SanTanValley.com

There are few certainties in life. But unless you’ve spent the last 50 years in a cave, coma, or stranded on a desert isle, it’s pretty certain that you’ve heard of or heard a song by the Beach Boys. After 50 years of their touring, you may have even seen the Beach Boys in concert once or twice.

On Saturday, April 20, 2013, you’ll get another chance to see the Beach Boys perform live as they headline the Good Life Festival at the Encanterra Country Club in San Tan Valley, Arizona.

We all have those moments when we hear a song and it sticks in your head for days. No matter what you try, your mind always goes back to that song.

With Starship featuring Mickey Thomas playing the Good Life Festival at Encanterra in San Tan Valley on Saturday afternoon, March 23, it makes sense that concert goers would walk away with “We Built This City,” or “No Way Out,” or “Sara,” entrenched in their brain. But no.

Since that concert, my mind only hears “Fooled Around and Fell In Love,” the Elvin Bishop Group hit song from 1976. Damn you Mickey Thomas.

Just as you should not judge a book by its cover, you should not judge a band based on one album. When REO Speedwagon released its mega hit album, “Hi Infidelity” in 1980, songs such as “Keep on Loving You” and “Take It on the Run” pigeonholed the group as a pop oriented band.

But as REO Speedwagon showed on Saturday evening, March 23, 2013 at the Good Life Festival at Encanterra in San Tan Valley, REO Speedwagon was first forged as a hard rocking, rock and roll band. Those roots have not been forgotten.

In 1962, Winnipeg, Manitoba drummer, Garry Peterson joined up with a few other local musicians, including Little League friend Randy Bachman and bass player Jim Kale and created a band who by 1965, would be known as The Guess Who. Fifty years later, Garry Peterson still remains the drummer for The Guess Who.  In conjunction with The Guess Who’s recent appearance at the Good Life Festival in San Tan Valley, Arizona, Garry was kind enough to share some thoughts regarding his long tenure with his band.

It was nice of the Winnipeg, Manitoba formed band, The Guess Who, to bring some of the cooler Canadian weather with them to Arizona when performing at the Good Life Festival at Encanterra Country Club in San Tan Valley, Arizona on Saturday, April 14.

Whether The Guess Who was actually responsible for turning a week of 35 degrees C days down to 18 degrees C (that’s 95 down to 65 for you Americans) may only be speculation, but that they can deliver a hot performance was easily verified.

Given only sixty minutes, The Guess Who played a string of eleven hits which earned them some new fans and kept their older ones satisfied.

When I think of the band Styx, I’m reminded of the episode of “That 70’s Show” when Eric Forman decides to camp out to get Styx concert tickets and his friends make fun of him for liking Styx, yet are caught stealing Styx albums themselves.

In other words, it was okay to like Styx in the 1970’s, you just had to keep it secret.  On the cloudy afternoon of Saturday, April 14, 2012, several thousand people of all ages descended upon the Encanterra Country Club in San Tan Valley, Arizona and made it no secret that they liked Styx.

Why not?  Styx can deliver one heck of a rock and roll show.

The folks at The Good Life Festival at Encanterra sure have a love affair with Winnipeg, Manitoba.

First, they invite two of that Canadian city’s most famous musical icons, Randy Bachman and Fred Turner (Bachman & Turner) to come perform on March 31, 2012 and they deliver a fan pleasing, blow the roof off performance.

Not satisfied, the musical vaults of famed Winnipeg alumni are again raided and The Guess Who is now scheduled to play Saturday, April 14, 2012 at the Encanterra Country Club in San Tan Valley, Arizona.

I have no doubt that the organizers of The Good Life Festival somehow lured the Jets to become the Coyotes years ago.

Other than a few groups, most classic rock bands made it big due to monster selling studio albums in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Foghat was one of the exceptions to that rule, their 1977 Foghat Live album becoming Foghat’s biggest selling album with over two million albums sold and reaching as high as number eleven on the Billboard album charts.  There was no disproving why Foghat may be a better live band than one in the studio based on their performance on Saturday, March 31, 2012 at the Good Life Festival at Encanterra in San Tan Valley, Arizona.  For all of their sixty minutes onstage, Foghat was hitting on all cylinders, important for a group who has “Road Fever.”

I was warned.  In talking with mild mannered, laid back, Bachman & Turner bassist/vocalist Fred Turner prior to their concert on Saturday, March 31, 2012 at the Good Life Festival at Encanterra in San Tan Valley, Arizona, Turner mentioned that he was a “totally different singer when not on stage.” That was an understatement. When Bachman & Turner took the outdoor stage under a cloudless, 93 degree, Arizona spring afternoon, suddenly Clark Kent turned into Superman as Turner attacked the lyrics of the concert’s opening song “Roll On Down the Highway,” his unmistakable growl daring you to doubt that they had “rented a truck and a semi to tow.”  For the next eighty minutes, Randy Bachman and Fred Turner, now, for legal reasons, billed as Bachman & Turner but forever remembered as Bachman-Turner Overdrive or B.T.O., gave the gathering a fifteen song sampling of the old and the new.  Although Turner had stated when asked about playing their old music, “we find that people want their memories,” it doesn’t mean that new memories can’t be formed when seeing them perform their new material as well.

We’ll never know if the country rock Canadian band Brave Belt would have ever made it big.  Because once guitarist/song writer Randy Bachman asked fellow Winnipeg bassist/singer Fred Turner to join that group, it evolved into Bachman-Turner Overdrive and thirty million album sales later with songs like “Takin’ Care of Business,” and “Let it Ride” it’s safe to say that Fred Turner’s influence was a good one.

Although Turner retired in 2004, Randy Bachman convinced Turner to give it another go and the result was Bachman & Turner, who released an album of new material in 2010 and who have been on tour ever since.

On the cusp of the beginning of Bachman & Turner’s 2012 tour at The Good Life Festival at Encanterra in San Tan Valley, Arizona on March 31, 2012, Fred Turner was kind enough to spend some time and share his thoughts.