Elvis Reigns at Bay Street
Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor will present “Elvis 80: A Tribute to the King” on Saturday at 8 p.m. Gene Casey and the Lone Sharks and the Vendettas will celebrate Elvis Presley’s 80th birthday with a selection of his hits and other early rock ’n’ roll classics.
Asked about the genesis of the program, Mr. Casey said that after his band’s successful 25th anniversary show at Bay Street in 2013, he was asked if he would like to do it again in 2014. “I didn’t want to do the 25th anniversary plus one,” he said. “I wanted to have a theme of some sort, so I mentioned to Gary Hygom, Bay Street’s managing director, that it would be Elvis’s 80th birthday and asked if he’d want to do a tie-in with that.”
Mr. Hygom liked the idea and suggested adding the Vendettas to the bill. Both Gene Casey and the Lone Sharks and the Vendettas have been strongly influenced by roots music and early rock ’n’ roll, and both bands are based on eastern Long Island.
Mr. Casey and the Lone Sharks will play Elvis songs, some of their own original music, and an assortment of early rock songs related to Elvis’s music.
“He did a lot of Little Richard songs, and Chuck Berry songs as well, so we might veer from strictly Elvis to a related selection totally in the spirit of early rock ’n’ roll. All the early guys — Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino — they are like the Mount Rushmore of my world.”
Elvis was a very private person who loved Monty Python and wanted to make a kung fu movie, according to Mr. Casey. “He wasn’t just a conventional Southern guy. He made it possible for white people to get down. If you look at old TV shows, before Elvis, everybody just kind of stood at the microphone. And there were very few black artists on network TV. So when he came on and did his thing, it was outrageous to people, but he was just doing what came naturally. There was almost an innocence about him that I found touching and appealing.”
Gene Casey formed the Lone Sharks after he moved to the East End in 1988. Members of the band have come and gone, but the music remains drenched in the roots of rock. Their most recent CD, “Untrained,” released in 2012, features 12 original songs that evoke early rock, classic country and western, and 1960s pop. The band did 150 shows in 2014, mostly on Long Island but also in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York City.
The Vendettas, too, will mix “Elvis tunes with other music from his Sun Records label mates and rockabilly and R&B of that era,” according to Jay (Jaybone) Janoski, guitarist and founder of the band. “Elvis was the prototypical rock star, the complete package. He had a great voice, looks, and stage presence. He has a tremendous body of work that covers so many areas stylistically, including really gritty, almost punk rock to gospel and ballads. Elvis has had some influence on all the rock ’n’ roll we listen to.”
Mr. Janoski began his career with the Hackensack Men and the Trenton Horns, another Long Island-based group. After leaving the band, he took stock of the material he had been playing and realized that early rock and rockabilly numbers were his favorites. He then formed the Vendettas.
“I found rockabilly backwards in a way,” he said, “first through Robert Gordon, then Stray Cats, and then the Blasters. When I started playing guitar I would read about guys like Cliff Gallup, who played with Gene Vincent, Paul Burlison, who played with the Rock and Roll Trio, and, of course, Scotty Moore, who played with Elvis.”
Coming up for Mr. Casey and his band is Rockin’ for the Homeless VII, a benefit that will take place Jan. 24 at the Polish Hall in Riverhead. Who Are Those Guys and Boot Scoot Boogie are also on the bill. “It’s a good thing to do in January,” Mr. Casey said.
The Vendettas will be appearing in a rockabilly show at the Bryant Library in Roslyn on Feb. 1.
Tickets, which are selling briskly, are $25 and can be purchased at the Bay Street box office or at baystreet.org.