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18
winter
|
spr ing
replete with tours, a live performance, and an all-day recording session
at a chosen studio. People pay top dollar for these trips – in excess of
$15,000 – and in return, David and Jesse would pull a group of people
together as a rock and roll band and orchestrate seven days of travel
using the combined decades of music industry connections they’ve
cultivated. The activities they organize are as basic as a tour of the
Beatles Story Museum and as intimate as a sit-down interview with
Julia
Baird
, John Lennon’s half-sister.
Live at Liverpool
In early January, I traveled to Liverpool to meet David, Jesse, Mike, and
Vince, who had just spent the previous month rehearsing the song they
would record at Abbey Road Studios in London. Few Americans know
Liverpool as well as David and Jesse, where they have created important
and lasting friendships – including with
Bill Heckle
, owner of the Cavern
Club – and they know every part of the city, from Chinatown to the
shopping arcade along the banks of the Mersey.
“We know it so well that we can show it blind,” David said. “We don’t
have exclusive rights to Liverpool, but in a way, it is ours.”
They’ve been going there regularly for the past six years, performing
every August during Beatles Week with their band, The Tearaways. They’ve
performed at the famous Cavern Club about 25 times and they are official
Ambassadors of Liverpool for 2008.
Liverpool was chosen Europe’s Capital of Culture for 2008, and the
800-year-old city has been playing host to a yearlong celebration of its
artistic heritage. In early January, a raucous opening ceremony with
banging drums, acrobats, children’s choirs and fireworks was the first of
more than 300 events planned for the year.
I checked into the nicely appointed Malmaison Hotel just across from
the Liver Building as the citywide regeneration was in its last throes; the
skyline was choked with cranes and forklifts all the way from the Greco-
Roman mass of St. George’s Hall to the two-towered Royal Liver Building.
I had had difficulties reaching David on his cell phone and so asked the
hotel receptionist how I might recognize the group.
“They look like a rock band,” she said plainly. “Don’t worry, they’re the
only people in this hotel with long hair and leather jackets.”
The receptionist was correct; they
were
easy to spot.
Members of the Band
Vince looked nothing like the corporate middle manager he had
been four years prior, when he quit his job at a linen supply company
to become a full-time musician. He more closely resembled the music
teacher he currently is at Santa Barbara’s Jensen Guitar & Music Co., on
De La Vina Street, who performs at several local venues and small festivals
outside the city. For Vince, who started doing country gigs on the guitar
when he was 13 years old, the Mainstage tour was meant to be a personal
and career “stepping stone.”
“I’ve been a gun for hire a long time and I played with a lot of different
people,” he told me. “I’ve always been a side man, but I’ve never done my
own singer-songwriter thing. I’ve never been the lead guy in a rock and
roll group and that’s something I always wanted to do.”
Mike was born just as Beatlemania was crossing the Atlantic and
sweeping into American homes. But he recalls the remarkable impression
“The Ride’s” Jon Payne (left), Stacey Fergusson, and Dave Hekhouse perform group’s
original song, “One Ride,” on what is now known as the “Beatles’ Stage” in the
basement of the Cavern Club in Liverpool
“The Heavies” are (from left) Dave Hekhouse, Mike Shiflett,
Jesse Benenati, and Vince Chafin