Pittsburgh ‘supergroup’ Limousine Beach takes its glam-rock over the top
Just before the pandemic hit in midMarch, Dave Wheeler managed to squeeze in a record release show with his heavy boogie-rock band Outsideinside.
His next show, when we get out of this mess, will be more like a ballroom blitz.
The towering singer-guitarist will be rolling out with Limousine Beach, a Pittsburgh “supergroup” steeped in the glamrock of the early ’70s. The band, which formed in spring 2018, finds Wheeler with three members of the metal band Cruces (guitarist Evan Mitchell, bassist Dan Hernandez and drummer Dan Bhutta) with guitarist Jason Sichi of Fist Fight in the Parking Lot.
Yep, that’s three guitarists.
“I wanted to exaggerate what we were doing,” Wheeler says of his work with Outsideinside and previous band Carousel, “so that it was sort of impossible to miss what we were trying to do — take an approach that was a little less nuanced. Not that Carousel was nuanced, but I wanted this to be harder to ignore.”
With Limousine Beach, which released
a three-song EP on Friday, he wipes away some of the sludge and unleashes a more
frontal attack, recalling the brash era of The Sweet and Kiss, with brighter hooks and even rock ’n’ roll swagger from the singer whose voice is so 1974.
He points to The Sweet’s “Desolation Boulevard,” the album with “Ballroom Blitz” and “Fox on the Run,” as inspiration for the songwriting. Initially, the songs were designed for Carousel, but when that band was folding, he took them to the guys from Cruces, who normally play in the heavier, darker vein of Graveyard. Sichi signed on to take it “even more over the top,” Wheeler says.
“It made sense that it was a whole new band because the concept was different than what Carousel was. For instance, we said, ‘Let’s make the songs under 2½ minutes.’ We never would have done that in Carousel.”
“Stealin’ Wine,” the story of an unattended liquor cart on a trans-Atlantic flight, with “Hear You Callin’ ” and “Tiny Hunter” — deemed “sizzle rock” by New York label Tee Pee Records — are the first dispatches from Limousine Beach, which plans to release songs in these little bunches, leading up to a full-length.
The band, which hasn’t seen a stage since February, has its next show set for the Seaside Bike Fest in New Jersey in September.
It’s not clear if that will happen due to the pandemic. As for Wheeler, who had COVID-19 in April, presumably he’s free to move about the country.