The Rock Bottom Remainders, America’s most literary oldies rock cover band, will reunite at the 2015 Tucson Festival of Books.
New York Times best-selling authors Amy Tan, Mitch Albom, Dave Barry, Scott Turow, Ridley Pearson, Ray Blount, Jr., Alan Zweibel and Greg Iles, aided by a couple of ringer musicians, including drummer Josh Kelly and Albom’s singer/actress wife, Janine Sabino, will perform a 90-minute show in the University of Arizona Student Union Memorial Center ballroom to kick off the festival on March 13
The concert replaces the festival’s annual authors dinner.
The authors also will participate in the festival March 14 and 15, said organizer Brenda Viner , a festival founder who has been trying almost since the festival began in 2009 to get the band to play in Tucson.
“This is huge. The fact that they’re coming is just wonderful, and they fit so much in our mission, in what we believe in, which is to improve literacy in Tucson,” she said. “We think in year seven, this is a great thing to happen.”
This will be the first official performance for the Rock Bottom Remainders since they called it quits in 2012 after the death of band founder Kathi Kamen Goldmark. Several members of the band, which played together for 20 years at book festivals and literature events, did an informal performance at the Miami book festival last year.
“We retired, so to speak, and the joke is now we are going to start doing the first reunion tour,” said Tan, the band’s self-appointed dominatrix, who dons a wig, knee-high boots, fishnet stockings and a whip on stage. “We’re going to be like the Rolling Stones or whatever those groups are that do those reunion tours. This is our first farewell tour.”
“As Mitch Albom says, ‘We’re such a bad band, we can’t even break up correctly’,” Barry added.
“This isn’t the greatest band, you know, but it really is a great group of friends,” said tour manager Ted Habte-Gabr, who had been fielding Viner’s requests for years.
“The thought of doing a concert came up … so we looked into the invites we had, and the folks at the Tucson Book Festival had invited the band several times. We polled the band on availability over those dates, and decided to do it. We had heard lots of wonderful things about the festival on how well run it was, so that made the decision easy.”
The Remainders cover classic oldies that have three or fewer chords, Barry said recently, quipping that any more than that is too tall an order for this cast of musical misfits. Several of the members — including Barry, Albom, Iles and Pearson — have some experience playing instruments or singing in bands in their pre-author lives, but most are winging it with the goal to entertain, not amaze.
“‘Play’ is probably a strong term for what we do with our instruments, but we have them with us onstage for sure,” Barry said. “I would say a better term is we hold our own instruments.”
Albom recounted what Bruce Springsteen told the band several years ago, which has become something of its guiding light: “You’re not that bad, but I wouldn’t get any better. Because if you get any better, you’re just going to be another lousy band.”
“We were so bad that we were funny. But if we got any better, then we would just be lousy,” Albom explained. “So we’re ranked slightly below lousy, which apparently, according to Bruce Springsteen, is actually a pretty good place to be.”
The Rock Bottom Remainders will likely get together an hour or so before the March 13 show to rehearse. But Turow said those rehearsals will do little to improve their performance.
“Even new songs don’t get much in the way of rehearsal. … And then we get onstage and we flub,” he said with a laugh. “And even the songs that we’ve done a million times before, there’s an element of improvisation every time we perform. I never manage to come in on the right place when I’m singing, so the band has to follow me breathlessly, waiting to see when I’m going to start and what key my voice it’s going to be in that night.”
Those little imperfections are what have been the hallmarks and the joy of the band’s performances.
“ If you’re not bad and expectations are low, then what you have is a funny show,” Tan said.
