Nearly 40 Savannah-area musicians team to salute the Traveling Wilburys at Victory North

Looking for a unique musical event to start your Thanksgiving weekend? In the immortal words of Roy Orbison, “You Got It.”

The “Traveling Wilburys: A Savannah Salute” at Victory North is set for Nov. 22, and the show’s co-producers Jim Reed and Ray Lundy are planning a slate of great music for those in attendance.

“This show is 100 percent about the songs themselves, and that's our sole focus,” Reed explained. “The musicians and vocalists on stage…will not be dressed up like the members of the Traveling Wilburys, nor will they be intentionally trying to impersonate those superstar's voices or mannerisms.

“It's designed [instead] to showcase the breadth of amazing talent found across the greater Savannah area music scene,” he added, “by learning and performing these words and music in our own way, to the best of our abilities.”

“What makes this show special is the high degree of love and gratitude that each one of us is giving to this, a beautiful labor of love and devotion,” noted Lundy.

The Traveling Wilburys were a supergroup comprised principally of solo artists Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan, as well as Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) and The Beatles’ George Harrison. Their first record, Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1, was met with high acclaim, winning a Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group in 1990.

“I purchased the first Traveling Wilburys album on vinyl on the very first day it was released in 1988, at the old Turtle's Records and Tapes store on Victory Drive,” Reed related. “The whole record really blew my mind….because the cumulative result of Dylan, Petty and Orbison, in tandem with a member of the Beatles and the leader of ELO, sounded nothing like what I would have expected. Although, in retrospect, I am not sure what on earth I did expect from such an odd lineup.”

Unfortunately, shortly after its release, Roy Orbison tragically died of a heart attack at just 52 years old. Plans for a series of concerts were ultimately scrapped and, while the band would go on to release a second album (inexplicably titled ‘Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3’) two years after their debut, the songs were never performed live by all five core members.

A house band of 38 Savannah-area musicians

For the local event, however, the music will finally find its way to the stage, and in a big way: Including the ‘house band,’ an incredible 38 musicians will take the stage at some point during the evening.

“No one in this show is playing the part of any famous musician,” Reed reiterated. “We are all just working together as a big team to try and come up with our own respectful renditions of all of these songs, some of which go all the way back to the Beatles' early years (the ones George Harrison wrote), and all the way back to 1960 (for one of the Roy Orbison tunes we'll be playing).”

“Almost every member of the house band for this show will sing lead at some point during the concert, and we also have 18 guest vocalists who will be jumping up on stage for a song or two,” he went on to say. “For example, over the course of the show I think we'll have four different people singing Orbison tunes and four different people singing Dylan songs. Whoever we think can do a great job on a given song is who gets to perform it. The same with guest guitarists, keyboardists, bassists [and] drummers.”

Amongst those in the house band is local guitarist and singer Ben Keiser, who’ll be playing lead and slide guitar parts throughout the show. Keiser has become a fixture in the local music scene, and jumped at the chance to join the all-star lineup Reed and Lundy put together for the event, even though he initially had no idea what he was signing up for.

“Jim and I were playing a show a couple of months ago, and he said he had a secretive project that he was putting together, but that he couldn’t give me a lot of details,” he said with a chuckle. “It was top secret at first.”

After Lundy called him a couple of weeks later to give him the details, Keiser began exploring the Wilburys catalogue, which taught him to appreciate the supergroup in a way he never had before.

“It’s one of those things where…you just know it’s amazing, [but] I’d never done a deep dive,” he said. “I’d heard the songs that were their singles. Now I’m all into it. The b-sides are where you can really hear the ‘stuff.’”

“It’s a perfect lineup, just as far as their vocal ranges, they were all so complementary,” he continued. “And the George Harrison stuff, he’s the master at finding the little perfect riff to put in between breaks in the song.”

Alongside Keiser, Reed, and Lundy, the house band is made up of Craig Johansen (the Magic Rocks, the 8-Tracks, Hot Pink Interior, the Myth) and Matt Eckstine (The Accomplices) on guitars, plus drummer Josh Safer (Bottles and Cans, GAM), bassists Jon Willis (the Myth, Jon Lee & The Apparitions) and Eric Dunn (the Train Wrecks, Velvet Caravan), and keyboardist Phillip Price (An Albatross, The Sw!ms, COEDS). Add in the scheduled guests, which includes folks like Basik Lee (real name Steven Baumgardner), Josephine Johnson, Jason Bible, and Ray Tomasino, and you’ve got what amounts to local supergroup, the Savannah version of what the Traveling Wilbury’s were globally.

“Every single one of these players and singers are at or near the top of their fields in this area, and so it's probably accurate to call this a ‘dream team’ of a backing band that's capable of tackling most any kind of rock, blues, soul, country or pop music you throw at them,” opined Reed. “Which is why they're perfect to handle learning the unusually varied songs of the Traveling Wilburys and that band's individual members.”

“As musicians, we're standing on the shoulders of giants,” Lundy added. “This is one way to show our gratitude to those that blazed the trails.”

If You Go >>

What: “Traveling Wilburys: A Savannah Salute”

When: Doors open at 6:30 p.m., music begins at 7:30 p.m., Nov. 22

Where: Victory North, 2603 Whitaker St.

Tickets: $25-$60

Info: victorynorthsavannah.com

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: 'Traveling Wilburys: A Savannah Salute' slated for Victory North