Stage Buzz: BoDeans at Art Theater • Hobart, IN
BoDeans
While attending Waukesha South High School in Wisconsin in 1977, buddies Kurt Neumann and Sam Llanas planted the seeds that would soon germinate into Americana roots-rock band BoDeans in 1983.
After the release of its 1986 debut album, Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams, the years of slugging it out in the Milwaukee clubs were part of Neumann’s rite of passage in the music scene. “We didn’t know what we were doing, so we were about as green as you could be,” Neumann explains during a recent phone interview. “Every day was a learning experience, pretty much because we just stayed on the road nonstop for the first year. Then we put out the second record, and before we knew it, we were on tour with U2. All that stuff just happened so fast that you were hanging on for dear life. People seemed to like what was happening.”
On the band’s fifth studio album, 1993’s Go Slow Down, the track “Closer To Free” famously served as the theme song for the smash hit television series Party of Five. It’s the band’s biggest hit, peaking at number 16 on the US Billboard Hot 100. The band had already built up a highly loyal fan base before that song ever got into the top 40, but it served as an added bonus to the band’s career.
“That song had been on the record many years earlier, and one of the supervisors for a TV show had been trying several songs for a theme song for this show,” Neumann remembers. “They just thought that one fit the best. I’m not sure how many people it reached as far as introducing us to a wider audience. Probably the biggest boost to our career was when we were on tour with U2 and playing to arenas and stadiums full of people. That introduced us to a lot of people… and the MTV videos that were played back then and also Triple A radio. We had a lot of music that would be in the top 10 charts for many years on Triple A radio. That’s really where we got known the most to audiences around the country.”
BoDeans’s current 40th anniversary tour heads our way on April 11 in Aurora at the Paramount Theatre, followed by a stop at the historic Art Theater in nearby Hobart, Indiana, on April 18, and also at the Des Plaines Theatre on June 6. As a midwesterner himself, Neumann feels right at home playing in the Chicagoland area. “I think Midwesterners really relate to our music for many reasons, but some of them are really undefinable,” Neumann confesses. “People from that area can relate to what the band is talking about and singing about. With Chicago, they really adopted us as their own right off the bat because WXRT, the radio station there, was always playing us all the time. So, people really knew our music around the Chicago area. So we always felt very much at home there. I think we’ve played most every kind of venue around the Midwest. We’ve played for probably hundreds of thousands of people around Chicago.”
As far as the band’s setlist, Neumann is planning a vast repertoire dating back from the band’s earliest material to its most recent. “I’m trying to give people a retrospective of the earliest stuff to the latest stuff, and kind of touch on stuff all throughout the whole journey of the 40 years,” Neumann admits. “So we split it up into two-hour sets to give people a 15-minute break in between that they could stretch their legs, but it gives us time to play more stuff, more songs. The show itself is pretty high energy, a lot of fun, and people seem to be really liking it.”
See BoDeans at Hobart Art Theater in Hobart, Indiana, on April 18, as well as at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora on April 11 and Des Plaines Theatre on June 6.
-Kelley Simms
Category: Featured, Stage Buzz
