WORCESTER—Most importantly, Brett Brumby rocks the finest boat shoes out of all members of New England Yacht Club. But while he’s got the slickest footwear for the show, the guitarist-singer was the least acquainted with the genre before helping to form this new yacht rock tribute.
Regardless, the pieces are falling into place like a regatta on a blissful summer day.
This smooth and polished musical genre dubbed yacht rock once crouched under the umbrella of soft rock, easy listening, or adult contemporary. However, aficionados of this distinctive style, crafted between the late 70s and early 80s, characterized by velvety melodies, intricate harmonies, tight rhythm sections, and embellished with elements like strings, horns, flutes, or the occasional marimba, yearned for a dedicated definition or subcategory.
While officially coined in 2005, yacht rock experienced a surge in popularity as a subgenre over the past decade, thanks to satellite radio, Pandora stations, and dedicated fan groups engaged in daily debates on social media over whether specific tunes are “yacht or nyacht?”
Ruled by yacht rock royalty such as Michael McDonald, Christopher Cross, Kenny Loggins, Ambrosia, Hall and Oates, Steely Dan, the Little River Band, and numerous one-hit wonders, enthusiasts are donning boat shoes, Hawaiian shirts, floppy straw hats, and playfully referring to friends as “Lovey.” They’re even sipping on pina coladas (yes, “Escape-the Pina Colada Song” qualifies!).
Whether in beachfront locales or elsewhere, fans nationwide are embracing local yacht rock tributes. Worcester County has recently welcomed a first-class crew to the scene with the launch of the New England Yacht Club.
At its core are captains Lisa Wilson Brumby and Brett Brumby, husband-and-wife duo and veterans of the local music scene who carved a name with the iconic She’s Busy, and a handful of iterations of the folk-rock group–most of which still play (She’s Busy is as busy as ever).
“Brett and I have taken our love of vocal harmonies and instrument playing with us to NEYC, but it’s a very different feel from She’s Busy,” said Lisa. “Getting into the Steely Dan/Kenny Loggins/Michael McDonald stuff is deep. It challenges us in wonderful ways. We are stretching.”
Co-captains of the mighty Club are bassist Ethan Bates, keyboardist Nancy Marshall and legendary drummer Donnie Sadowski, all of whom jump in on vocals, too.
“I have my Thurston HowelI, III shoes ready to go at all times!” said Sadowski.
Starting out in the well-known Tonelli Band in 1981, Lisa has been gigging out since she was 18. With her singer and sister Selena Wilson and guitarist-singer Rob Adams, She’s Busy was among the upper echelon of locals dominating the club scene, first as a trio playing mostly originals. When Adams left in 1994, Brett joined on guitar and vocals, along with different drummers and bassists along the way.
Lisa also played for many years with Steely Dan tribute 9Teen, which included Sadowski, bassist Bobby “Bones” Moltedo and keyboardist Michael Murphy, and played a whole lot of other stuff “related” to Steely Dan. For several years, she was a member of the Boston band the Experts, which she joined in 2013.
“Then there’s [the duo] Brumbylon with me and Brett,” said Lisa. “I mean, jeez, we’ve been married for almost 26 years, but together for more than that. Now we’ve got NEYC. The projects continue.”
Those familiar with She’s Busy might assume tackling yacht rock wouldn’t be much of a stretch, but Lisa said it’s actually quite different than the folky classic rock the band mostly focused on.
“She’s Busy has morphed over the years like Fleetwood Mac did, but I wouldn’t call us a yacht rock band,” said Wilson Brumby. “Maybe some of our material, such as ‘Southern Cross’ and the Stevie Nicks stuff, is.”
The style is so different for Brett, Lisa quipped that she “doesn’t see much of him these days. He’s always practicing. We have to book dates.”
“I’ve always viewed [She’s Busy] as kind of a classic rock band with lots of vocals,” said Brett. “The yacht rock genre is pretty new to me. I’ve never played these songs and found it quite challenging. I’d heard them growing up, but I was more of a Zep/Floyd guy.”
So, then, what makes yacht rock “yachty?”
Bates defined it as “popular music from the mid-70s to mid-80s, very melodic, easy on the ears, with great grooves, slick production, and fantastic vocal and musical arrangements. Imagine what you’d like to hear as you set sail on a yacht on a beautiful summer day.”
“I would even dance to yacht rock music, and I’m always more at home on the stage than the dance floor,” added Lisa. “The stuff is just so catchy.”
As with other genres that have experienced a resurgence, yacht rock is working its way onto the younger audience’s playlists.
“I’m thrilled that younger generations are catching on,” said Lisa. “There’s a sea of mediocrity out there in the music world, and the good stuff seems to get lost in it. There was a time when you actually had to be good to make the airwaves. Because they hail from a previous era, yacht rock artists and songs fall into that category. The music has lasted because it’s good. Everyone craves good music.”
So far, New England Yacht Club’s setlist includes an eclectic mix of songs that the members “love, and that our tight little five-piece can nail. We all play instruments and sing lead and backups, so that gives us a lot of variety in what we choose. If it’s great music, you want to honor that. Don’t take it outside unless you can really make it better.”
Since he was born in 1992, Bates feels a bit funny being the resident “expert” on choosing cover choices for the band. But while Brett has the best boat shoes in the band, Bates is likely the “yachtiest” of them all.
“For me, yacht rock is a wide spectrum of easy-listening rock music that includes lots of different artists, songs, and styles,” said Bates, “but almost all of it comes from the mid ’70s thrrough the mid ’80s and draws influence from jazz, soft rock, and singer/songwriter music of the time.
“Christopher Cross’s ‘Sailing’ is sort of the quintessential yacht rock song, checking all the boxes of the genre’s best features: complex but listenable composition and arrangement, emphasis on vocal harmonies, instrumental virtuosity, and lyrics about sailing and the ocean. “
Steely Dan’s albums “Aja” and “Gaucho,” too, are staples, said Bates, adding that the Mcdaddy of the ship still remains Michael McDonald, who’s either featured, sings backups or helped write just about every yacht rock gem out there.
“If it sounds great and makes you want to take a sunset boat ride, it’s probably yacht rock!” said Bates, who planted the seeds for the idea of a yacht rock band in Sadowski’s head about ten years ago.
Sadowski, whose career behind the skins includes bands such as the Ed Sullivans, Down East, 9Teen, the Doloreans and Solar Jazz, was well-equipped for the cruise.
“He told me of this new genre called yacht rock,” said Sadowski. “I told him that I grew up with that stuff and did a lot of Bread, Seals & Crofts, Loggins & Messina, Doobie Brothers and Orleans in the early Down East days. We loved it because of the songwriting, production, and challenging vocals they all had. That continued with 9Teen and the Steely Dan stuff.”
When Sadowski ran into Brett and Lisa last summer, the idea to try a new project popped up.
“I said Nancy Marshall from The Deloreans and Ethan Bates from BLB would fit nicely,” said Sadowski. “So, we all decided rather early on to just go with the ‘yacht rock’ thing, and here we are. Two of the best female singers and three solid guy vocals. We blend well together, and everyone knows how to listen. Plus, everyone plays well, and we take whatever time we need to nail down the parts. I’m still a little surprised how well this stuff goes over. But we’re having a blast dressing up and bringing back great memories for everyone.”
Born in Uxbridge and growing up in a very musical family, Marshall has been in bands since she was 14, and moved to Nashville in the mid-’80s, working in studios there recording lots of song demos and background vocals. As a songwriter, she’s also got a number of releases on Spotify and other streaming platforms. Marshall returned from Nashville in ‘99 to teach at the Berklee College of Music, also joining 9Teen, which ultimately morphed into the Deloreans and still plays regularly.
“I’m so excited to be part of this new venture, NEYC,” Marshall said. “These songs are ones that I’ve always loved, but have rarely gotten to perform. And to me, what makes them so special is the beautiful songwriting, great chord progressions, and especially, the background vocals! I think that’s been the most fun with this group because everyone loves singing the background parts as well as the leads, and it’s been so easy to sing with these folks, it’s like buttuh!”
The NE Yacht Club, though, are not “purists,” according to Lisa. At least not yet. Sprinkled amongst the breezy grooves are some tunes that fit well with the genre, but wouldn’t “exactly be in the top 100, like Bonnie Raitt or Grace Potter, for example.”
“We aim for the sweet spot between the ‘heavy hitters’ of the genre, what feels best for our tastes and abilities, and what is going to get people up on their feet,” she said. “All of us are professionals, and our combined approach has created an entity that I think is both accessible and unique.”
Bates added, “Now that the genre’s been hugely popular for several years, YouTube and other streaming services are loaded up with excellent playlists for the genre, which is almost always where we pull our setlist choices from. We do play quite a few of the staples, but also play lots of deeper cuts that may not make the playlists. Since we all alternate lead vocals, we’ve been in a pattern where each member brings their lead singer song idea to the band and we go with the ones that stick and sound good in our 5-piece arrangement. We’d like to add a regular sax player eventually, since so many of these songs rely heavily on horn parts and solos, but we have plenty of work cut out for us in the meantime.”
It’s not easy to nail this stuff, as any musician knows. It took a lot of extremely seasoned studio pros to execute it, and engineers to capture it, originally. Those harmonies, rock-tight rhythm section, intricate melodies and layered, involved compositions don’t always translate to a live performance.
“Brett and I are building all kinds of new neural pathways – brain gymnastics!” said Lisa. “I’ve never played keys [before] in my life, and I don’t read music, but I’m playing horn parts and string parts, and even stand-alone solo parts on songs like Steely Dan’s ‘Hey Nineteen’ and ‘Dirty Work.’ What a learning curve it has been already. It’s been so refreshing to venture out of my own wheelhouse. I like exploring that edge – it forces growth and nudges me out of complacency.”
“Most of them are challenging for me,” added Brett. “It’s a different way of playing than I’m used to. ‘Hey Nineteen’ and’ Josie,’ ‘Minute by Minute,’ and ‘What You Gonna Do?’ were tough ones. It’s new to me. It has been very challenging to learn this material. I don’t know where Steely Dan got their chords but it’s certainly been an education.”
Bates said the difficulty that comes with learning and playing yacht rock is one of the main reasons he enjoys being in the band. For him, too, his other band—the Blue Light Bandits—works frequently as a cover band, and hits several yacht rock numbers on its regular setlist.
When asked if NEYC may be adding some particularly difficult gems such as “Arthur’s Theme” or “This is It,” Bates replied, “I would love for us to play ‘Arthur’s Theme,’ and learning ‘Heart to Heart’ by Kenny Loggins has been the most challenging for me, and likely others in the band. It demands 100 percent of all five of us with its instrumental and vocal arrangements. Nancy, who sings lead and chose this one, patiently walked each of us through our parts over several months of practices until we got it under our belts.”
Some other songs beyond those mentioned on the regular rotation of a growing list (there are about 35 currently) include “Baby Come Back,” “Georgy Porgy,” “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do),” “Lowdown,” “Ride Like the Wind,” “So Into You,” What a Fool Believes” and “Sailing.”
“We take pride in playing these songs as accurately as possible,” added Bates, “but we’ve also enjoyed adding our own flavor to some of these arrangements. We found that so many of these songs end with fade-outs in their studio recordings, so we’ve enjoyed the challenge of coming up with our own unique endings to keep the energy up and give our audience something new at the end of a familiar song.
Capable hands are needed for such things, but it’s easy like Sunday morning to trust these shipmates will get it right.
“It’s music I’ve loved all my life,” said Lisa. “I just didn’t know it was an actual genre until I met Ethan—go figure, the youngest member of the band, ha ha. When he suggested it I was like, ‘What’s yacht rock?’ I was pleasantly surprised to find out. I am very familiar with the music, so it feels like home to me. The vocals…OMG. I’m in heaven.”
The band also dresses the part, working the wardrobe of the seasoned cruisers, and we’ve established Brett has the superior footwear in the band.
“We enjoy the dress-up aspect of the band’s theme,” said Bates. “I was thrilled in particular because I’m a camp shirt guy and now have a great reason to wear my collection throughout the cold weather months when we gig. We’re hoping our audience catches on and starts dressing up in YR styles for our shows. Brett has the best boat shoes by far, though.”
“Hands down, Brett has the best boat shoes,” confirmed Lisa. “What a hoot – I never thought I’d see him wear boat shoes! But Brett is a very cool dude, and he makes it work. I think everyone in the band is keeping pace with the yacht rock look/vibe, and we encourage our fans to dress the part with us. There’s some theater to it I suppose, maybe it’s even a bit campy. We’re having fun, but we’re also serious about honoring and reflecting the genre.”
New England Yacht Club plays Sunday, March 17, from 3-6 p.m. at the MCL Club, Lake Ave., Worcester. There’s no cover charge, and shepherd’s pie and corned beef sandwiches will be available.
Charlene Arsenault may be reached at carsenault@theworcesterguardian.org
