A band that formed in Athens during the early 1980s is set to play at the Ohio University Inn Saturday.
After rocking behind the movie screen in Athena Cinema and selling out the second floor of The Union Bar and Grill, The Back Beat will grace Athens again for the first time since 1983.
The Back Beat, a guitar-oriented band with a rockabilly and muscular power pop sound, formed in Athens during the early ‘80s. The band is set to return Saturday at 6 p.m. at the Ohio University Inn. There is no cover fee, but donations are welcome.
The Back Beat will mostly perform originals with a few select covers, such as songs from The Beatles. The band will perform 30 songs in two sets.
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“It’s going to be an interesting sort of time capsule of what was extremely hot in June of 1983,” Mark Drop, who plays guitar and vocals for the band, said.
This is the first time the group is playing together since 1983.
The original band consists of Ohio University alumni Drop, Tim Frew and David Umbenhour, who all came together after their other bands broke up, Umbenhour said. Without a bass player, the band advertised for one in newspapers. Erich Ackermann, a bassist and graduate student at the time, soon responded.
“The band was like, ‘Eh, I don’t know. He’s older than us, really loud. I don’t know if this is going to work out,’ ” Umbenhour, the drummer, said. “He came in for an audition, and I asked him to be in the band.”
The band had planned to reunite in the 2000s. After being in Croatia for some time, Ackermann was planning to return to the United States for the first time since the late ‘80s and was excited to reunite, Umbenhour said. Unfortunately, before the original foursome could get together, Ackermann had a heart attack and died, thus cancelling the planned show.
The remaining members of the band have asked former collaborator David McLean to learn the bass parts to replace Ackermann for the Saturday show.
Frew said he couldn’t imagine having anyone else play the part, since McLean was an inspiration for him to form a band in Athens in the first place.
“This gig is a great opportunity to pay it back to (McLean) by making him play a whole bunch of shit he didn’t know before,” Drop joked.
Although it’s not unusual today to play original rock ’n’ roll songs, McLean said it was difficult when everyone just wanted to hear Led Zeppelin covers and thought the band was strange for playing originals.
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Folk and disco were also popular during the time, but the band had “the desire to get out there and play,” Drop said. Even when the band’s big gig at Spring Fest got canceled, the men decided to move their show to a house party instead.
Prior to being a bar, The Union was a hotel. The band used money from their weekend gigs as rent for an old hotel room.
One night while rehearsing, a cop arrived with the manager of The Athena Cinema because the music was so loud people couldn’t hear a movie, Umbenhour said.
The band made a deal with the manger after the cop left and found a new rehearsal space behind the movie screen in the Athena Cinema when movies were not playing.
In the ‘80s, the band was fun despite the hard work, Frew said, but an important aspect was the men’s tendency to not be afraid of acting like fools on stage while playing their hearts out.
“It’s crazy how fast we used to play,” Drop said. “It’s madness trying to figure out chord changes. … The learning curve has been pretty steep here. I’m hoping when we all get together, it falls into place.”
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