it a try. Wyatt is a Beach Boys lifer, he even has a podcast, he was in the beginning of doing a Beach Boys history podcast when we first started the band and that podcast incidentally is called "Sail On" and as I said, Matt's senior project was one where he did a lot of analysis. So, we're Beach Boys lifers and finally we decided, hey let's just do it, let's buckle down and try it for a gig, let's see if it's realistic, let's see if we can do it. So, we did; I laid into it for about six months and walked myself away trying to figure out what everybody should be singing and playing and it was a mountain, a Kilimanjaro of pop music but we got it all together and the interest was immediate. Once we did get it out and played it live it was such fun for us and such a challenge but there was an immediate response because there weren't many people doing it and so we had a lot of interest from the beginning and we were able to hit the ground running."
Recently, the song "I Get Around" turned the ripe old age of 60 and it's amazing in itself that it's still widely aired on oldies and classic rock radio stations worldwide. Williamson says the very longevity of the song is what makes it special but keeping it and their age demographic in perspective is both refreshing yet unsettling.
"We have these conversations all of the time," he laughed. "I think about the music that was that age when I was growing up as a teenager in the late 80s or early '90s, the big band era and the "Early music" the post World War ll, the very early inklings of R&B and Rock 'n' Roll, that was the music that I thought of as being ancient and so distant, so removed in a far away past but I loved it because it belonged to a different extinct time and to think of the Beach Boys as being that now; I guess it really ages you to think how long ago it has been. The best thing about it is that we're able to still go out and play 70 or 80 gigs a year and that's just what we're able to sustain State side; if we were able to travel and work more, we might be able to do more than that and for a 60 year old catalog of songs, that is an incredible testimony. We work all in the United States and there are people everywhere who still absolutely love this music and no matter where we go, we still have people singing to "I Get Around" and "Barbara Ann" and all of that stuff. I guess it is "Timeless" as people say, it is fading a bit from the general zeitgeist of pop culture but we still have people who love it; the "Soundtrack of their lives" as that cliche goes and it's true and it's ours in a way."
"Our demographic is older," he went on, "I'd say ages 60 and up are probably over 70 percent of our audience and then the second generationers like myself; I discovered the Beach Boys as a little kid in the late '70s because I have a brother who is 12 years older than me and he was listening to "Endless Summer" when we were riding around and where the band was having kind of a second life, way before the "Kokomo" kind of resurgence of the '80s Beach Boys interest.This was still all of the old hits and I remember picking it up from him and in our group that makes up the next big percentage of our demographic, those who came to it during the second generation. Then there's the rare anecdote of grandkids and teenagers who come in because they've just discovered it and it's so anachronistic to anything that they've been aware of in their contemporary music. All I can say is, it's like the analogy I make for myself, it's like me listening to big bands when I was a kid; it was so exotic because it came from an extinct world. I liken it to looking at a romantic era painting or classical architecture; it has this exoticism from being from another world that is so alien to the contemporary. It has this cool quality, like finding an archeological treasure in a way. I see that in the kids, when we talk to the young people after the shows, they have that same thing about it like it is a treasure in some way unlike anything they're familiar with but it is rare to tell you the absolute truth. We don't have a lot of young people and I fear; not just because of the mercenary situation of our career longevity in doing something like this but just because you and I both I'm sure, rue the idea of it disappearing because it's so good and to lose it or have it just be forgotten would be a great loss. That is kind of really a lot of what we do other than the typical market mechanics of trying to have a working music gig and be able to sustain ourselves economically; we are kind of out there in a weird way as custodians of history or missionaries of another time and of course, Mike Love is still going and will continue to go as long as he can and we're trying to keep things going because we play a lot of different markets that others can't go to. We play a lot of smaller halls and places and so we're able to keep the music vital in a way or at least being performed and we do. We've been playing a lot of festivals this summer and there are some kids out there dancing to the surf songs or the easy sing-along songs and they enjoy it the same way I did, I can see it in their faces."
Many tribute or specialty bands try to emulate the band they are honoring almost to a tee. They will dress the part, have costume changes and some even go as far as to get players who resemble or can imitate the originals. Mike says this is not the case with he and the group as the music is the priority.
"We don't try to do the tribute thing like some other bands. I know that some of the Beatles bands or KISS bands are a little bit more theatrical where they try to play the exact roles of their particular characters and we can't really do that because there is the classic lineup of the Beach Boys, then there is the famous live era from the '70s up through Live Aid, Knebworth in the '80s where the band is Bruce Johnson and sometimes Brian is there and sometimes he's not and there are the auxiliary players and then during the '70s you had Blondie who sings on the big hit "Sail On Sailor." So, we try to portray the image of the classic era but we have to cover the entire catalog so we have to average out. We have to kind of meet in the middle of; how can five guys get the parts done without being very specific? No, you can't do that because this is what they do here or you can't do this because this is what Mike sang here. We have to play it a little bit broader than that and blur the lines ever so slightly. We have bass, drums, two guitars, one full-time keyboard player and I do utility stuff. I play guitar, auxiliary keys, a little bit of percussion, kind of whatever is necessary and that's how we kind of pitch it around a little bit; we pick up what we need to fill out the arrangement. We made a decision very early on that the arrangement and the music is more important than anything else because that's who we are. These records are deeply embedded in my life's soundtrack so the sound of Vibes on "California Girls," that's the stuff we chose to prioritize and try to make sure that we get the arrangements right and get the sound right to make the songs as authentic as we possibly can live."
The fun thing about being in a tribute band is performing material that both player and fan enjoys but with a catalog as vast as the Beach Boys; how does one narrow it down?
"The thing about it, it's funny, we are very beholden to the general audience perspective. Meaning, you and I know The Beach Boys have a very deep catalog; if you count it all, from the early '60s going all the way up through the '80s stuff like "Kokomo" and all of that; we're talking a lot of records and a lot of stuff that people are unfamiliar with. After about 1975 right around "Sail On Sailor," there weren't many Billboard charting hits; it was all more obscure. So, there is a lot of music to choose from but what we have to pay service to is that people want to hear the hits in general so we have to cover all of the songs that are the greatest hits. So, that's what we do in general, either two sets or one set but basically we do the greatest hits. We have our favorites, sometimes we get to pull from the "Smile" era or from the mid-seventies; every once in a while we get to pull one or two of those just for fun; just for the Beach Boys lifers in the crowd and you'd be surprised there are more of those than you'd expect. We get people coming up and they'll namecheck some deeply obscure album cut and say, "Oh man, I wish you'd guys had played that" and it's like well, we can't put the energy into doing that and not play, "Help Me Rhonda;" you know? Because people are inevitably gonna be angry if we don't do the hits. So, it's the predicament we're in and we have to do the best we can; we have to play the 32 or 33 songs that everybody on Earth has heard at some point; somewhere in a movie, at the mall or somewhere else."
The Lizzie Rose show is a 7:30 p.m. start time with the doors opening at 7 p.m. and a ticket price of $40 in advance. To purchase tickets from the venue please visit https://www.lizzierosemusic.com/ and to discover more about Sail On or purchase tickets, please go to https://www.sailonsounds.com/
That's it for this week! Please continue to support live and original music and until next week....ROCK ON!
