***THIS EVENT HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED INDEFINITELY. WHEN A FUTURE DATE IS AVAILABLE, WE WILL NOTIFY YOU. ALL PREVIOUSLY PURCHASED TICKETS WILL BE HONORED. IF YOU'D LIKE A REFUND, PLEASE EMAIL [email protected] BY APRIL 2, 2020***
Bill Gottshall, keyboard; Doug Slemmer, sax; Kristofer Ewaniuk, guitar; Paul DiRenzo, bass; and Dave Fry, drums
With special guests Wade Stoneback & Camber Beauchamp, keyboard
Bill Gottshall Music will present another themed show on Friday, April 3rd, when he brings his production, “The Time Travelers Band Meets Billy Joel & Elton John, Face to Face” to The Underground. Based upon the legendary shows the two great singer/songwriter/piano players have done together for decades, “The Time Travelers Meets Band Billy Joel & Elton John, Face to Face,” will draw upon material from the nearly 50-year careers of each world-renowned musician.
The Time Travelers Band will explore the different styles of each man’s music, paying special attention to the haunting ballads and gospel-infused rockers of Elton John’s early records and to the jazz-inspired tunes and harddriving songs of Billy Joel’s peak recording years. In order to recreate the unique sound of those recorded masterpieces, The Time Travelers will be featuring 3 keyboardists for this show! “Those of us who grew up with the music of Billy Joel and Elton Joel know that they packed a huge amount of sound into their studio recordings,” says
band leader Bill Gottshall. “Elton John’s 1970s records had incredibly complex and powerful string arrangements.
They made his songs stand out from almost everything else which was being released then. And Billy Joel’s early recordings also had a wealth of extra instruments on them as well. In order to do justice to that distinctive sound, we decided to bring on two extra keyboard players. One of us will be assigned to covering just the piano part, which in itself is a very difficult job, as both Elton and Billy are masters of the instrument. Another keyboard will be assigned to
covering the orchestral instruments they used a great deal, especially strings. The third keyboard will pick up the odds and ends: unusual instruments such as accordion, employed often by Billy Joel, and various brass, woodwind, and mallet instruments.”
Joining Gottshall in helping to form this keyboard army will be his piano student, Camber Beauchamp. While this will be Beauchamp’s debut with The Time Travelers, it won’t be his first time onstage at The Underground; he is the keyboard player for The Conservatory’s Advanced Jazz Ensemble, which is featured several times a year at The Underground. Opposite Gottshall onstage, “Face to Face,” with their keyboard racks back-to-back, will be Wade Stoneback, recently nominated by the Lehigh Valley Music Awards as one of the region’s Best Keyboard Players. “Wade is a tremendous musician and, best of all for me, he knows every one of these songs, inside and out,” says Gottshall. Stoneback will have a familiar guitar player by his side at this show, as The Time Traveler’s newest member is Kris Ewaniuk. He and Stoneback are member of The Weekenders.
Along with Stoneback’s individual nomination by the Lehigh Valley Music Awards, The Weekenders were named as one of the best bands in the Lehigh Valley.The remainder of the Time Travelers Band will be familiar faces to their audience: Doug Slemmer (sax) and Bill
Gottshall have been a been live performance and recording team for 40 years. Joining them onstage will be multiinstrumentalist Paul DiRenzo (bass), whom Slemmer “discovered” when DiRenzo was a grade school student of Slemmer’s music teacher wife, Mary Lee. Alongside DiRenzo will be his longtime friend, drummer Dave Fry. DiRenzo and Fry work together, directing music groups in the Perkiomen Valley School District.
“The Time Travelers Band Meets Billy Joel & Elton John, Face to Face” show begins at 8:00 PM and will run until about 10:30 PM. Tickets are $18 per person. While tickets will be sold at the door, several of the band’s past shows at The Underground have sold-out in advance.
Bill Gottshall Music
https://www.facebook.com/billgottshallmusic/