A rare unplugged-style show is coming to the Jane Pickens Theater & Event Center, and thanks to Spectacle Live, we’ve got a pair of tickets and a “meet and greet” opportunity to the show. To enter to see Marc Roberge, e-mail Ken Abrams at mrabrams11@gmail.com by Friday, November 3 at 5PM. Two sets of winners will be announced – enter now!
Marc Roberge is best known as lead singer/guitarist in the multi-platinum-selling band O.A.R. Known for hits like “Shattered,” “Love and Memories,” and “This Town,” the band has built a loyal fanbase since getting together in 1996. We spoke to Roberge recently, and learned more about the history of the band and plans for the upcoming Newport gig.
No doubt, the band’s roots run deep – O.A.R. first got together in eighth grade. “Gosh, I can remember it so clearly … we were neighborhood kids, we rode our bikes to band practice. I wanted to write songs because my older brother was in a band, (RI-based) Foxtrot Zulu. We just wanted to be involved with live music,” said Roberge.
“Our drummer Chris had a drum set because his dad was a drummer,” Roberge continued. “Every day after school we’d watch the Genisis Mama Tour on VHS with Phil Collins and Chester Thompson playing the dual drums, then it was Pearl Jam Unplugged. So we go in the basement and play these songs, and Richard comes with his guitar, and Benj with his bass. We called ourselves the goonies of rock and roll. The 8th-grade talent show was our very first opportunity to play in front of people outside the basement – we were hooked immediately.”
After high school, and ready for college, the band searched for “the biggest college town with the most college bars” to potentially reach the most fans. They chose to go to Ohio State, together as a band, and within a year, they all managed to get in. The rest is history.
O.A.R. was there at the beginning of the digital music age and benefitted from the original music-sharing service. “Napster was gigantic; when it showed up, our entire world changed because our music was being delivered around the world,” Roberge explained.
“It changed our entire business plan. We found out where the hotspots were – Nevada, Arizona, these places we knew where people were really downloading a lot. On weekends, we would get into a van, or we would fly to Arizona and play shows. People knew all the words, and we knew why: because of Napster. We were selling CDs, printing them up, and we would send them to different colleges, and we were collecting e-mail addresses from college kids.”
His advice to budding musicians: “My very first thought is always reps, play anywhere, for anyone, at any time. I see on the internet they make fun of the guy who pulls out a guitar or ukelele at a campfire. Be that guy!” laughed Roberge. “You start to really learn how to express your music, and the good stuff really boils to the top.”
The band has built a large following over the years, with returning fans comprising a large portion of the audience at shows. “My advice is always to go play shows, get in the van, pay your dues, and all that other stuff, on the internet – keep doing that too, and man, it will give you a fanbase… what I like to call fans for life.”
In Newport, fans can expect to hear O.A.R. classics and a few of Roberge’s favorite covers, “the Billy Joel songs, the Johnny Cash songs, Crowded House. I feel like I can sit on the guitar, singing those songs, and then maybe dig a little deeper into how that led me to writing O.A.R. songs, sharing a little more of the story behind the songs. It’s real loose… we play about 20-25 songs. The cover songs, that’s just purely selfish, I’m gonna do ‘Scenes from an Italian Restaurant’ and people say you shouldn’t do that on a guitar,” he laughed.
Get ready for a great night of music. Stephen Kellogg opens. Click here for tickets.
