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Originally Posted by Jazuela
Would any of you be interested in seeing Jefferson Starship or the Steve Miller Band? If either are of interest, I could see if these two bands might be interested in playing in The Villages. My sister is friends with the owner of Starship, and I'm friends with the Steve Miller Band's keyboard player's ex-wife. At the very least, I could find out if they'd ever considered the idea, and point them to the Sharon Morse center's production folks.
Update: got in touch with Chris Smith (owner and keyboard player of Starship) and he says they played a few years ago at the Morse P.A. Center; gave a texty-thumbs-up to the idea of doing it again.
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It sounds like you really like Jefferson Starship. Let me set the record straight on this. Starship featuring Mickey Thomas was at the Savannah Center March 28th for two shows. I was front row center at the 5pm show, he was fantastic. Mickey joined Starship in 1979 after Marty Balin (who passed away in Tampa last summer) had quit. He and Grace Slick lead the band until finally Grace walked away in 1988, original guitarist Paul Kanter had quit in '84. So Mickey was the last of the recording artist. After Grace left, he dropped Jefferson from the name and has carried on ever since. His current band mates for most part have been with him since 1993 and Stephanie Calvert the female singer has been with him since 2006 and sounds exactly like Grace Slick.
Mickey was the original lead singer on the hits We Built this City, Find your Way Back, Sara, Nothing Gonna Stop Us Now, Jane and It's Not Enough to name a few and was vocalist on the Elvin Bishop hit "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" when he sang for them in the 70's.
The group you're referring to Jefferson Starship has one member who actually played in the band during it's hit years. David Freidberg played guitar from 1974 to 1984. That's the only connection they have to the band, not one singer. They played here for free promoted for veterans, I believe it was 2016 at Savannah Center, I skipped going. I've seen them on youtube, and it's not good. They really only have a female vocalist, who doesn't do Grace Slick as well as Stephanie in Starship and no male lead vocalist. Friedberg does some singing, but it's obvious why he was a guitar player. Freidberg owns that name, the Chris Smith you mentioned is the keyboard player and has only been with them since 1998. Maybe he is the tour booking agent which is why he is the contact person. That's Friedberg below, his biggest claim to fame was he was an original member of Quicksilver Messenger Service before joining Jefferson Airplane.
Steve Miller would be a good show, I don't know if the Sharon is quite big enough. One person who we have never had here and would play in our Savannah Center, is original vocalist guitarist of Grand Funk Railroad "Mark Farner". Mark is legally unable to use the name Grand Funk because of paperwork he signed in 1998 in error. So when you see that name listed, it has the drummer and bass player but not the star of GFR.