September 17 to September 24, 2020
MUSIC
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ive music fans in the Coachella Valley have been left ‘dazed and confused’ since the pandemic devoured all live entertainment. The Fantasy Springs Resort Casino has had to ‘ramble on’ despite new limitations and although it’s been a difficult road, ‘the song remains the same’. ‘Going back to California’…Indio, California that is, is the world’s premier tribute to Led Zeppelin, LED ZEPAGAIN! It seems like the group has been ‘ten years gone’ but the band that Jimmy Page concedes is “the closest you’ll ever get to the real deal” is back again for their yearly trip to the desert. Swan Montgomery (vocals, harmonica), David Thymiakos (guitar, mandolin), Jim Wooten (bass, keyboards), and Derek Smith (drums, percussion) would like to say, ‘thank you’ with a ‘whole lotta love’ and live ‘rock and roll’ music this Saturday at The Rock Yard at Fantasy Springs Resort Casino. The show is FREE and guests must be 18 or older to attend. Please be mindful that you are required to wear protective masks and adhere to Fantasy Springs’ social distancing protocols. To make it easier to digest, The Rock Yard invites guests to get creative with their masks launching the MASK-QUERADE CONTEST every Friday and Saturday. Attendees are encouraged to wear their coolest protective mask with the winners receiving dinner for two at The Bistro or POM. Awards will be announced on stage at 9:30 p.m. Los Angeles rockers STEEL ROD get the music started at 7:30 pm. The group has toured the world including the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan and South America performing sold-out shows worldwide in major international venues, concert halls and performing arts centers. They have been featured on AXS TV’s World Greatest Tribute Bands and have shared the stage with drummer Jason Bonham for a performance of ‘Rock and Roll’. In January of 2004, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page himself attended a Led Zepagain show at the House of Blues in Los Angeles. He was absolutely astonished at the bands’ accuracy asserting to the band, “It’s amazing
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LED ZEPAGAIN WITH STEEL ROD PERFORMING AT THE ROCK YARD SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2020
how much you sound like us. You must have grown up on this because you were inside the music, and you paid attention to detail in your presentation…I can tell you guys really love our music!” This chance meeting led to the band attending Led Zeppelin's 2007 Reunion Concert at London's O2 Arena at the behest of Mr. Page. Combining the bona fide Zeppelin sound and look with the classic equipment and costumes, Led Zepagain is looking like the closest thing you’ll ever get to another Led Zeppelin reunion! Born in Drogheda, Ireland, Swan Montgomery is an Irish entrepreneur, musician, vocalist and producer/engineer. Led Zepagain was founded in 1988 and Swan is the longest serving member. Swan was also invited to perform on stage with The Who vocalist Roger Daltrey. As a solo artist, Swan released an album of original World Music called ‘Ogham’ in 2019. Coachella Valley Weekly spoke with Montgomery in anticipation of Led Zepagain’s return to The Rock Yard. CVW: The Rock Yard is a very unique venue. What’s your favorite part of performing there? Montgomery: “It’s up close and personal which is really cool… fans are right in front of the stage with no barrier and we can see their faces. We get to feel how they all get into what we’re doing. The crew is great and the sound is fantastic. We’ve always had a great experience there. The music speaks for itself. Paid or unpaid everyone just has a good time and enjoys, us playing Zeppelin music to the older folk bringing back some memories.” CVW: The pandemic obviously prevented the band from its usual schedule of weekly shows around the world. How have you all held up? Montgomery: “It’s been about six months since we last performed, as of late, we have done three shows in the last three weeks so it’s nice to be back, but it’s been tough because we were used to a schedule of every week, traveling, flying, on boats, traveling to other countries, it definitely changed our world a bit because we were so used to that pace. When I got back into it I had to work
back to that level, back to working out. You play almost 90 minutes, it’s a lot of energy you put out there and you don’t realize that until you stop. I said, ‘Whoa! We gotta get this back!’ It’s been different but challenging.” CVW: In addition, the fans have had to weather this storm as well. Is there any newfound attitude or feeling with what you're doing? Montgomery: “People have been locked down for quite a bit now. To see people’s faces in a different environment, whether social distancing or sitting outside their cars you can see everyone’s face happy and seeing live music and doing something different. It’s good to see that, you can see they’re very happy. It’s a good feeling. As an artist, you still want to give them 100% no matter what, even if we’re still breaking ourselves in, you still go for it. It’s like riding a bike; the band played their first show about three weeks ago and we got back into it, we just looked at each other and said, ‘Oh, OK, this is alright!’, so we still got it going on, we didn’t even rehearse, we didn’t see each other for six months, the next thing you know, we’re on stage starting off for the first time, it just felt really good.” CVW: What’s been the silver lining for you personally with the pandemic? Have you been able to rededicate yourself to other areas of your life? Montgomery: “Family; with touring and the time away, I haven’t been able to spend much time with my family as I would like to and now with this I am able. Also, being able to do other projects that I’ve wanted to do because I’m a solo artist as well. I have my hands in a few other things. It’s been great to be able to drop back and face some projects that I was working on.” CVW: We can download Led Zepagain versions of a lot of the Zeppelin classics on iTunes and Spotify. I listened and they are spectacular renditions. Montgomery: “Yes, they’re on Spotify and iTunes, it’s a tribute album to Led Zeppelin, there’s five of them actually. We just felt we had to go in and challenge that side of things and it came out quite good. At one time Led Zeppelin was not on iTunes or Spotify and Led Zepagain was the only source you could
BY NOE GUTIERREZ get of Zeppelin music to download. It did quite well and of course Zeppelin decided to put up their music, haha! It didn’t kill it totally because we still do well with downloads. The best thing I’ve seen one time was a listing of downloads on iTunes where Led Zepagain’s version of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was above Led Zeppelin’s! I was like, ‘this is impossible!’ haha.” CVW: I can imagine there are many little idiosyncrasies of Robert Plant and the rest of Led Zeppelin that you’ve had to study early on to provide the full experience. Montgomery: “I study Plant a lot, his movements, he’s not as animated today as he was back then. It’s like acting, you go up there and portray an era, we’re portraying all the Zeppelin years. We just naturally get into it. I haven’t had much of a problem.” CVW: I’ve attempted to sing songs like ‘The Immigrant Song’ and it can be a difficult task. How have you remained performing at a high echelon for all these years? Montgomery: “I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I’ve been doing it for nearly 33 years, so I worked all that out. I’m not the greatest at doing vocal exercises before a show, I do know a lot about it but I mentally prepare and make sure my voice is in top notch condition and that has to do with taking care of it through sleep, the most important thing, and simple things like tea and ginger and not talking too much before a show. I get myself into the role and psyche myself up. Sometimes out of the gate ‘The Immigrant Song’ is the fourth song so I have to be ready for that. The warm-up is the first four or five songs. We often go with set lists Zeppelin performed, to open it’s either ‘Rock and Roll’ or ‘Immigrant Song.’” CVW: Getting back up on stage must have felt really good to you and the rest of the band. What did you miss the most? Montgomery: “I miss the crowd and the vibe that goes along with that. It’s been a blessing too. Sometimes we were in it and we were going like an express train flying down the track and we weren’t thinking about getting off but it’s nice that it stopped for a minute to rejuvenate and do some other things that we’ve wanted to do. Now that things are opening up we’ll get back and we have more energy to be better to do what we want to do.” www.zepagain.com Check out Swan Montgomery’s solo album of World Music, ‘Ogham’ on iTunes Led Zepagain with Jason Bonham on drums performing ‘Rock and Roll’: youtube.com/watch?v=2w6noToYSqQ STEEL ROD Based out of Los Angeles and together for 20 years now, STEEL ROD is Southern California’s premier cover band! They have performed at venues like Staples Center, House of Blues, BB King’s Blues Club, Home
