Kearney Cruise Nite concert will be a tribute to the Everly Brothers
Jack Skuller and Sean Altman will perform the music of the Everly Brothers at the Merryman Performing Arts Center at 8 p.m. Thursday. Tickets start at $29.
When he was 12, Jack Skuller was a "Beatle-obsessed tween” who watched every Beatle interview. Then he discovered the Everly Brothers.
“Their songs changed my life,” he said.
As a tribute to the music of Don and Phil Everly, Skuller and Sean Altman will present The Everly Set at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Merryman Performing Arts Center.
The performance is part of the 39th annual Cruise Nite Week.
Skuller and Altman understand the importance and power of a duo that first broke onto the American music scene seven decades ago.
The Everly Brothers’ first hit, “Bye Bye Love,” topped the pop charts in 1957. Other hits followed during the next 16 years, until tastes changed and the music of the Everly Brothers fell out of fashion with teenagers.
Skuller and Altman find it easy to explain why the music of the Everly Brothers remains popular. “It’s brilliant songwriting, stellar production and the blend of Phil and Don’s voices,” Altman said.
He noted that most of the duo's big hits, including “Bye Bye Love,” “Wake Up Little Susie,” and “All I Have To Do Is Dream,” were penned by the Nashville husband and wife Felice and Boudleaux Bryant.
“Their record producer/arranger Chet Atkins was also a studio innovator,” Altman added. "'All I Have To Do Is Dream' was among the first pop hits to use electric guitar tremolo as a features element."
He credits their “razor-sharp brotherly blend" of voices and their teenage good looks with enabling them to stand the test of time.
Skuller said their transcendent vocal blend cut through record players and transistor radios so much that it felt like they were in the room with the listener.
“It still feels that way today, listening off an iPhone. You can hear in their voices how relatable and humble they were, just two family men from a small town in Iowa. But they had an unmatched vigor when they sang together,” he said.
Altman discovered the Everly Brothers through cover versions of their songs by other performers, such as Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bye Bye Love,” Linda Ronstadt’s “When Will I Be Loved,” Nazareth’s “Love Hurts,” and Carly Simon and James Taylor’s duet of “Devoted To You.”
“I’ve always been drawn to harmony singing, and the Everlys are the pinnacle,” he said.
Both men believe the Everly Brothers helped define the rock ‘n' roll genre, and they were the only ones singing every song in two-part harmony.
“If you were a kid in the late 1950s and you wanted to sing rock, the Everly Brothers were a huge influence,” Skuller said.
“Out of all of the post-Elvis rockabilly icons — Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran — the Everlys were the only ones doing what they were doing. The two-part harmony, matched with innovative rhythm guitar playing, added a new dimension to the genre. It seems that every budding musician at the time wanted to be them,” he said.
On stage, the two will lead the audience on what they called a “celebratory journey."
“The audience knows many of the songs note for note, and they expect us to sound exactly like the records they grew up with,” Altman said.
Added Skuller, ”We have so much fun on stage, because the songs lend themselves to that. The most challenging aspect is the choreography. Sean and I move in unison for much of the show, as the Everlys did.”
Cruise Nite featured drag races in 2023.
