By Terelle Jerricks, Managing Editor
Zachary and Dylan Zmed are bringing the Everly Brothers Experience to the Grand Annex on March 10. The siblings can flat-out sing and play the dickens out of their steel-string acoustic guitars. In fact, they play Everly Brothers hit songs looking and sounding very nearly like the Everly Brothers — right down to their Ivy League suits and their country-harmonizing ways. Just don’t call them a cover band. Even “tribute band” does not do justice to what they aim to do in every performance.
Think you’re unfamiliar with the music of the Everly Brothers? Stop thinking. Just listen. The Everly Brothers gave us hits like Wake Up Little Susie, All I Have to Do Is Dream and Cathy’s Clown.
The Everly Brothers emerged at a time when it seemed everyone was stretching the status quo. The civil rights movement was challenging this country’s racial caste system; the visceral, on-the-ground reporting of the Vietnam War galvanized the American public to form an anti-war movement. And rock ‘n’ roll and the rapid expansion then restriction of work opportunities for women spurred on the sexual revolution.
Through it all, the Everly Brothers remained noncontroversial, even nostalgic of a more peaceful and more innocent America. Even if it never really existed. That’s not a knock against the brothers. It’s just to say that in a social moment fraught with tension and unease, there’s a place for good music that shifts attention away from the things that are pulling us apart.
The Everly Brothers had cross genre appeal that may have had a great deal to do with the moment in which they emerged. This moment was created because of Elvis Presley and other white artists who ensured that black music would no longer be easily segregated in the race music aisle of the record store. The line between country music and rock ‘n’ roll was blurred by artists like Buddy Holly and Ray Charles.
In a 1986 Rolling Stone interview, Don Everly noted that when they first came out in the late 1950s, the record companies didn’t like rock ‘n’ roll and interviewers from the press, were always old curmudgeons compared to the artists they were covering. Then the world changed when the Sixties came along, and everyone suddenly got real young, and if you were more that 30, they didn’t trust you. Don was comfortable with the change that was happening during that time and wanted to be a part of it. Phil Everly — not so much.
During that same interview, Phil admitted that the Sixties weren’t his cup of tea.
“I never bought that philosophy that, you know, we’re all brothers and that’ll solve everything. And I never believed that music dictated the times. I always thought it reflected them. We were against the grain in that period, and there was a lot of confusion about our direction. Maybe we were just losing the freshness of it all, losing interest.”
The Everly Brothers didn’t always get along with each other, and their music didn’t necessarily keep up with the times. In a way, their music remained timeless.
On The Everly Brothers Experience website, Zachary and Dylan say they are not impersonators, but aim to honor the aesthetics of the Everly Brothers’ sounds and honor their place in music history, all the while having a little fun telling their personal story.
Zachary and Dylan began developing The Everly Brothers Experience show in 2016 along with their partner and drummer, Burleigh Drummond. Since then, the trio has traveled the world sharing the Everly Brothers’ sound and music in iconic clubs, theaters, performing arts centers, casinos, ballrooms and coliseums.
A part of that experience is their accounts of meeting people connected to the Everly Brothers. One day they met and spent time with Del Bryant, son of one of the most significant and prolific songwriting teams in the 20th century, Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. Del became a significant songwriter in his own right, and also spent time as CEO and president of BMI records.
The Zmeds also relate the experience of becoming friends with great 1960s pop singer Julie Grant, who toured the United Kingdom with the Everly Brothers, Bo Diddley and the Rolling Stones in 1963.
The bottom line is that The Everly Brothers Experience promises more than a simple tribute band can offer. The Everly Brothers Experience promises respite from tension-ridden angst of this moment.
March 10
Time: 8 pm
Cost: $25
Details: www.grandvision.org
Venue: The Grand Annex, 434 W. 6th St., San Pedro