Tell Me / A little Q&A – Gym Class Heroes

Published on April 13, 2007

With a single soaring up the Billboard Hot 100 charts, Geneva-born band Gym Class Heroes is on the cusp of greatness. Last week the band finished its first major headlining tour — the Daryl Hall for President tour — and this summer will be opening for Gwen Stefani on an arena tour of Australia.In between the two tours, the band is playing a few shows on its own, including a stop at 7 tonight in Evolution Entertainment Complex, 2094 George Urban Blvd., Cheektowaga. Drummer and Gym Class Heroes co-founder Matt McGinley checked in from the road before a recent show in New Orleans.

>Is playing in Buffalo a little bit of a homecoming for you and your band?

In a way — when we were first getting scouted, Travis [McCoy] and I went to a Fall Out Boy show in Buffalo, where we got to meet the band. Pete [Wentz] from Fall Out Boy was an integral part of getting us signed to his label.

>Meet anyone interesting now that you’re headlining?

I met this dude, Murs, this MC from California that I’d been into, and now we’re planning some collaborations. He’s always been someone I’ve really been interested in, someone who’s got a similar style. To meet people that you were a fan of, that’s really awesome.

>How has being a headliner and touring larger venues changed the way you perform?

It hasn’t really changed, but we’ve stepped the stage show up a bit. . . . We’ve been a group that puts a lot of emphasis on playing live — that’s part of the reason we signed with our label, because they knew it was important for us to go out there and play live.

>How will the Buffalo show be different now that you’re coming off a tour and preparing for an arena tour?

This tour, with Gwen, will be our first arena tour. Arenas are new to us, even in the states. It’s kind of cool, because at first it’s intimidating, but it’s a good steppingstone. The thing is with GCH is that if it was up to us, we’d never play arenas. We feed off the energy of the kids at the show.

— Evan Parker Pierce, Special to The News

 

B.B. King reigns over the blues

Date: Sunday, May 13, 2007

Section: Local

Edition: Final

Page: C6

By Evan Parker Pierce – CONTRIBUTING REVIEWER

B.B. King’s legend is immune to old age. In fact, getting old might be the greatest move of his career.

The heartache and soul of his blues are all the more relevant as time passes, and the 81-year-old King of the Blues shared a lifetime with the crowd Saturday in Seneca Niagara Events Center in Niagara Falls.

While age has robbed King of some movement — he played his entire set from center stage in a chair — it hasn’t taken anything away from his showmanship. Upon taking a seat after his introduction, King strapped on “Lucille,” his guitar, and strummed out his first licks of the evening, rocking back and forth and scrunching his face with the vivacity of someone a quarter his age. Classics like “You Know I Love You” and “How Blue Can You Get” inspired crowd reactions not only for their recognition, but because King clearly still feels what he’s singing. He yelped and emoted, using his entire body, with each song, either wincing or shaking his jowls with every lamentation. Even relatively recent songs like 1988’s “When Love Comes to Town” were sung with energy that outpaced a crowd with a mean age half of King’s. A breakdown in the middle of “When Love Comes” saw King dancing in his chair, hiking up his pant legs and shimmying the Harlem Shake better than most kids of the day.The sleepy audience didn’t faze King, however, and he pulled them into his set with stories, like a grandfather spinning tales and advice to his grandchildren. His stories weren’t fairy tales for tots, though: “I’ll tell all you young fellows, you 50-year-olds, a lesson. I’m 81 years old and I’ll tell ya: the older you get, the prettier they look.”

His stories weren’t all jokes, however. Much like his blues, they told of hard times few now experience, but were sweetened with his charm and humor. King told one story of growing up in Mississippi during time of segregation, when his small hometown was divided by railroad tracks into the white part of town and the black part of town, including the notorious separate “white” and “colored” water fountains.

“I snuck over to that part of town to taste the white water,” he said. “But the white water didn’t taste any different than our colored water.”

As his hour-and-a-half-long set drew to a close, King put into words the passion for living he demonstrated his entire show: “I’m just passing along a lesson,” he said, leading into, “I’m a Bluesman.” “Just know I’m glad to be alive,” he said.