Guitarist Tony Perry, lead singer/bassist Adrian Perry and drummer Ben Tileston make up the Duxbury, MA garage and blues rock trio better known as TAB The Band. Despite the silly name, an acronym for the members' first names, this is a fast-emerging rock band with some serious connections in the music business: rock icon and guitar god Joe Perry of Aerosmith happens to be the father of the Perry boys.
The elder Perry joined his sons' band for a full slate of hard rock and roll last Friday night. The 75-minute, 17-song set was both a Leap Year birthday bash for former Boston Bruin and current WAAF-FM (Boston) rock radio jock LB (Lyndon Byers) and a benefit show. Musicians On Call, a nonprofit organization that heals patients in healthcare facilities with music will receive proceeds from this and six other shows the band is doing at select Hard Rock Café locations as part of its concert series. [Joe Perry participated in the first two of these shows in Boston and New York, respectively]
The audience was made up of contest winners (courtesy of radio stations, including WAAF-FM) and there were significantly more 30-to-50-year-olds among them than anyone the band's age — Tony and Adrian are currently in college, according to their proud papa. With lots of reserved tables at the Hard Rock, sure it looked like a typical corporate event, but most people there were clearly longtime Aerosmith fans watching the next generation play with a hero of theirs for one special night.
When TAB The Band and Joe Perry finally left the dressing room area and hit the stage — they were nearly twenty minutes late, around 9:20pm ET — it didn't take long for the audience to realize they were in for a treat. This was not going to be merely Joe Perry joining Tab The Band to jam on their tunes; it was mostly the other way around, which I'm sure did not disappoint many in attendance.
First came the bouncy blues rock of "Roadrunner" (a Bo Diddley cover Aerosmith recorded for Honkin' On Bobo). Next was a rockin' but not exactly note-perfect rendition of "Walkin' The Dog" and a slew of other lesser known Aerosmith tunes and selections from Joe Perry's own solo catalogue.
Many of the songs performed this night were, according to Joe Perry either longtime requests from Aerosmith fans that he hardly ever gets a chance to play live, or jams that his kids always wanted him to play. "Combination," from the classic Rocks LP was a hit with the crowd. "Bright Light Fright," from 1977's Draw The Line album was ferocious, and as the Aerosmith axe man pointed out, was written during the Sex Pistols' heyday and influenced by them. Perry performed it on what he called the ugliest (black) guitar you'll ever see, the same exact one he used on the set of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" video with Run D.M.C. The on stage banter continued as Joe told the crowd that his wife, who was in that video, was also pregnant with Tony at the time.
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