If you can sing every word to Eagles songs such as “Desperado” and “Life in the Fast Lane” as well as more obscure tunes like “James Dean” and “Those Shoes,” then you’ll want to head down to Tally Ho in Leesburg on Friday, Dec. 19, to check out Eaglemania, considered the quintessential Eagles tribute band.
“What we try our best to do is sound as much like the Eagles as we possibly can,” says Frankie Reno, who formed the band in 2012. “When we started this project, our goal was to dissect the Eagles’ records and replicate everything they do on their records live on stage.”
That means lead vocalist Steve French, guitarists Ken Darcy and John Gaechter, drummer Jon Weiswasser, bassist Kevin Hummel and Mr. Reno on keyboards evoke the spirits of their Eagles counterparts, Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon, Randy Meisner, Don Felder and Joe Walsh when they hit the stage.
“We do our best to stay true to their recordings and not do our own versions of songs, because people are coming out to hear the songs they love to hear, and they want to hear them the way they are used to hearing them,” Reno says. “We’ve been fairly successful at it. One of the comments we hear night after night is that if people close their eyes, they hear the Eagles.”
With five number-one singles, six Grammy Awards, five American Music Awards, and six number one albums, the Eagles were one of the most successful musical acts of the 1970s. Eaglemania has the uncanny ability to emulate the band’s signature five part harmonies note by note.
“I have the right personnel with the right voices that we can cover their stuff pretty accurate,” Reno says. “We were all musicians playing other projects and we wanted to find a project that had some longevity that would appeal to the largest demographic we could find. Don Henley always said his music was for people 2 to 82, and that’s a wide demographic. It appeals to everyone.”
The songs, he opinions, appeals to so many because it’s “very middle of the road.”
“People just love them. It’s not too heavy, it’s not too light,” he says. “They were huge for a while and you didn’t hear much about them for a while until classic rock came out in the ’80s and the resurgence came about and their music was probably played even more then. It became the soundtrack of a lot of people’s lives.”
At the show, some obscure songs from the Eagles’ catalogue may be played as well, but unfortunately the night isn’t long enough for Eaglemania to play them all and still touch on every hit the audience wants.
“One of the challenges is that there’s really very little flexibility I can have with the set list because they have so many hit songs and people expect to hear those hits every night,” he says. “We will do in the neighborhood of 30 songs over the course of a two-set evening.”
For Reno, being in this band affords him the luxury of playing music he loves and the audience responds to.
“I love the vocal harmonies in these songs. When those hit, I get chills,” he says. “When we do ‘Take it to the Limit,’ and hit those harmonies, it’s a tremendous feeling. And I love that the audience sings along with every song we do. It’s an amazing feeling.”
For more information on the show, visit tallyholeesburg.com.
