‘Like a Rock,’ Bob Seger’s music given a solid salute

FLAT ROCK —  Steve Kelly and his band The Tribute Kings exuded the passionate, welcoming and energetic style of Bob Seger during a tribute concert April 6 on the mainstage at Flat Rock Playhouse.

Kelly, who last appeared on the FRP stage last year with his tribute to Neil Diamond (“Cherry, Cherry”), made a sizzling return for the Bob Seger salute, which ran April 5-8.

Kelly featured amazing, athletic choreography (especially considering that he was recovering from recent back surgery), magnificent stage presence and had a terrific voice. His band was top-notch, too.

About 200 people attended the two-hour, two-set performance that included such Seger hits as “Night Moves,” “We’ve Got Tonight,” “Old Time Rock and Roll,” “Against the Wind,” “Like a Rock” and “Hollywood Nights.”

The regular show ended with the rollicking “Mary Lou’s Getting Down Tonight,” after which the crowd erupted in a standing ovation. At that point, Kelly and the band gathered side-by-side across the front of the stage, joined hands and bowed in unision. They then left the stage.

As the crowd chanted for more, the band soon returned to perform one more song — “Old Time Rock and Roll” — to the delight of the audience.

With Kelly performing lead vocals, his seven-man band included Dean Babbitt, guitar and backing vocals; Neal Babbitt, drums; Dan Canyon, bass guitar and backing vocals; Christy McKinnin, keyboards and vocals; Roger Keith Wheeler, guitar and backing vocals; Darryl Estes, saxophone and percussion; and George Haage, saxophone, flute and percussion.

The show started with the lively 1977 hit, “The Fire Down Below,” which interestingly was criticized — at the time — by syndicated newspaper advice columnist Ann Landers for glorifying sex. (Seger also would later take heat for the sexual content in the lyrics for another of another of his songs — “The Horizontal Bop” — from Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center.)

The second song of the night was one that Kelly described as “our (and Seger’s) theme song, ‘Main Street.’”

Continuing in a Seger blast-furnace mode, the next song was “Hollywood Nights,” which ignited the audience.

The crowd — women as well as men — seemed to be into the show, as Kelly belted out:

“She stood there bright as the sun on that California coast

He was a Midwestern boy on his own

She looked at him with those soft eyes so innocent and blue

He knew right then he was too far from home....”

Following a rendition of “Here I Am on the Road Again,”  Kelly and his group performed a sublime rendition of “Against the Wind.”

Other memorable first-set songs included “Katmandu,” “Gambling Man” and then the smashing, “Night Moves,” a song that Seger said was inspired from watching the film “American Graffiti.” (“Night Moves,” released in 1976 and topping out at No. 4 on the U.S. pop charts, was, nevertheless, named Single of the Year” for 1977 by Rolling Stone magazine.)

“Night Moves” seemed to be the song of the night and Kelly got the crowd involved in singing along with him on parts of it, 

Alas, the band chose just to perform the original — at its three- or four-minute length — rather than stretching it out into what it merited — a 10-minute or so jam.

The crowd joined in as Kelly sang:

“Workin’ on our night moves. 

And it was summertime. Sweet summertime, summertime. 

And, oh, the wonder. We felt the lightning. 

And we waited on the thunder. Waited on the thunder. 

I awoke last night to the sound of thunder. 

How far off I sat and wondered. 

Started humming a song from 1962. 

Ain’t it funny how the night moves....”

As the group’s rendition of “Night Moves” wound down, Kelly left the stage briefly only to return in a mod jacket with frills (a la Seger) and wrapped up the first set with a rendition of “Beautiful Loser.”

Following a 20-minute intermission, Kelly stepped up his mimicking of Seger’s habit of changing into stylish jackets between songs during the second set.

Among the second set’s memorable songs were “Strut,” “Fire Lake,” “We’ve Got Tonight” and “Blame it on Midnight.”

However, possibly the best song of the second set — based on crowd response — was the solid “Like a Rock.”

Upcoming shows at the Flat Rock Playhouse’s Flat Rock mainstage include “Clue: The Musical,”  May 25-June 9; “The Love List,’ June 14-30; and “Broadway on the Rock,” July 6-21. Showtimes vary.