Posted by Donna Talarico on November 9, 2009
Photo from Weekender, Nov. 4, 2009
The November 4, 2009 edition of the The Weekender featured two articles my me. I’ve been a fan, thanks to @SheliTwits, of the Tom Petty Appreciation Band for some time. A life-long Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers fan, I was secretly waiting for a tribute band to pop up locally (I actually have a name for one that I’ve never been able to use because my only musical talent is listening, so instead I turned it into a collection of short stories I want to write), so when I saw a Twitter update in March that Sheli was going to see a Tom Petty Appreciation Band in Scranton, I was like, “What? Where?” I didn’t get to see them that day, but have seen most of their shows since.
When I heard that Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers was coming out with a massive collection of live music called the Live Anthology, I thought it’d be perfect timing to cover the local and national angle. I pitched the idea to my editor at The Weekender, and we found out the next Tom Petty Appreciation Band show was going to be at the River Street Jazz Cafe in Plains (basically Wilkes-Barre) on November 6, so he scheduled both my stories for the Wednesday before.
Pat Finnerty, lead singer of the band, was very fun to talk to. I think the story turned out well. It seemd to help draw a huge crowd to the Jazz Cafe also.
Check out the article here: NEPA’s Southern Accents… (But of course, I love how the page looks in print.
Also, there’s the article on the Tom Petty collection.
Posted in Music, weekender | Tagged: Interviews, Music, weekender | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Donna Talarico on September 1, 2009
In the 8/18/09 issue of the Weekender, I interviewed the manager (and father of two of its members) of a local classic rock group made up of local high school students. The interview was prior to their first bigger gig on their own– previously they were opening acts for other bands.
Here’s the scoop on Gentlemen from Mountaintop:
Stevie Ray Vaughn. The Rolling Stones. Led Zeppelin. Not artists you’d first associate with a modern-day teenage basement band, right? Wrong. That’s a typical setlist for a quartet of young men from Mountaintop. Make that Gentlemen.
Check out the whole story on these talented boys here.
Posted in Music, weekender | Tagged: Music, weekender | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Donna Talarico on June 2, 2009
Just realized that I never posted this story here on my blog. I had the opportunity to interview the lead singer (the “Gene”), Tom Pressano of a New York-based KISS tribute band, KISS ALIVE! for a Weekender story a few months ago. He was great fun to talk to! He’s an English teacher by day and by night, rocks out to some of the greatest rock and roll ever made. The story ran in the April 1, 2009 issue of the Weekender, promoting the band’s show that weekend.
Here is a snippet:
Shakespeare by day. Simmons by night.
Tom Pressano spends his weekdays teaching English in New York City, but as his students tell him, he’s a freak on the weekends. Pressano, or “The Demon,” on bass and vocals, is one-quarter of the Kiss tribute band KISS ALIVE! He impersonates fellow (former) teacher, Gene Simmons.
The NYC-based KISS ALIVE! will bring the makeup, the costumes and the setlist that made KISS rock n’ roll icons to Nightcaps in Edwardsville this Saturday, April 4. It seems as if Kiss and other legendary bands from that era are still insanely popular today, and Pressano offered that perhaps it’s because they were the first big entertainers in the genre.
To read the entire story, you can visit the archived Weekender story here: KISS ALIVE! to Rock and Roll All Night.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Music, weekender | Leave a Comment »
