Sebastian Bach and Santa Cruz Rock B.B. King’s Blues Club!

My 2016 Rock&Roll calendar marches on in grand fashion, most recently at Live Nation’s iconic Time Square B.B. King’s Blues Club Wednesday, May 18, 2016. It was yet another epic night of classic Rock&Roll with the incredibly talented Sebastian Bach of Skid Row fame, and an emerging and very talented young Rock band from Helsinki, Finland called Santa Cruz. And it was my first “official” VIP experience listening to a sound check. Performing live and delivering a masterful technical experience is no small feat. You can have all the talent in the world, but at the end of the day, the production elements have to be first rate when it matters most. The sound check must be a stressful situation that requires very coordinated concentration, under clear time pressure. To open that up to a small group of adoring, yet unpredictable fans, is very generous and I really appreciated that! Bobby Jarzombek kicked things off on Drums, followed by Brent Woods on Guitar and Rob De Luca on Bass. We may not know the names of Sebastian’s band so well, but I can tell you that these are very talented veteran musicians! And they’re nice guys. I had a brief interaction with them at the Meet and Greet following the performance.

As Sebastian’s band was warming up, the band members from Santa Cruz were milling about before their turn on stage. It was a nice experience for the VIP fans to get a relaxed informal look at a promising young band that could very well achieve Rock&Roll superstardom some day. They seemed to be very focused on the business at hand, ahead of their performance on this big New York stage. Due to the usual time conflicts that arise around live performance, the sound check started late, which of course applied time pressure on these young musicians, yet they seemed to handle it just fine. They actually did most of their warm up as ticketholders starting filling up the club.

Santa Cruz finished their warm up and the club soon hit “sold out” capacity. This New York crowd was pumped and ready for a legendary Rock&Roll evening! The lights dimmed and the young Finnish rockers returned to the stage to great audience applause! Of Scandinavian ancestry on my father’s side of the family, I love that this young band’s talent, hard work, and perseverance has brought them to this iconic New York stage so early in their career! Of course this is my first time seeing them perform, but this is actually their third time performing in New York, as I understand it. Several points stand out. First, every band member sings. Lead Singer Archie Cruz (born Arttu Kuosmanen) has a powerful voice with great range, particularly appealing with his Finnish accent, also with tremendous confidence and charisma on stage. Lead Guitar player Johnny Cruz (Joonas Parkkonen), Bass player Middy Cruz (Mitja Toivonen), and Drummer Tazzy Cruz (Tapani Fagerstrom) all sing Back Up Vocals, that add a very powerful harmonic blend to the sound! Further, they are all very technically proficient musicians on their respective instruments. Lead Singer Archie Cruz is also very strong on guitar, in addition to vocals. This band is extremely talented musically! Of course they have the look all the ladies love, with thick blonde hair flowing down their shoulders. They’re also very athletic on stage, with hair and body moving succinctly to the musical beat. To round out the talent picture, they have great songwriting ability, including their newest hit single “Skydiving Without A Parachute”  that they debuted that evening; what a treat for this connoisseur Rock&Roll New York audience! I’ve already downloaded it to my iPhone and highly recommend you do the same. It was a big night for these young talented rockers from Helsinki, Finland and I look forward to the next time Santa Cruz returns to the New York stage! Of course, it was great for this to happen warming up for one of their idols, Sebastian Bach, who is such a great guy, always very enthusiastic and supportive of the talent around him. It’s a great energy!

Sebastian Bach and his band took the stage shortly before 10PM to a packed and completely engaged B.B. King’s Blues Club audience! They actually did something quite unique, in that they first performed an acoustic set, which was then followed by a full electric show. Sebastian did not participate in the early sound check as “..the vocal experience at show time is always different!..” he explained. Makes complete sense! The acoustic set was Sebastian’s method to vocal sound check. Of course, the VIP ticketholders knew this ahead of time but certainly appreciated Sebastian’s authenticity in explaining the rationale. This is the first point that stands out about Sebastian, who has an extraordinary level of integrity in engagement with his audience. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it. Moreover, he has an incredible energy and presence on stage! At 48, his voice is still mighty and powerful, and he is extremely fit and athletic for a guy who stands well over 6 feet tall with a very large frame! He was clapping arms over head, jumping up and down, and moving with incredible agility and tight synchronization to the beat. It was really impressive! It’s one thing to perform like that in your 20’s, even in your 30’s as he did on Broadway in Jekyll & Hyde and Jesus Christ Superstar, but in your late 40’s, and particularly with an aggressive live performance schedule with multiple consecutive evening performances, wow! Sebastian Bach and his band knocked it out of the park!

Sebastian exudes great energy and strikes you as one of the happiest guys around! He came out smiling and joking about a seat that David Grohl made for him, of course in tribute to his great friend Axl Rose and our legendary Guns N’ Roses band. He made reference to GNR several times during his performance, clearly with great respect and deference to this iconic band, who brought Sebastian up on stage April 9 in Vegas to sing “My Michelle”; very cool indeed!

Sebastian and his band opened the acoustic set with a Jimmy Hendrix cover, “The Little Wing” before moving into their first Skid Row cover “Breakin’ Down”. Then they launched into a more recent solo hit “Battle With The Bottle” released September 30, 2008. Other than an “April Wine” and “PainmuseuM” cover, the rest of the night was devoted to the veteran fans who came to hear the iconic front man perform his stuff from the legendary Skid Row days. One guy in the audience shouted out that Skid Row was not Skid Row without Sebastian Bach. With complete Rock&Roll cool and humility, our very professional and consummate performer joked that “..clearly that wasn’t the case…” It was yet another poignant connection between this legendary singer and his adoring fan base. And if that wasn’t enough, Skid Row Drummer Rob Affuso, who was sitting at a nearby table, came up on stage to perform “Rattlesnake Shake” with his good buddy, 2/5^th’s of a Skid Row reunion, and more jokes about complex math. Sebastian has a great sense of humor, which would explain his long run on the hit TV series “Gilmore Girls”.  It was great fun all around!

To wrap up the main set, Sebastian brought Santa Cruz back out on stage to perform “Youth Gone Wild” and to promote this young emerging band. Sebastian is forever a cheerleader and it was great to see these very talented, hard working rockers from different generations tear it up together!

For the encore, perhaps also in tribute to his buddy Axl Rose, currently helping out and performing with AC/DC, Sebastian and his band closed this incredible night with AC/DC cover “T.N.T.”! Well done guys! The fans definitely had a “Dynomite” night! Too bad House Speaker Paul Ryan wasn’t in the house. I’ll bet he would have enjoyed this.

A terrific Rock&Roll performance and we still had the Meet and Greet ahead! Sebastian was great, taking his time with each of us. I told him that I was sorry I missed his “My Michelle” performance April 9 in Vegas with Guns N’ Roses, as I only attended the debut April 8 performance, but thrilled that I could see him here in my hometown of New York. Sebastian revealed that the “My Michelle” performance “… caught me completely off guard. I didn’t even know that would happen. Axl texted me about 10PM, My Michelle. Be ready.” Wow! I love it!

If you want to learn more about this amazing performer, Sebastian Bach is set to release his first memoir this year. This read promises to be gripping and entertaining as it reveals the incredible highs and lows of his extraordinary talent and personal journey of Rock&Roll fame! Pre order here.

Thanks for coming to New York Sebastian, we hope to see you again soon!