Category: Music This Week

Musical veterans band together as Once An Outlaw

The five members of Once An Outlaw have a long history in Southern rock. Macon, Georgia, native Chris Hicks played guitar with the Marshall Tucker Band for many years. Chris Anderson, born in Florida and raised in Spartanburg, South Carolina, spent time in the Outlaws, as did bass player Jeff Howell — who also toured with English blues rockers Foghat.

A.J. Vallee was mentored by Blackfoot drummer Jakson Spires and played in the Southern Rock All-Stars before joining guitarist Chuck Farrell in the Allman Brothers centric band The Peacheaters, called “the greatest tribute act in America” by Outlaws founding member Henry Paul.

“They capture the spirit and passion of the Allmans, and that ain’t easy,” he said.

With all that shared experience, however, it took time and fate to make them a band.

“We’ve all enjoyed being a small part of their legacies, and being able to go out and play these songs for people,” Hicks said of his membership in the Southern rock brethren, during a recent interview that included Anderson and Farrell. “Even though we’ve all been in these bands at different times, we’ve never really played together that much.”

Hicks was set to hit the road with Marshall Tucker this summer in support of Charlie Daniels’ Fire On The Mountain anniversary tour, but those plans were dealt a one-two blow — Daniels’ death and Covid-19. So when Farrell rang up Anderson with an offer for him and Hicks to head north and play a few shows, both were ready.

They left Nashville, where both currently live, in mid-August, arriving for an abbreviated Bike Week in Laconia. Five sold-out socially distanced shows “went really great,” Anderson said. “We had a ball. … People really seemed to enjoy it.”

Their sets featured a mixture of hits from the many groups they’ve played in, songs like “Green Grass and High Tides,” “Hurry Sundown,” “Can’t You See,” “Heard It In a Love Song,” “Take the Highway,” ”Slow Ride,” “Fool for the City,” “Tell Mama” and others.

Hicks was happy to leave hot and humid Tennessee to play for a live audience after months of down time.

“People are just ready to get out and see some music,” he said. “They’ve been quarantined for so long, you know there’s a lot of energy on both sides.”

He also relished an opportunity to jam with Anderson, whose resume includes Grinderswitch, Bad Company and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

“I’m not saying this to promote the show,” he said. “Chris Anderson has always been one of my favorite guitar players. You have to see him play to know what I’m talking about — it’s just a natural, very heartfelt thing.”

Unlike Hicks and Anderson, Farrell and Vallee are native New Englanders, and Howell hails from upstate New York. But geography doesn’t matter, Farrell said.

“It’s in you,” he said, adding he loves that “there’s no brain hemorrhaging with this music; you just go out and do it,” he said. “It’s a language — in the front it’s three guys playing guitar, with a great rhythm section and everyone having a good time.”

A native of the Allmans’ home base, Hicks discovered the harmony guitar and jam ethics of the genre at a very young age and was captivated. He was also taken with the freewheeling spirit evoked by the music and its players.

“In 1968, my great uncle told me, ‘The hippies have moved in down the street; let’s go look and see what they’re doing.’”

The Allman Brothers Band lived at nearby Idlewild South Farm, a commune that gave their first album its title.

“It’s right outside of Macon, which grows the best mushrooms in the world. That’s why they made their logo like that, they like them so much,” Hicks recalled. “The first thing I saw was a beautiful blonde girl naked riding a horse on the side of the road. I said, ‘You know what. this is gonna be pretty cool.’ It only got better from there.”

Featured Photo: Once An Outlaw. Courtesy photo.

Once An Outlaw
When: Saturday, Sept. 12, 1:30 p.m. (Gates at Noon)
Where: Alpine Grove, 19 S. Depot St., Hollis
Tickets: $25 and up at alivenkickingprod.simpletix.com
The Bob Wolfman Band opens

Unique Beatles tribute act The Weeklings play Manchester

The Socially Distanced Concert Series closing out the summer at Delta Dental Stadium includes several tribute acts, most of which promise note-for-note recreations of hit songs. On Aug. 28 and Aug. 29, Dancing Queens does ABBA, followed the next weekend by local heroes Recycled Percussion playing their trademark junk rock. Ending the series, Almost Queen appears Sept. 12. They’re exactly as billed, right down to the lead singer’s Freddy Mercury motorcycle jacket.

Beatles Night on Sept. 11 features a very different kind of doppelgänger, however. The Weeklings do cover “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” and “Paperback Writer” in their set, along with several more Fab Four favorites. But the band’s sweet spot band lies in creating originals that sound like lost Lennon & McCartney gems.

Imagine that Revolver had been followed not by Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but by another Rubber Soul. That describes The Weeklings’ sound on songs like “In the Moment” and “Little Elvis.” It’s a wonderful glimpse into what might have been, in a show that also includes never-released Beatles tracks.

The John and Paul of the band are Zeek and Lefty Weekling, the stage names of Bob Burger and Glen Burtnik. The two have worked together since the 1980s and share a love of Beatles music. Burtnik’s resume includes stints with Styx and the Broadway hit Beatlemania; he also co-wrote “Sometimes Love Just Ain’t Enough” for Patty Smyth and Don Henley.

Rounding out the group are guitarist John Merjave and drummer Joe Bellia as Rocky and Smokestack Weekling.

Burger co-wrote a few Styx songs with Burtnik and has three solo albums out, but for shows like the upcoming one he asks to be quoted as Zeek — that’s how completely he inhabits his character. Like many children of the ’60s, he picked up a guitar after seeing The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, and never looked back.

With The Weeklings, the two feel free to follow a muse with an English accent.

“We wrote together for years, very often having to intentionally avoid sounding too much like The Beatles,” Zeek said in a recent phone interview. “So when we got this band together it was like, ‘OK, the gloves are off.’ We could do whatever we wanted to do.”

The band grew out of Birth of the Beatles, a tribute show focused on the Fab Four’s first two albums.

“We found out at that point in their career they were playing live in the studio,” Zeek said. “We said, ‘Well, this is fun, a little self-contained four-piece. … Let’s go take some Beatles songs they didn’t record.’”

Their eponymous debut album, released in 2016, contained “Because I Know You Love Me So,” a McCartney song dating back to their Quarrymen days — the version quotes “She’s a Woman” and “Drive My Car” — along with the Help! outtake “That Means a Lot.” Quickly they diverged from being a pure covers band.

“We had original songs that also fit into the same mode, so we started moving away from the tribute band concept almost immediately, by playing our own arrangements of obscure Beatles songs, and originals that sound like them,” Zeek said.

The formula worked; they’re staples on satellite radio stations The Loft and Little Steven’s Underground Garage, and in demand as live performers. They’ve released a trio of albums; the latest, 3, arrived in mid-January.

A harbinger of Burger’s future success happened in 2003, when he played a Hamptons party for fellow New Jersey native Jon Bon Jovi. Prior to his set, he learned some big names might be at the bash.

“Jon goes, ‘There’s a 25 percent chance that Paul McCartney will come,’” Zeek said.

Sure enough, a jam session broke out with Bon Jovi, Jimmy Buffett, Billy Joel and Roger Waters. But all that star power paled next to Sir Paul, who’d also arrived.

“The rest of them might as well have been bar band players,” he said. “Because Paul McCartney was there. Bruce Springsteen came, but he didn’t play — and I didn’t care.”

Later, he spotted Macca mouthing the words to “Back in the U.S.S.R.” in the raucous crowd.

“Raising his arm, fist in the air, I’m thinking, ‘This is not real….’ It was like a gambling machine, where all the cherries line up in a row,” he said.

Featured Photo: The Weeklings. Courtesy photo.

Socially Distanced Concert Series
Dancing Queens ABBA Tribute – Friday, Aug. 28, and Saturday, Aug. 29, $23
Recycled Percussion – Saturday, Sept. 5, and Sunday, Sept. 6, $35
Beatles Night featuring The Weeklings – Friday, Sept. 11, $23
Almost Queen – Saturday, Sept. 12, $23

Shows at Northeast Delta Dental Stadium, 1 Line Drive, Manchester; shows start at 7 p.m. Tickets at ticketreturn.com.