{"id":15959,"date":"2019-03-28T10:45:07","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T14:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=15959"},"modified":"2020-07-02T10:06:47","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T14:06:47","slug":"wedding-bands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wedding-bands\/","title":{"rendered":"Wedding Bands"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"issuuembed\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px;\" data-configid=\"37604829\/68736827\"><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.js\" async=\"true\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">April 2019 | <a href=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/apr19-wedding-bands.pdf\">view full story as .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<h4 class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>\u2026to have and to hold and to dance like no one\u2019s watching.<\/i><\/span><\/h4>\n<p class=\"p1\"><strong>By Evelyn Waugh<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-15975 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/apr19-wedding-bands-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"apr19-wedding-bands\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/apr19-wedding-bands-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/apr19-wedding-bands-200x134.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/apr19-wedding-bands.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">Your wedding reception is a dream set to music\u2014if the music\u2019s right. We\u2019re all still recovering from the \u201cElectric Slide.\u201d Our advice to couples: leave it to the professionals. But are these professionals live musicians or DJs?<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"p3\"><b>Soul Man<\/b><\/h4>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">\u201cMusic is a big part of the energy, especially during the last two hours of the evening,\u201d says wedding planner Emily Hricko of <b>Emily Elizabeth Events<\/b>. She\u2019s convinced that a live band is a matrimony must-have for contagious dance moves.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\"><b>Charles Brown<\/b>, an icon in the Maine wedding band industry, isn\u2019t so sure, even though he\u2019s seen it all from every awkward father-daughter dance to rowdy great aunts. He started the <b>Red Light Revue<\/b> in 1986, a rhythm-and-blues band that he fronted for four years. Then came <b>Papa Loves Mambo<\/b>, a \u201cCaribbean-oriented powerhouse\u201d which Brown started with Andrea Antognoni, his wife, in 1990. For ten years, they rocked hundreds of weddings all over the Northeast. But in his eyes, live wedding bands are being shoved (or maybe gently pushed) off stage. It\u2019s likely he can play any song from any playlist. But ever the jokester, he asks in his website, \u201cDo you want your parents and their friends to enjoy it as much as you do? We play a bouncy swing sound that boots everyone on the dance floor, nine to ninety. You say Uncle Don wants to get up and sing \u2018Danny Boy?\u2019 He\u2019s on next. It\u2019s party time. Problem solved.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">\u201cMost people don\u2019t use live music anymore,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a generational thing\u2014the Spotify Generation. They\u2019d rather make a mix: exactly the tune they want, when they want it. If you have a band you like, you have to trust them, you know? And most people don\u2019t do that anymore.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<h4 class=\"p3\"><b>Hey, Mr. DJ<\/b><\/h4>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">Rebecca Strout married last July in Hollis. She hired a DJ to \u201chelp with the flow of the night\u2014directing people towards the reception, dinner, and first dances.\u201d<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Wedding planner Kathleen Pacella of <b>Fancy Figs <\/b>in Brunswick, says \u201cthe appeal of hiring a DJ or having a personal playlist is the cost savings, hearing the originals, and a wider range in music genres. DJs can often source recorded versions of songs that might be really challenging for a band to perform live.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">Megan McKenna, a 2020 bride-to-be, lives in Portland and teaches dance. \u201cI\u2019m picky. I always wanted a DJ,\u201d she says. \u201cI like the idea that I can make a playlist and know exactly what I\u2019ll be hearing.\u201d She went to five weddings last year. All of them used DJs. <\/span><\/p>\n<h4 class=\"p3\"><b>Stage Stunners<\/b><\/h4>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">Yet, there\u2019s still something about a live band. The romance of a performance is unparalleled by even the most thought-out playlist. \u201cLive bands infuse weddings with a ton of energy. They\u2019re generally equipped to play all the current hits, and they can interact with guests in ways that a DJ cannot,\u201d Pacella says. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">Rachel Sisson of <b>R.L. Sisson Events<\/b>, Southwest Harbor, agrees.- \u201cLive bands tend to engage guests more and keep people on the dance floor. The dancing portion of the evening is often most important to many of my clients, so they hire a great band to keep the party going.\u201d We don\u2019t just want to dance. We want to be swept away.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">The <b>Dapper Gents<\/b> have been rocking weddings from Portland to Tampa for six years. Their favorite part is the energy of the reception. \u201cCelebrating with a room of like-minded people is always a blast,\u201d Jacob McCurdy, lead singer, says. He recalls a reception so lively it belongs in the fraternity comedy <i>Animal House<\/i>. \u201cLast summer we played at one of our favorite wedding venues, Caswell Farm. It was a serious party. The crowd was brimming with energy\u2014at one point they lit 50 sparklers and surprised the bride and groom with massive bottles of Champagne and ros\u00e9. Minutes felt like hours while they tried to find a bottle opener. Eventually, once the bottle was opened, an impromptu limbo contest broke out. That\u2019s the first time I managed to do the limbo while playing guitar.\u201d Now that\u2019s one way to ring in a happily ever after. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">Jenny Lou Drew of <b>Jenny Lou &amp; Something Blue<\/b> recalls the start of her own happily-ever-after: \u201cAfter playing a wedding at Stone Mountain Arts Center, my husband (Scott Morgan) and I had our dream wedding at Stone Mountain.\u201d So it began. Drew and Morgan, who is also Something Blue\u2019s guitarist, energized weddings from 2006 to 2018. Now, she says, \u201cwe\u2019re on a wedding hiatus while we focus on personal work, like the upcoming release of our Americana album, <i>Rockbiter<\/i>. We plan to be back at the wedding band thing in 2020. Weddings are a joy to be a part of because the people are alight with love and happiness. When you play clubs, it\u2019s a mixed bag of mostly strangers. But the crowd at a wedding is friends and family, and they\u2019re there for a night to remember. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">\u201cI\u2019ll never forget when we played my friend\u2019s wedding and her husband got on the drums for \u2018Wild Thing.\u2019 The bridesmaids held her up in the air in front of the stage while she fanned herself with a paper fan\u2014I wish I\u2019d gotten that one on video!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h4 class=\"p3\"><b>Off the Charts, On the Floor<\/b><\/h4>\n<p class=\"p2\">So how do you keep the party going all night? \u201cWe play run-to-the-dance-floor classics like \u2018Play that Funky Music\u2019 and \u2018Jesse\u2019s Girl,\u2019\u201d says <b>Time Pilots<\/b> frontman Jon Goodman. \u201cYou recognize [them] the second you hear them, and they just make you want to dance!\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">\u201cI\u2019ve done so many weddings. Let me reflect,\u201d says Cedric Jackson II, former singer in <b>One Step Ahead Band. <\/b>Bassist David Lebleu says it\u2019s all about reading the audience. \u201cWe try to have fun ourselves, and we play the songs that get people up and moving around. Sometimes during the first set, during dinner, we can get away with songs that we love as musicians. It\u2019s about finding songs that you love playing and that people recognize.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">Johnna Dionne, manager of<b> Wavelength<\/b>, says, \u201cWe play an energetic and diverse song list that brings everybody to their feet.\u201d She says the band is \u201cversatile, comfortable performing in multiple genres. We work with couples to tailor a set list, and they allow us to pick the right music to keep the dance floor alive.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s2\">And that\u2019s quite the job when dealing with a few Maine relatives who\u2019ve been dancing closely with our dear friend Geary most of the night. \u201cOccasionally, well-meaning guests ask us to play a song the couple specifically asked us to avoid,\u201d Goodman cringes. \u201cThink \u2018Chicken Dance.\u2019\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">Any of these bands will make your big day a blast. Sounds like you can have your cake and eat it, too. As for Charles Brown, wedding singer extraordinaire and Spotify cynic, you aren\u2019t likely to find him singing at a ceremony anytime soon, but you can hear him every third Monday at <b>Blue<\/b> with Andrea Restarting at 6 p.m.\u2014\u201cGeriatric hours,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Your wedding reception is a dream set to music\u2014if the music\u2019s right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,117],"tags":[335,333,331,127,126,332,330],"class_list":["post-15959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-wedding-guides","tag-april-2019","tag-djs","tag-live-music","tag-maine","tag-portland","tag-wedding-bands","tag-weddings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15959"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18935,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15959\/revisions\/18935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}