This summer’s Sellersville Theater lineup featured Kick (the INXS Experience), the Machine (Pink Floyd), and Southern Accents (Tom Petty). New Hope is the nucleus of a teeming tribute-band biome that engulfs the region, from Montgomery County to Bucks and reaching east to the sea. Tribute bands advertised at Havana, New Hope (His ’80s hair-metal band was called Touch.) “Now I’m making believe I’m somebody else, and I’m more popular than ever.”
The band mingles and poses for photos with fans. Winery shows have a hard stop at 10 p.m., to cut noise for neighbors. Marybeth Sullivan-Dowdell, in a tartan kilt, plays “America the Beautiful” on bagpipes, and the band cranks into an exhilarating rendition of “For Those About to Rock (We Salute You).” And if the real AC/DC did a gig in your school gym, how different would it be?įor the finale, Conti grabs an American flag off the wall and stomps to center stage. This is like an opportunity to see them play in your middle-school gym. The band’s other guitarist, Malcolm Young, died in 2017. The last real AC/DC concert was in 2016, in Philly. Almost every AC/DC song has a monster guitar solo, and Shane uses these occasions to duck-walk across the stage just like his idol, thrashing Young’s trademark Gibson SG.
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Matt Shane, a 22-year-old with a mop of brown hair, is dressed like Angus Young, in full schoolboy uniform. He wears the same flat cap and sleeveless denim shirt. Lead singer Bob Conti howls: “I was caught/In the middle of a railroad track.” Thunder! “I looked ’round/And I knew there was no turning back.” Thunder! He sounds and looks just like AC/DC’s Brian Johnson. Lights flash, and the room seems to be pulsing. It has a paneled-basement vibe, but this feels like an arena show. I sprint to my car and arrive at the New Hope Winery as Dirty Deeds is moving from “Who Made Who” into “Thunderstruck.” Winery shows are in a big shed behind the restored barn the owners use as a restaurant. I was learning them at the same time I was playing Copland’s Appalachian Spring and thinking, wow, this is like playing Copland.” “There were three or four songs that were pretty challenging to learn because of the meter changes. “I have to tip my hat to Kansas,” she tells me later. She tours the world playing classical music. Perdikis is principal violist with the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra. Kansas is known for complex time signatures and key changes. See how quick that was?” Just like that, they’re a Kansas tribute band, launching into “Point of Know Return.” Petula Perdikis steps up with her electric violin to fiddle the song’s frantic arpeggios. Good tribute bands can be like an Impossible Burger - a surprisingly tasty substitute for real meat, even if a note of the original flavor is absent, which might be … the blood?īoardman announces: “Fooling Ourselves is going to take a break, and Know Return is coming up. The musicians storm the Styx canon: “Too Much Time on My Hands,” “Grand Illusion,” “Lady,” “Renegade.” Bassist Howard Whitman, who’s also in a Cars tribute band called You Might Think, takes the lead singing “Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man).” Chuck Whitmore, owner of a marketing agency, nails the song’s soaring keyboard solos.
Havana, which anchors a bustling tribute-band-based nighttime economy on New Hope’s Main Street
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Fool ing Ourselves takes the stage: six middle-age guys basically in jeans and sneakers, plus a female violinist in black leather and heels. This is a Friday-night show at a venue that has booked national acts for decades. A crowd of maybe 200 fills the club to near capacity. Inside Havana on Main Street, three keyboards (Styx!) stand among the gear arranged on a little corner stage. Actually, Fooling Ourselves and Know Return are the same guys they have two separate tribute bands. Fooling Ourselves is opening for Know Return, a tribute to prog-rock band Kansas.
At Havana, a local band called Fooling Ourselves is performing the collected works of Styx. The New Hope Winery is hosting Dirty Deeds, a group of musicians from Massachusetts who authentically simulate an AC/DC concert. On a hot Friday in July, two venues in Philadelphia’s favorite Bucks County retro-hippie river town have scheduled competing tribute-band rock shows. This is the kind of night New Hope was built for. Allman Brothers tribute band Live at the Fillmore plays Havana on August 26, 2022.
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