By Elmer Ploetz

(Image above: The Blues Brothers Review band – (L-R) Joe Bellanti, Jake Schoelles, Tom Sieracki, Ray Skalski, The Commodore Dave Sieracki, Trevor Jennings, Kyle Yagielski. Missing: Peter Heuer, Nate Kalnitz)

We’re proud to work with Buffalo Hive’s Board of Directors, all of whom are involved with the arts and culture of Western New York in their own ways. From time to time we’ll be shining the spotlight on them and their activities. Today we’re starting with Robert J. McLennan (our board vice president) and the Blues Brothers Review show he has organized for tomorrow night at Asbury Hall.

There’s a thin line between tribute bands and the kind of shows Bob McLennan puts on. Think about Buffalo’s Last Waltz or the Woodstock and Monterrey Pop recreations he has created.

They were one-time events that attempted to recreate the experience of the original events as closely as possible (annually in the case of Buffalo’s Last Waltz).

McLennan’s latest re-creation is the Blues Brothers Review tomorrow night (Friday, May 9) at 8 p.m. in Asbury Hall. The event will feature Kidd Kyle from the Brass Machine and Captain Tom of the Hooligans  as Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, respectively, along with members of their bands and special guests.

They’ll be doing the original 1978 Blues Brothers “Briefcase Full of Blues” album in its entirety with a full – and very large – band, plus highlights from the Blues Brothers movie from 1980.

For those who might not have been around then to remember it, the Blues Brothers came out of the Saturday Night Live TV show but was something more. Aykroyd and Belushi turned it into a tribute to blues and soul music, recruiting an all-star band and restarting the careers of some of the performers they paid homage to. While the SNL members may have been amateurs, the people they surrounded themselves with were anything but.

Here’s a snippet from the concert where they recorded their live album:

The live album went platinum and then they made the film, “The Blues Brothers.” While it had its moments as a movie, it was the music that was killer, from Cab Calloway’s 1940s hepcat jive to John Lee Hooker playing at Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market to songs from Ray Charles, James Brown and Aretha Franklin.

Here’s the original trailer.

It’s the spirit of that music that McLennan is looking to rekindle with the Asbury Hall Show, which is promoted by the Buffalo Music Coalition group he leads.

“I like creating a special event that people want to go to,” McLennan said when we spoke earlier this week. “I had no interest in recruiting a bunch of players, horn section and the whole deal, and saying, ‘Hey, let me manage your Blues Brothers Band, and I’ll try to get you a bunch of bookings. That’s not what I’m interested in.'”

But he is interested in is hearing that music again. He got involved in recreating shows with Buffalo’s Last Waltz, which recreates the final concert by the original version of The Band at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco in 1976. It’s a fundraiser for the Sportsmen’s Americana Music Foundation, and it has sold out every performance since it started in 2017.

“We try to make that as as close of a reenactment as possible of the Martin Scorsese movie of ‘The Last Waltz,’ and it really gives people an experience that is irreplaceable,” McLennan said. “I mean, you’re never going to see that original concert again from 1976. There are touring bands that do ‘The Last Waltz,’ but they just do the music of the Last Waltz. We do the dialogue, we do the concert and the movie in the exact order it was done, where some other people may for dramatic reasons say, ‘Let’s do “The Weight” as the encore.'”

While Aykroyd and Belushi recruited a lineup of national all-stars such as Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn and Matt Murphy for their band, McLennan has called in some local heroes. Here’s the lineup:

• Kidd Kyle (Kyle Yagielski) from The Brass Machine as Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd role)
• Captain Tom (Tom Sieracki) of Captain Tom & the Hooligans as Joliet Jake (John Belushi role)
• Guitar – Peter David
• Keys & Organ – Joe Bellanti
• Drums – Trevor Jennings
• Bass – Nate Kalnitz
• Sax – Dave Sieracki
• Trombone – Ray Skalski
• Trumpet – Jake Schoelles

By the way, the answer is no … McLennan will not be driving around the neighborhoods on Friday with a loudspeaker atop an old police Crown Victoria … although he did look into finding one to park near Asbury Hall at Delaware & Tupper. He couldn’t find one that still rolled.

The Buffalo Music Coalition’s next musical re-creation will be a reproduction of Bruce Springsteen’s “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions” at the West Falls Center for the Arts on June 13.

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Elmer Ploetz is editor-in-chief of The Buffalo Hive