By Tricia Despres
“For us, yacht rock is more of a mood and a lifestyle than it is a genre.”
Five-year-old Nick Niespodziani rarely went anywhere without his Fisher Price AM/FM player by his side. Coming from its low budget, bright blue speakers came the songs of everyone from Michael Jackson to Neil Diamond, serving up a soundtrack to a rather sweet life.
“I loved his song ‘Heartlight,’ ” the Yacht Rock Revue co-frontman tells Ravinia Magazine about the Diamond classic that would hit the top of the adult contemporary charts in 1982, the same year that brought us the birth of Prince William, the death of John Belushi, and the arrival of the almighty computer. “Listening to that song now, it sounded pretty yachty, you know?”
Yacht rock—it’s a term that has been used and reused, a term that has been somewhat understood but frequently confused, a term that brings with it a slew of different feelings from those who essentially find shelter within it from the reality of the present time. And it’s a form of music that Yacht Rock Revue has built an impressive career on.
“This is the music of my childhood, you know?” Niespodziani says with a passion that routinely comes out during his renditions of the most overly emotional songs of the ’70s and ’80s. “For us, yacht rock is more of a mood and a lifestyle than it is a genre. When you come to see us play”—as rock lovers can do at Ravinia on July 31—“you’re going to hear Steely Dan and Ambrosia, but we might throw in a Whitney Houston or a Queen song in there too. Who knows?”
It’s this rather haphazard, happy-feeling playlist featuring the unforgettable melodies of artists such as Daryl Hall & John Oates, Toto, Kenny Loggins, and Christopher Cross that fans of the seven-member Yacht Rock Revue can’t get enough of. “Our job is to get people together and have a lot of fun,” Niespodziani says. “If we are really strict about what this is, then it isn’t Yacht Rock. We like to keep it wide in terms of definition.”
Granted, the members of the Atlanta-based Yacht Rock Revue never set out to become the legends that they are quickly becoming. Originally, Niespodziani, drummer Mark Cobb, and co-frontman Peter Olson were simply an indie rock band from Indiana University by the name of Y-O-U that got their start back in the early 2000s playing everything from pop to psychedelic music, but they never found the spotlight that they craved. So, in their late 20s, the members of the original band began to seek out “real jobs” where they could make a mature living.
But then everything changed on one fateful night.
“We did this one-off show where we played these dentist-office rock songs that we used to play in our cubicles—when we were working in insurance companies and being secretaries—to annoy the other people that we worked with,” Niespodziani laughs. “And we thought it was hilarious. We pulled out all the songs, and then we did it, and it sold out—and then we did it again, and they sold out again.”
Soon, the little band that could was playing every Thursday night at a local club. Niespodziani quit law school and they started making some real money, and soon they knew they had something very special. “We watched how our music made people feel in the audience and we let that be our north star,” explains Niespodziani. “That’s essentially how we decided what we were going to add to our show—how we acted, what songs we chose, how we danced, what places we chose to play.”
And it worked.
“I think in some ways, we helped grow the love for this music,” adds Niespodziani, who admits to personally loving to perform the 1980 classic “Steal Away” from Robbie Dupree when it finds itself in Yacht Rock Revue’s playlist. “And in some ways, we just kind of rode the wave of people loving this music.”
But there is more to Yacht Rock Revue than a setlist of covers. In 2020, the much-loved band released an original EP titled Hot Dads in Tight Jeans that was soon applauded for its originality. And the emotional eruption for the sheer talent of the band was something that Niespodziani appreciated, coming off a “midlife crisis” that had him feeling the musicianship was being overlooked. “I love making people happy and playing the shows that we play. At the same time, I’ve always felt like my gift was not really as a performer, that my real gift was as a writer and a creator. I’ve had some minor success with that, but never on the level that I wanted. And when we released that EP last year in February and it was on the Billboard top 200 in the first week—it just felt good.”
Unfortunately, that feeling didn’t last as long as Niespodziani would have liked, as the pandemic put the brakes on the momentum surrounding the album and the band. “Everything was building, and we had our big summer tour planned where we were playing big places like Ravinia for the first time, and everyone was like, ‘Okay, this is really happening now,’ ” remembers Niespodziani. “And then three weeks later, we were canceling shows in California and flying home terrified. We were on this high from releasing the album and the excitement that we had behind it, and then everything just totally crashed out.”
Like the rest of the music world, Yacht Rock Revue found themselves pivoting the best they knew how, via a series of livestreams and acoustic shows. “We did a show every Thursday for 45 weeks straight,” explains Niespodziani. “And the connection that we made with our fans who really loved the album during that time forever changed the trajectory of the band. You know, it wasn’t thousands and thousands of people every night, but it was still hundreds, and it’s those people who were our biggest fans during that awful time that are our best evangelizers now.”
Despite the pandemic, the craving for the band and all of its music has never faltered. And for Niespodziani, it came as a welcome, somewhat beautiful surprise. “Shame on me for underestimating our fans,” he says emphatically. “After we put out the album, I thought that would be like, ‘time to all go to the bathroom’ during our live show. But now we play originals like ‘Bad Tequila’ and ‘Step’ and that’s one of the biggest applause moments of the entire night. We know we are on to something.”
He draws in a deep breath.
“I’m just really encouraged and excited. It’s weird to be feeling the original music side of my career is on the upswing at the age of 42. But that seems to be the world that I’m living again.”
Tricia Despres is a Chicago-area entertainment writer whose work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, Taste of Country, and a number of local, regional, and national publications. Twitter: @CHIWriter