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Viewing: Philadelphia - View all posts

We're just looking for some Tush  

It's our craziest time of the year! Summer for Sunshine Symphony involves playing tons of community events, festivals, and weddings in the Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia areas. This summer is no exception! We've managed to cram another special event into our schedule this week.

Tonight, we head to Toll Man Joe's bar in South Philadelphia to compete in the WMGK House Band competition. If you're not familiar with WMGK, it's a classic rock radio station out of Philadelphia. Many of the DJs have been on the air for multiple decades. In fact, morning show host John DeBella was one of the DJs I listened to that inspired me to get into radio. In any case - this is huge and legendary for me personally, that we could be the house band for a radio station I've been listening to for a long time. 

We are required to play a 25-minute set of classic rock tunes, and one of them must be Tush, the 70s song by ZZ Top. We don't play a whole lot of blues tunes (we tend toward pop and 80s stuff), but boy, was this song fun to learn (and easy - it's only 2 minutes long!).  We were racking our brains trying to think of ways to make our version accurate but different, and we decided to play up Ricky's experience on blues harmonica. He does a killer solo that fits right into the feel of the song.

Listen to our version from rehearsal and let us know what you think! 

UPDATE: Well, we didn't win the semi-final round, but put on a performance to be proud of. Congrats to the guys in The Mad Trio, who move on to the finals. They were a 3-piece rock group that made a lot of noise! Also, fun to see Raised on Radio, and Retro 45. Some killer pipes and musicianship among all the bands.