Runnin’ Down A Dream — Tom Petty Tribute Band John Purtel photo

It has been over a year since I last touched bases with Roger Howard, drummer for the Tom Petty tribute band known as Runnin’ Down a Dream, so I wanted to find out what has been happening with this successful Maine-based act. When I reached him via the phone at his home the first topic was an easy one …

CONCERT INFO

NAME RUNNIN’ DOWN A DREAM — TOM PETTY TRIBUTE BAND
TIME: 7 p.m.
DATE: Saturday, Oct. 19
VENUE: Somerset Abbey
ADDRESS: 98 Main St., Madison
TICKETS: $35
PHONE: 207-696-5800
WEBSITE: rundownadream.com

Q: I hear that you’re coming back to the Somerset Abbey on the 19th of this month, correct?
A: Yup, we play there every year, and it gets better and better every year, it is truly one of our favorite places to play. The audience is great and the owners couldn’t be nicer, they’re really good people. It’s a huge entertainment venue for that area and it’s always a ton of fun to go there and we’re definitely excited about that. It is ‘way in Western Maine and we’re always looking to get further and further away from our home base.

Q: And where is your home base?
A: Well, we’re pretty much Southern Maine; a couple of us are from the Portland area, a couple of us are in the Lewiston-Auburn area, and our keyboard player is out in Fryeburg, he’s got to drive all the time (chuckle). We just did a gig out in Casco so he was the closest to that one, it was at Point Sebago, and that was a tribute weekend: there was a Rod Stewart tribute on Friday night, a Zeppelin tribute on Saturday afternoon, and then we were the headliners on Saturday night. In fact, the band’s discussed the possibility of putting together a show next summer like that with tribute bands from around the area. We think it would be a lot of fun. The only difficulty would be finding a venue to perform in.

Q: Speaking of tribute acts, I’ve been doing a lot of interviews with such groups lately, there seems to be quite a few of them out there nowadays.
A: Just in the last year, I’ve noticed a lot more of them in the state, or coming from out of state into Maine, so we’ve got a lot more competition and that was not the case even a year or two before, so the idea of a tribute band has really blown up.

Q: How long has Runnin’ Down a Dream been together?
A: We started doing this eight years ago and there were very few of us around so it was, “Oh, a Tom Petty tribute band, let’s do that!” But there are a lot more choices now so we’re looking to move further and further away.

Q: Would you go out of the state?
A: We’ve done a lot of shows in New Hampshire this past year, or since I’ve talked with you, that were really fun venues from Laconia to Manchester and even over to Conway, just west of Fryeburg.

Q: That’s about 30 minutes from where I live, actually.
A: Oh, really? We played the Majestic Theatre there and all of those shows in New Hampshire were a big success. It always blows our minds when we get to places we haven’t played before because they don’t know us and yet we sell these places out.

Q: To what do you attribute that success?
A: Well, the audience already likes the music. And because we’ve been doing this a long time we’ve really polished the act so the songs that we play are really fine-tuned to what we think they want to hear. It’s so gratifying to get to these new places we’ve never been before, far from home, and they love us, it’s thrilling and the reaction is what really tells us that we’ve done a good job. Another element that plays a big part of our success is that you have to sound as much like the original artist as possible or don’t bother, really that’s my opinion. If you’re in the audience and you can close your eyes and think you’re listening to the original artist then that’s a good tribute band.

Q: Now, because you’ve performed at Somerset Abbey before, do you try to mix up the set list with some different songs that maybe weren’t played at that venue before?
A: Yes, but there are a certain number of songs we have to play and we do those no matter where we are, there are also what you would call the deep cuts that we love playing but you can’t do a lot of them because some people just want to hear the hits, so we work them in around the hits. We have a variety of those that we can use and most of the time we get a great reaction when we do those songs.

Q: Is there anything, Roger that you’d like to pass on to the folks reading this article about your upcoming performance?
A: Yes, there are just a handful of venues that we hope we can always play and always look forward to, and they are interspersed throughout the year; and we generally will be at Somerset Abbey in the fall. The acoustics in there are so great, the audience there is so appreciative, and we’re so comfortable there, having been there a number of times before, that it’s always a gig that has kind of a magical quality to the performance. So playing Somerset Abbey is one of the peaks of our entire year, it’s really the highlight of our live performances.

Lucky Clark, a 2018 “Keeping the Blues Alive” Award winner, has spent more than 50 years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@myfairpoint.net if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.