When musicians on the Happy Together tour perform, they don’t have to ask the crowd to sing along.
“Everything we do is recognizable from the band’s catalogue,” said Mark Volman, aka “Flo” of The Turtles featuring Flo and Eddie. “We really don’t have to worry about saying ‘Come and join in.’”
The Turtles featuring Flo and Eddie -- famous for the 1967 hit song “Happy Together” -- is just one of the acts playing as part of the tour at the RiverCenter tonight. Other performers include The Association, The Grass Roots, The Buckinghams and Mark Lindsay, a former lead singer of Paul Revere and the Raiders.
Working with each of the bands on tour has been fun, Volman said.
“It’s almost like being on the road with family,” he said. “There’s a lot of camaraderie and a lot of joking going on.”
The first Happy Together tour was in 1985. It was revived in 2010, for the tour’s 25th anniversary and returns this year. Volman attributed the success of the tour to the fans.
“I think really a lot of the fans were the reason it came out,” he said. “Each group created a significant fan base.”
Though Baby Boomers comprise most of the tour’s core fan base, younger generations also know ’60’s music because it was played in their households, Volman said. Older fans bring their children and grandchildren to shows and other musicians revive other pieces of 60’s nostalgia, he added.
“Vinyl is even popular again,” he said. “Great musicians like Jack White have made vinyl popular again.”
Volman said he thought fans loved the music because of the memories they associate with it.
“People have so many great memories of these songs,” he said. “It must be just a bombardment of memories. Every time these records played, something important was going on in their lives.”
The fans’ love of the music created happy memories for the musicians on the tour as well.
“Happy Together is a very proper name,” Volman said. “Fans bought these records that gave those artists that time in their lives. We owe them so much.”
Sara Pauff,reporter, can be reached at 706-320-4469.
