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Auckland, August 5, 2017
Shane Cortese & the 8-Track Band is a tight-knit group of friends who share a love of music and delight in performing together.
Although lead singer Shane is a formidable triple-threat in his own right, he likes people to know this band is not about him.
He is only one part of a whole. The other parts are Chris Jones on guitar and vocals Steve Abplanalp on bass and vocals, Scott Cortese on drums and Pete France on Saxophone.
The whole is indeed more than the sum of its parts and Shane Cortese & the 8-Track Band, now three years old, is proving very popular with its repertoire of cover songs from the 70s, 80s and 90s by classic bands such as Th’ Dudes, Dragon and Dance Exponents.
Inspiring singers
As well as being very much motivated by the Kiwi/Australian Pub Rock scene, Shane points to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band as an inspiration.
“I had just seen Springsteen the last time he was here at Mt Smart. We loved his band. Actually, one of our pieces of inspiration was a picture of Bruce playing out the front, laughing, with the guys from his band. I thought, that’s what music should be, it should be playing with your mates and enjoying it.”
Shane’s previous band was ‘The Class of 58’, an American Graffiti Style Rock and Roll band.
“I have an affiliation with old Rock and Roll music. The Class of 58 had been a very successful band – but I was sitting on the deck at Chris Jones’s house on Waiheke, having a beer and we talked about all the songs that we used to love, you know, all those great sounds from places like the Glue Pot – we liked Hello Sailor, the Exponents, INXS, the Choir Boys and Springsteen and we decided that we would one day like to get a band together that played that kind of music.
“Well, I am not one to sit still and rest on my laurels and neither is Chris so we said, ‘why don’t we just do this?’ So, we put a band together and put very, very good musicians who connected with us really well into the band and started to play around over the course of a year, year and a half with a playlist and it worked.”
Kiwi-Aussie Pub Rock
Shane says the band’s musical inspiration is very much the Kiwi/Australian pub rock scene – “Choir Boys, Hello Sailor, Dudes, Exponents, Split Enz…” however when Shane Cortese & the 8-Track Band play, they’re not playing as a pub band, they’re giving a concert.” What I like doing, because I am a performer and that is my job, is to put together a set which is like a recreation of those old concerts.
“I sit down with the boys and we discuss strategically what’s going to happen. I don’t want us to ever be a band that says, ‘We are just going to take a short break and we will be back in a minute.’
That is the domain of pub bands and party bands.
Uninterrupted Music
“What we do is recreate a two-hours and fifteen minutes concert. Once we start, we don’t stop playing for two and quarter-hours. We play 30-plus songs.
“We don’t take breaks. Once you start taking breaks you lose connectivity with your audience. You lose the chemistry in the room.
“I’ll bring in a support act that plays 45 minutes or an hour and then there’s a 15-minute break and we come on and do two and a quarter hour. So, the audience gets a support act and full show.
“It’s like Bruce Springsteen. It’s a concert. He doesn’t break. He plays for about three hours. That’s how it should be.”
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