A couple weeks ago, I chatted with Gerald Brann, who fronted an Elton John tribute band.
This week, it’s Dan Kirouac, who’s a member of a Beatles tribute band called Beatles For Sale. Made up of five members — Joe Budroe (bass, vocals); Mike “Mingo” Christian (drums, vocals); Dennis Cummins (vocals, rhythm guitar); Steve Caisse (lead guitar, vocals); and Kirouac (keyboards, vocals) — this group scored the 2015 Limelight Music Awards “Tribute Band of the Year” honors recently with their spot-on recreation of the Fab Four’s sound.
Beatles For Sale
Beatles tribute band
Time: 7 p.m.
Date: Friday, March 11
Venue: Moody Chapel
Address: KVCC campus at Good Will-Hinckley, U.S. Route 201, Hinckley
Tickets: Free
Phone: 453-5822
Website: www.beatlesforsale.net
They are scheduled to perform at 7 p.m. Friday, March 11, at Moody Chapel on Kennebec Valley Community College’s campus at Good Will-Hinckley. To that end, I called the keyboardist at his central Massachusetts home.
Q: My opening question usually is: “Have you played in Maine before?” But I scratched that one off the list as soon as I saw your videos on YouTube that were recorded live at the Deertrees Theatre in Harrison.
Kirouac: We have had our best shows in Maine, seriously. Aside from Massachusetts, which is where we’re from, we’ve played more shows in Maine than any other state. There’s just something about the audiences up there. We’ve had our most fun times in your state, and besides Deertrees, we played at the Orion Performing Arts Center over in Topsham, Lincoln Theater in Damariscotta, and the Brewer Performing Arts Center up by Bangor.
Q: Now you’re going to be coming into the Moody Chapel at the Kennebec Valley Community College, a venue I’ve never been to, truth be told.
Kirouac: We’ve never been there, either. All I know about it is the pictures I’ve seen online.
Q: One thing I appreciate about your band is the fact that your repertoire is very broad. Normally you only hear the hits being played. You guys delve into the material that’s not heard all that often. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a big plus in your favor.
Kirouac: Yeah, that’s kind of, I think, what sets us apart a little bit. I mean, for an hour-and-a-half or a two-hour show you have to get the majority of hits and the accessible stuff that has sort of mass appeal, but when we first started tackling some songs it was to keep ourselves interested. Then we discovered that the die-hard fans out there really love the deep cuts and we find that out talking with people after the shows. I mean, we do “She’s Leaving Home,” “Eleanor Rigby” — that’s kind of a hit but it’s a great theater song — we also do “Strawberry Fields forever” and “A day in the life.” People always wonder how we’re going to pull that one off.
Q: And how do you?
Kirouac: Fortunately, because two of us in the band play keyboards at given times, we can cover all the sort of wild instrumentation that’s needed in that song and songs like it.
Q: Like when, in one of those Deertrees’ videos, you do “Got To Get You Into My Life” — that brass section that you play on your keyboard is spot-on.
Kirouac: Well, thank you, keyboards have come a long way in the 20 years with all the different patches they put on there and how realistic they can sound. So the horns of keyboards in the last 10 years is so much better sounding than the ones from, say, 25 or 30 years ago.
Q: How long will the KVCC show run?
Kirouac: The performance will be two hours, maybe a little longer. We always tend to run a little long if people are enjoying the show. If no one’s kicking us out of there, we run 10 minutes over what we expected to be. But typically our best shows are two hours long.
Q: What’s your tour load with Beatles For Sale?
Kirouac: It’s real busy from, say this year, March to November — we will always take the bulk of the winter off — and we probably do between 28 and 35 shows a year. Not that much by some bands’ standards, I guess, but that winter down time gives us the opportunity to revisit some old stuff, get a different show for the upcoming year — bring back some stuff, weed out some stuff. We always do “Hey Jude,” “Yesterday,” “Let It Be,” and “She Loves You.” We do 150 songs but there’s always like 40 songs we want to swap in and out to keep the show fresh. Yeah, we’re old men, we don’t want to be carrying equipment in the winter months and you can’t really play for shows in the winter because they can get canceled by 14 inches of show, you know what I mean?
Q: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean! How long have you been doing this particular tribute act?
Kirouac: We’re starting our ninth year — we started in the summer of ’07 — and the lineup has not changed.It’s been the same five people the whole time, which is unusual with the juggling of families and day jobs which we all have. But we got lucky in the sense that five people, in addition to being committed to the music and the project, we all get along and have a good time and are all friends.
Q: Is there anything you’d like to pass on to the folks reading this article?
Kirouac: Just that I think we do a good job entertaining a wide age range and the people should check us out whenever possible because there’s always sort of a slightly different show. And we just love talking Beatles with people, too. We don’t just play the show and disappear, you know — we make a lot of friends along the way. It’s very much a social thing as much as it is a musical or financial thing.
Lucky Clark has spent more than 45 years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@myfairpoint.net if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.
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