Shane Henry and Maggie McClure, a husband and wife duo, first started out without even having a band name. They wanted a name with boldness, adventure, and big dreams. Shane finally came up with a name and logo, which came to him in his dreams.

As it’s kind of hard to become a musical star in Oklahoma, the couple headed for Los Angeles. Now they have a couple of albums released. Their music is full of gritty blues-rock riffs, mesmerizing vocal harmonies, driving pop-rock tunes, heartfelt singer-songwriter ballads, delicious guitar tones, and dazzling solos. They’re really good. I actually enjoyed listening to them from the wings.

The band included Ryan Miller on Bass https://www.instagram.com/slapmillerokc/

And Jordan Oliver, on the drums. https://www.facebook.com/SoulBubble

Everyone in the band was super easy to work with and as friendly as could be.

We were all impressed with Shane’s guitar pedal board and the great sounds which he could produce with it. He explained that he and his father in law had a business building guitar pedals, Westerlund Audio. Shane described the Westerlund ONE pedal as his desert island pedal and the Swiss Army knife of pedals. For more information visit www.westerlundaudio.com.

Check their website at https://www.imaginariesband.com/ for more information about this great band, their history, touring schedule and merch!

Some more band links:

https://www.instagram.com/imaginariesband/?hl=en

https://www.facebook.com/imaginariesband

https://www.youtube.com/theimaginaries

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We semi-recently did two shows with Rob Kapilow and his series, What Makes it Great? I’ll write here about the show titled, Beethoven’s First Symphony, the other show was about the Beatles, as I have no photos of that one!

Kapilow performed at The Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts 

https://ccpa.cerritos.gov

Rob has been returning to the Cerritos Center for thirty something years, three or four times a year. So it’s easy to say that he has been here more than any other performer in our history. And that’s great because he is a pleasure to work with, and is also a very talented musician, conductor, author and performer.

From Rob’s website https://robkapilow.com/

“Rob Kapilow “gets audiences in tune with Classical music at a deeper and more immediate level than many of them thought possible,” hails the Los Angeles Times. In a three-part format. Kapilow dissects a musical composition. The pieces are performed, and a lively Q&A concludes the evening. “You hang on to every word and note,” says The New York Times.”

Essentially he takes a piece of music, breaks it down, explaining each part of the composition in language that anyone can understand and tells the audience what makes it great. He also gives the audience background about the composer/ musicians who wrote the piece so that the audience gets a good idea about when, where and why the music came into the world. His show is always fascinating and I never fail to learn something about the history of music.

The Beethoven’s First Symphony show was of course interesting, informative and something to hear. Rob played along with the Fullerton College Symphony.

https://music.fullcoll.edu/index.php

The Fullerton College Musicians often accompany Rob, and they are extremely talented. The school has, over the years provided many musicians for this endeavor and all the many generations of students have been exceptional musicians.

Some quick video from rehearsal.

The other show we did with Rob Kapilow was about the Beatles. I didn’t really have time to write about this show as I was busy preparing for a corporate event which followed the morning after. So sorry!

Here you can find his books through this search link: Rob Kapilow’s Books.

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Next up was British Rock Royalty with Brody Dolyniuk. This is only one of Brody’s many shows and includes the music of The Who, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Queen and Led Zeppelin. Brody has been at our venue many times, and his production value is high as Brody cares a lot about every little aspect of the show and is involved in everything. He is a perfectionist. There’s always a good light and laser show. Brody and his band are great musicians, and they play the songs of all these bands better than anyone else you’re likely to see in concert other than the actual bands themselves. So if you see his name on an advertisement anywhere- go see the show. You are guaranteed not to be disappointed.

The last show of the weekend was a matinee with Frankie Avalon. Frankie is another performer who has visited many times. He is a great guy. His band includes two of his sons, Jr. who plays drums and Tony who this time played bass, but also sometimes plays guitar. The sound check went late due to the band members getting stuck in bad traffic here in Los Angeles. Frankie was not even able to check with the band, and then, only sound checked alone fifteen minutes before the doors opened! But Frankie was easy on us as usual and only took about three minutes to get done.

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With a swinging rhythm section (Bass and Drums), and full complement of a horn section, and two fun frontmen. (Plus a great guitar player and keyboardist) And if that’s not enough there’s the added bonus of beat box to liven things up! If you want to see a great energetic and highly entertaining band, Phat Cat Swinger is one for you. They are off to do some shows in Las Vegas next, where I’m sure they will be greeted with enthusiasm.

After their set, and a quick four minute change over of the stage Jay Leno came out without announcement and made the crowd laugh until they cried. He has been here a few times, and I wrote about him in my book, Stagehand: A Backstage Pass to my Life Stories.

Jay is always friendly and happy. When he arrived he came to our crew break room to say hello to everyone. Afterwards I presented him with a copy of my book. When I stopped by his dressing room he was skimming through the pages. He commented on the chapter about Art Garfunkel. Apparently Art is well known as the guy I wrote about in the first part of the chapter about him. I’m glad to have yet another chance to work with Jay. He is one of the most down to earth entertainers who I know.

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Guitarist Terry Sylvester of The Hollies told me the story of how it accidentally became their biggest hit during sound check tonight.

“A DJ in Germany was playing the A side of the record we recorded, it was late and he was feeling lazy- so instead of getting up out of his chair to grab the next record to play, he just flipped over the record on the turntable and played its B side. And the song on the B side was “Long Cool Woman.””

“Long Cool Woman” wasn’t like our other songs, it didn’t have the three part harmonies we were known for. We figured that our fans wouldn’t be interested in it. So we used it as a B side song, nobody expected anyone to pay any attention to it at all. But as soon as that first guitar part started playing, the red lights on the DJ’s telephone switchboard started lighting up! People started calling in like crazy, and the next thing you know we were on a world tour with a number one hit song.”

Also, tonight The Lovin’ Spoonful played. Rob Bonfiglio, the guitar player (also, Carnie Wilson’s husband), has been here many times with various bands. Rob last played here with Al Jardine and the Pet Shop Band, who I wrote about in a previous post.

I was glad to get to see Carnie, who I missed at the Al Jardine show because I was so busy. But she has always been a sweet person who is always friendly to me. So I quickly ran backstage to say hello, and had a short chat before going back to work on stage.

Talking to Jeff Allen Ross, the keyboard player (and vocalist) of the Hollies and Lovin’ Spoonful, we found out that we are practically neighbors. So we talked, naturally, about our shared home turf.

Closing the evening was Gary Lewis and the Playboys.

So all in all a good day on the stage. Filled with interesting conversations and talented musicians. Pretty much why I decided to dedicate most of my life to this business in the first place.

Photos and video below.

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Next up, and opening the show was Tommy Tutone. He played acoustic guitar with his band-mate Greg. You may or may not remember who Tommy is but I’m absolutely sure you will remember his 1981 song “Jenny”, which peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. Still don’t remember. Well here’s her phone number: 867-5309.

Tommy wanted to walk out into the audience during the show and then head out to the lobby to sign autographs near the merch table, so I gave him a short tour of the facility and introduced him to the usher staff (Penguins as I like to call them). While we were out there chatting he told me “I’m almost never recognized out in public, unlike some other musicians.” to which I said, “That’s probably for the best, you can live a normal life, but you still have one of the most recognized songs of all times. You’re famous enough for me to get a photo with!” He was a really nice guy and you can see the photo above.

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A Flock of Seagulls started as an English new wave band formed in Liverpool in 1979 (now members live all over the world). The group hit the peak of their chart success in the early 1980s.

The group had a string of international hit singles including “I Ran (So Far Away)” (1982), “Space Age Love Song” (1982), “Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)” (1982), and “The More You Live, the More You Love” (1984).

The opening band is Men Without Hats, a new wave and synth pop band originally from Montreal, Quebec Canada. Their greatest popularity was in the 1980s with “The Safety Dance”, a worldwide top ten hit (No. 3 in the United States), and “Pop Goes the World”. They took the 1990’s off and returned around 2010.

The drummer, Adrian is mixing in ear monitors for the band from a small mixer at the drums. FOH (Front of House) is mixed by their audio engineer Nick from an iPad. They will have wedges on stage as back up mixes which will be mixed by Kerry (our house monitor engineer). All the inputs go to the Men Without Hats audio rack at drums and then split  out to our system.

Adrian, Men Without Hats drummer explained the name of the band “In Canada, because it’s freezing cold during the winter only tough men go without hats.” Men Without Hats are going out on a new tour soon and are just getting set up with this new input rack and monitor ears rig, due to somebody losing their old  one (amongst other gear) as they passed through an airport not too long ago!

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The sound of that Hammond organ is classic. They are unbelievably exciting! That old rock and roll sound. Then there’s Chubby delivering the lead vocals with an unmistakable voice. (But he’s also unmistakably not here for sound check.)

This marks the fourth time I’ve worked with them, first in 1998, New Years Eve 2000, 2018 and now.

I’m on stage as an A2 for sound check and they are playing The Fats Domino song Blueberry Hill. It sounds great up here. That’s in good part due to Kerry’s awesome monitor mix.

Last time Chubby Checker was here in 2018 with Frankie Avalon. I wrote about that in the manuscript for my (hopefully) soon to be published book Stagehand: A Backstage Pass to my Life Stories. (I gave a copy of the chapter to his manager Shelly for him today.)

Today has been a more smooth running day than that last one, when we had a few technical problems.

Opening the show tonight is Gary Lewis and the Playboys, we’re moving along to sound check them right now. Ideally the bands will soundcheck in reverse order, which they’re doing today but didn’t happen last time. Really Chubby doesn’t need an opening band to make him sound better, but he definitely has one. I’d give a more thorough review but Mom always said if I can’t say something good just say nothing at all. Well I guess I can say that the band members are all friendly and play well, I suppose I’m just not a fan of the singer Gary’s style of vocals.

It’s also another night filled with rolling risers for the drums and keyboards and also re-patching inputs between bands like a lighter version of last night with Jim Messina, no big deal though.

It’s easier working tonight because Jack and Kerry (our house crew) are mixing the show on our own desks, so no guest audio engineers or audio gear belonging to anyone else.

At showtime Chubby takes the stage singing Good Lovin, written by Rudy Clark and Arthur Resnick. It was a #1 hit single for the Young Rascals in 1966. Chubby doesn’t look or sound a day older than the last time he was here, this guy just knows how to rock! He’s dancing  all over the place, out in the audience, all over the stage, singing up a storm and the band is killing it! They are as tight as a band could be. The audience is going crazy. If you have never seen Chubby Checker in concert I suggest you try to catch him if you can. There is a reason why Chubby Checker is a legend.Definitely the kind of show that makes me glad to be working on this stage.

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Also two of the people working as A2 ‘s at the load-in will be leaving before the show so lots of notes are getting passed between us for the change over between bands. I’m sure that’s going to make things interesting during the change over. I’m actually the video projectionist tonight but I’m also working with Henry as an A2 as we both have different schedules that list us in each of the two jobs.

I’ll write more later depending on what happens.

At sound check I unexpectedly had a conversation with Jim Messina (I didn’t know it was him when we started our conversation). We spoke about stuff I wrote in my upcoming book,  about performers and how they treat people around them, some being good, kind individuals and others not so much. I pointed out how most people who are in the business and treat others well succeed, but there are some who have so much talent they succeed even though they treat everyone around them badly. He told me how he started working at age 13 assisting in a studio, and how his musical career bloomed out of that. He saw a lot of people partying and doing drugs but he had already started working hard, so he just kept up with that and it ended up paying off. He went from assisting to engineering, to producing and then to performing. All he knew was, “Once I started working in Hollywood there was no way I was going back to San Bernardino!” It didn’t matter what kind of work he was doing.

Obviously he is a down to earth kind of guy. He has friends in all walks of life working regular jobs, carpenters, plumber’s etc. – and it shows in his attitude toward life and the people who surround him. It’s refreshing to meet another performer who falls into the category of good people. I have also enjoyed working with and talking to his monitor engineer Willie too. He is a great guy. We spoke about how much fun it is to meet so many interesting and talented people in our business. So far all the crews and musicians working today have been great.

Sound check is still moving along fine despite the small bits of confusion, mostly because the road crews are all easy to work with (as well as the musicians). Hopefully the change over will go well.

Before the doors open and after dinner the carp crew and audio crew had a little meeting to come up with a plan for the movement of the drum, percussion and keyboard risers and how we will swap all the cables and re-patch everything. Did I mention that all the risers that the gear is on will move? Hmm? Maybe I forgot. So we now have a plan for the move.

Jim Messina and his band are playing right now, they are pretty good. I’m enjoying the show from behind the monitor board. It’s nice to have music I like playing on our stage. Most of my down time I spend listening for things going wrong on stage (so I can run out to fix them) and reading. Tonight I’m actually listening to the music for a while. The sax players are really good. Soon it will be change over time at intermission.

At intermission all the tech crew jumped on stage for the change over. Cables were disconnected and re-patched, risers, wedges and microphones were moved and swapped. I ran out to the video station and started the 7 minute intro for Pablo Cruise as Henry was still working with Johnny B. to tap through all the inputs. Jon was a little surprised when the video started, nobody told him both the band and our supervisor James had asked to start it! Yet he and Henry were able to get everything working except for one audience mic which we had changed over in the break. Other than that we had only to lift the ground switch on the bass during the second song- not an unusual problem. So I went out and flipped it between songs. Now everything is working fine and the audience is enjoying the show. All in all the change over was way more painless then expected- also not so unusual!

Now while Pablo is playing I am going to start putting together the mic kit for tomorrow’s show, Chubby Checker.

Tonight  has been a successful evening working with good people and good music.

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