Worcester Telegram, MA
February 3, 2008
Aerosmith’s guitar master joins his sons’ TAB the band for a Foxwoods showAdrian Perry was pretty sure at one point in his life that he was not going to go into the family business.
“When I was a kid, I got sick of people always asking me, ‘So are you going to play guitar, too?’ I thought I’d do anything but that. I wanted to be a baseball player or a basketball player,” Perry said.
But when Perry turned 13, he collided with his heritage, and the son of Aerosmith’s Joe Perry became obsessed with music.
Fast forward another 13 years, and bassist and singer Adrian is even deeper into the family business; he is now in a trio with his brother, guitarist Tony Perry and drummer Ben Tileston. TAB the band, formed in 2006, last week released the full-length “Pulling Out Just Enough to Win,” a album of rousing power-trio rock
TAB the band just did a couple of CD release shows in Boston and New York City and is performing in March at the South By Southwest music conference. But perhaps the most interesting show on the horizon is Friday at the Fox Theatre at Foxwoods Casino, where the trio teams with patriarch Joe Perry.
“This is something we will not do very often. We can’t do it very often with our schedules, and they want to have their own identity and not be seen as my band, so I look at this as something really special,” Joe Perry said.
The one-off at Foxwoods is also a rare chance for the senior Perry to dedicate a show to his expanding catalog of non-Aerosmith music. Right after Perry released his excellent self-titled solo album in 2005, the mothership of Aerosmith took off on a tour cycle that became the longest of its career.
“It was a tough decision, but I had to put a solo tour aside,” said Perry, who not only has the goods from his Grammy-nominated self-titled project but also a stack of songs recorded with the Joe Perry Project when that group was together in the early 1980s.
While the Joe Perry Project kept the guitar slinger on the radio for a spell when he left Aerosmith, the solo record is sort of a lost treasure for Perry fans. The record lets him open up beyond his well-honed blues-based licks and deliver everything from a little jazz to psychedelia, to outright guitar wankery.
“I ran almost all those songs past Aerosmith at one point or another, and they just didn’t make it onto Aerosmith records,” Perry said. “I decided, ‘Well, if the car hits a tree, (my wife) Billie has some finished music she can put out.’ ”
As Perry watched the progress his sons were making with TAB the band, he got behind the idea of playing a solo show with them rather than trying to reassemble a new band for such a job.
“We’ll do a show that’s a third of their stuff, a third of my stuff and then a third of interesting covers and a few Aerosmith songs,” Pops Perry said of his upcoming show with TAB the band.
Even though Aerosmith and TAB the band evolved within wildly different environments, both Perrys agreed that some aspects of the business have not changed, the main one being that a band makes its name on stage. No amount of radio airplay, YouTube hits, press write-ups, record-company push or other tools at the disposal of a band, can shore up the fate of group that is unable to inspire a concert crowd.
“It’s easier now to get the word out,” Adrian Perry said. “And there is no difference or distinction between the Spice Girls and an independent band selling music on iTunes. But the fundamentals for a rock band especially are all about getting out there and playing good shows. Our dad really stressed that point.”
Joe Perry, in a separate interview, concurred.
“Back in 1967 and ’68 when I started playing in bands, we’d hire out the town hall, hire an off-duty police officer to be security and charge people a couple of bucks to get into the show. You do that long enough to get noticed by someone who can help you move up,” recalled Perry, who was born in Lawrence and raised in Hopedale. “The next step was to become an opener for a bigger band, but that was tricky because you had to be good, but not too good and get the headliner mad and get kicked off shows.”
Yet there is every reason to believe that Joe Perry will share if not cede the spotlight to TAB.
“They are better than I was at their age, and in some regards better than I am now,” Joe said.
Having watched the likes of Jason Bonham take on the role his father had playing drums in Led Zeppelin, or simply seeing the various progeny of Bob Marley carry on the reggae icon’s name with music of their own, Perry counted himself lucky to be able to actually throw down with his kids.
“I knew they liked music, but Tony was raised in the road and I knew he didn’t want to travel,” Joe said. “When they started working on songs in 2006, I was impressed by how good the music was.”
Adrian, whose mother is Joe Perry’s first wife, grew up on the West Coast, but wended his way east and teamed with Tony, five years his junior and one of three boys raised by Perry and current wife Billie. Tony is at Boston University and cultivating a knack for music production; Adrian is in his third year at Georgetown University Law School.
Yet Adrian said he and Tony will take TAB as far as they can. The brothers first made a series of goofy recordings ranging from dance music to humorous rap tracks, and in the process realized they clicked together as musicians.
“Once we tried writing something seriously, we both realized, ‘This works,’ ” Adrian said. “Tony is a big punk rock fan, I like punk, too, and some of the more classic stuff. We never had a mission statement, but decided to go with only three members and have a punk attitude. And rock is marginalized, so it’s rebellious to play straight-up rock ’n’ roll.”
Between Joe Perry’s affinity for British Invasion guitar styles he forged into a signature sound, Adrian’s eclectic tastes, and Tony’s contemporary, Tom Morello-shaded tone, the union of TAB and Joe Perry is likely to cover a lot of ground
“The audience will be seeing something different, like two different schools together,” said Joe.
“Together we’ll fashion something pretty good. I mean, they love to rock.”
Joe Perry and TAB the band When: 9 p.m. Friday
Where: Fox Theatre, Foxwoods Casino, Ledyard, Conn.
How much: $66 and $55
