Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers - Ardmore Music Hall | Nov. 23, 2024

Me:  Sorry I can't make [insert important event here], I have plans.
The plans:   🤩🎸💯🎶😎🙃

93.3 WMMR Presents Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers
with Jamie McLean Band
When:  Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024  |  Tickets

Cheap Trick's Surrender - Buzz Zeemer

Recalling how legendary Tommy Conwell hit those Cheap Trick high notes at the end of "Surrender" with Buzz Zeemer. 
Live at Ardmore Music Hall AKA The Best Concert Ever at Ardmore Music Hall!

🎸🤩🎶💓😍💥💯

Focus Now Please

Lost and Found Record Release Party - Buzz Zeemer

Last week on Friday, March 29—two concerts in one day from a band that I found out about in 2004. When I shared my “Buzz Zeemer reunion” meme last year, I did receive a couple of “yeah, it’ll never happen”-type comments. So, I never thought I’d get to witness them live in my lifetime, but dreams do manifest themselves in the most unusual ways! 🤩 

The WXPN Free at Noon was a solid performance, but I could never have imagined the transcendental event that would transpire later that evening. What Frank Brown, Tommy Conwell, Dave McElroy and Ken Buono, brought to us onstage that night didn’t happen by magic—they must have practiced for a long time and been really thoughtful about their performance to give us the kind of quality show they knew we would be expecting from them. Buzz Zeemer was the best band in America in their prime and they truly lived up to it! 🎸🎶 

I went through a universe of emotions with each song as it was playing and thinking about the years I’ve spent enjoying them: Don’t Hang Up, This Town, Porch, Sometimes, Lost and Found, Crush, Don’t Pull Away, These Things, Shelly Don’t Mind—so many songs! 🥰 

How awesome was it to hear the cheers of “one more song”—the audience was so loud! And seeing the younger kids in the audience flashing “heart hands” after “Through It All” in the encore—amazing! 

Life can make us see our past in rosy shades and attempts to recreate moments may only muddy our memories. But the music experience with Buzz Zeemer in 2024 has left a positive impact on me--getting to meet new friends, hearing their stories and realizing how much the music means to any community willing to support their artists. 

Yes. Let’s do this again next year.

Buzz Zeemer, Lost and Found, Philadelphia Inquirer Article - March 29, 2024

 ENTERTAINMENT | MUSIC

The pandemic made a Philly power-pop band go digging for its old songs. Today, it’s playing its first shows in 17 years.

'Lost and Found' by Buzz Zeemer is an unearthed gem from the 1990s. The group, fronted by Frank Brown and featuring Tommy Conwell, plays two shows at Ardmore Music Hall tonight.

Buzz Zeemer, the Philly power-pop band, is led by singer Frank Brown (left) and guitarist Tommy Conwell, seen rehearsing here in Manayunk on Monday, March 25, 2024.
Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer

by Dan DeLuca

Published Mar. 29, 2024, 5:00 a.m. ET

High on the short list of Philadelphia bands that coulda, woulda, and shoulda made it big in the 1990s is Buzz Zeemer.

The power-pop outfit fronted by songwriting savant Frank Brown and local guitar hero Tommy Conwell grew out of Brown’s previous band, Flight of Mavis, which, like Buzz Zeemer, featured drummer Ken Buono and bass player Dave McElroy.

Buzz Zeemer packed Philly clubs like Upstairs at Nick’s and J.C. Dobbs, played CBGBs in New York, and traveled twice to the SXSW festival. Two stellar albums — Play Thing in 1996, and Delusions of Grandeur two years later — were released on Philly’s Record Cellar label before the group split.

Since then, the band — named after a neighbor of Brown’s in Horsham who frequently operated a chainsaw — has played just one gig, a reunion at the Grape Room in 2007.

Last September, a newly unearthed album of the band’s previously unreleased material was released. Called Lost and Found, its 14 tunes are so good that it’s puzzling why they stayed in the vault so long.

On Friday, a deluxe streaming version with five bonus tracks will be launched by the band’s manager and ardent supporter Pat Feeney, who owns Main Street Music in Manayunk.

The band will celebrate with two shows at Ardmore Music Hall on Friday. First, the quartet will do a Free at Noon broadcast on WXPN-FM (88.5), followed by a full-on performance with the Tisburys opening. The evening show will be streamed on live music platform Nugs.net.

This week, The Inquirer spoke to Brown and Conwell, their guitars at their side — a Les Paul and Fender Telecaster, respectively — at the Manayunk rehearsal space where, along with Buono and McElroy, the band has been working up nearly three dozen sparkling 3-minute pop songs from Brown’s Buzz Zeemer songbook.

Philly power-pop band Buzz Zeemer in the 1990s. Left to right, Ken Buono, Tommy Conwell, Frank Brown, and Dave McElroy. The reunited band's new album of unreleased material is "Lost and Found." The quartet will play a Free at Noon concert at Ardmore Music Hall on Friday, March 29, that will be broadcast on WXPN-FM (88.5) and then again that night at the same venue.

Back in the 1980s, Brown, 59, remembers hearing Tommy Conwell & the Young Rumblers’ “I’m Not Your Man” on WMMR-FM (93.3) while driving to high school when Conwell, the Hooters, and Robert Hazard and the Heroes were Philadelphia’s great rock and roll hopes.

In 1988, Flight of Mavis opened for the Young Rumblers at the Chestnut Cabaret. “They made an impression,” says Conwell, 62, who had a two-album run on Columbia Records that came to an end with Guitar Trouble in 1990.

“I was sitting in my kitchen, and my manager called and said ‘Tom, we got dropped,’ Conwell, who grew up in Bala Cynwyd, recalls. “And I cried.’”

Putting rock star aspirations behind him, Conwell got a degree from Chestnut Hill College and taught third grade for five years while playing locally with his Blues-based combo Tommy Conwell & the Little Kings.

By the time Conwell started playing with Brown, Buono, and McElroy in 1995, the trio who grew up together in Horsham had also been through the music industry wringer.

The album cover to Buzz Zeemer's "Lost and Found." The Philly power-pop band plays a Free at Noon show at Ardmore Music Hall on Friday and a second show that evening at the same venue. MSM Records.

Flight of Mavis first caught Feeney’s attention when he was working at Neil Drucker’s Record Cellar store in Northeast Philly.

The teenage trio gave him a tape, and “I couldn’t get the songs out of my head,” he says. It brought to mind Marshall Crenshaw, as well as Brown’s heroes, Nick Lowe and Terry Adams of NRBQ.

Flight of Mavis’ debut came out in 1989, and the band flirted with big-time success, touring steadily and opening for Sinead O’Connor on a run of dates that year. By the early 1990s, the band was without a deal and frustrated.

“I was tired of it,” Brown says. The band called it quits, but Brown kept writing songs “and they kept getting better,” says Feeney. “More mature.”

“I know it seem ridiculous,” Brown says, “to have two different bands with the same three people in them.” But Brown, Buono, and McElroy started recording new material with producer Adam “Red” Lasus at his Queen Village studio, this time as Buzz Zeemer. When Conwell heard a demo tape, he was blown away. “This is out of character for me, but I said to Ken, ‘This is amazing music. If you ever need a guitar player, give me a call.’”

Before long, they did. Their fourth member, guitarist Kevin Karg, couldn’t make a gig at the Grape, and Conwell stepped in, injecting the indie band with wildcat rock star energy. “I was having a ball,” he says. When Conwell formally joined the band, the band started fresh with Play Thing and left the older tracks behind.

Many Lost and Found songs feature Conwell, like the jangly earworm “Shelly Don’t Mind,” that XPN has been playing regularly. Others feature guitarists like Karg, Kevin Salem, and Philadelphia players such as Andrew Chalfen and Mike “Slo-Mo” Brenner.

Buzz Zeemer flirted with wider success. They “knocked me out the first time I laid ears on them,” Peter Jesperson, cofounder of the Twin Tone label who discovered the Replacements, recalls on the Lost and Found notes. “This is classic power pop!”

But no label deal materialized, and the band — now older, starting families, and no longer committed to relentlessly touring — split up.

Meanwhile, Feeney kept listening to the songs that would become Lost and Found. “I always loved it. I always wanted to put it out.”

Buzz Zeemer, the Philly power-pop band, is back performing together. It's led by
singer Frank Brown (left) and guitarist Tommy Conwell.
Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer

Brown and Conwell both stayed active in music. Brown lives in Havertown, teaches fourth grade math in Upper Darby, and fronts Travel Lanes, which released Let’s Begin to Start Again in 2015 and On in 2020.

Conwell, who lives in Oreland, works for his brother-in-law’s company, the Fence Guys. He reassembled the Young Rumblers for 2019′s Showboats & Grandstanders and is headlining the Wayne Music Festival with them on June 8.

During the pandemic, Brown started digitizing old cassettes. He found a rough mix of a song called “C’mon If You Can” to be “just blazing.”

He sent it to Feeney, and the two started digging for songs, turning up 22 that hadn’t been released. “The whole thing has been a labor of love,” says Feeney.

It’s been a challenge pulling a show together with Buono living in Nashville and McElroy in Virginia. But for Buzz Zeemer to get back together, Flight of Mavis needed to reunite first.

So in June of last year, Brown, Buono, and McElroy played a Flight of Mavis date at Wayne’s 118 North. “I hadn’t played with those guys in forever,” said Brown. “So that was really the first step.”

The show sold out the 180-capacity room, gathering old fans to sing along, and pointing ahead for Friday’s show at Ardmore, a venue three times the size.

Conwell is “really excited” to be back on stage with the band. “Buzz Zeemer is some of the best music I’ve ever played. There’s craftsmanship to Frank’s songs. But a lot of art there, too.”

Going forward, one gig a year sounds good, he thinks. “I don’t see why we couldn’t do it again.”

But first things first, says Brown. “This is a big deal. We’ll see if we can pull it off.”

“It won’t be flawless,” says Conwell, with a laugh. “But it will be fun. The spirit will live.”

-------------------------------------------

Dan DeLuca
I cover pop music, from what's happening in the local scene to national trends and touring acts.

TCYR at Ardmore Music Hall, Nov. 2021

Video by Stephen Haldis on YouTube from last weekend’s Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers concert at Ardmore Music Hall on 11/20/2021.

TCYR at Ardmore in November 2020

** Rescheduled to Saturday, May 1, 2021 **

WXPN welcomes Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers with Stolen Rhodes at Ardmore Music Hall. 

Link for tickets here. 

Tommy Conwell & the Young Rumblers - Nov. 23, 2019

Announced for November on 11/23-- Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers return to The Ardmore Music Hall.  

Tribute to Darryl Ray - Ardmore Music Hall, 6/30/2019

The Ardmore Music Hall hosted a matinee concert on June 30 for a tribute to musician Darryl Ray. Proceeds benefited the children of Darryl Jenkins.

A bevy of fellow musicians paid tribute including Tommy Conwell and the Little Kings, Dynagroove, Rockett 88, Matt Wallace and the Blues and the Darryl Ray Band.

DJ Caterina fell in love with the music of Tommy Conwell and the Little Kings in the early 2000s while a college disc jockey at UT-Dallas. 

See Audio Rumble's well-documented adulation here.

RIP Darryl Ray. I will miss you.

Also read:  "Five Years On - Darryl Ray" (2024)

All YouTube videos courtesy of Stephen Haldis.

The Sky is Crying
 

More performances: 

• "Honey Hush"- Tommy Conwell, Little Kings, Matt Wallace in the final jam 
  
• "Pony Time" - Tommy Conwell and the Little Kings
• "It's Raining" - Tommy Conwell and the Little Kings
• "I Want to Walk You Home" - Tommy Conwell and the Little Kings
• "All God's Children Wanna Rock" - Tommy Conwell and the Little Kings
• "Bottle Woman” and “Betty Jean" - Tommy Conwell and the Little Kings w/ Anna McGlocklin 
• "Goin' Back to Philly" - Tommy Conwell and the Little Kings w/ Chris Day
• Rockett 88 with Dr. Harmonica (Mark Kenneally) and Quentin Jones
• Dynagroove
• Darryl Ray Band
• Matt Wallace and the Blues

2018 Audio Rumble Wrap-Up

A 2018 Audio Rumble year-in-review post—everyone have a Happy New Year in 2019! 

• In 2018, Audio Rumble shared the #30Years #Rumble #TCYR tags to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the release of Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers’ first major label debut on Columbia Records, Rumble. 
• Supporters of the Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers Indiegogo new album release received several updates this year on possible timing of the new recording. For updates on the recording:
  ⏩ Tommy Conwell at Forge Recording
  ⏩ TCYR album update per Cliff Hillis
  ⏩ In the Pocket podcast radio interview 
• Tommy Conwell interview with Brant Buckley. Thanks for the great post, Brant! 🎶🎸
• Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers performed on the Main Stage as the headlining act of the Lancaster Roots and Blues Fest on March 10. Mark Keneally (Dr. Harmonica and Rockett 88) was a special guest during the TCYR concert and provided an impromptu blues jam with the boys. By the way Lancaster Roots and Blues, are we ever going to see those awesome live feed performances again? 
• Tommy Conwell and the Little Kings performed two sets at 118 North in Wayne, PA on March 14.   
• Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers at HoagieNation on May 26—the scheduled hour-long set was abbreviated due to lightning in the area. 
• Another Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers sold-out show at The Ardmore Music Hall in November—hosted by Jacky BamBam of 93.3 WMMR Philadelphia! 

Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers Concert Video - 11/19/16

Video from Saturday night's Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers concert at The Ardmore Music Hall - 11/19/16. Thanks to Chris Cafiero for posting on YouTube. 

Part One:



Part Two:



Setlist: 

Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers - Ardmore Music Hall [11.21.15]

Images of Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers live on November 21, 2015 - Ardmore Music Hall in Ardmore PA. Photographs by Karl McWherter Photography.

 
 
 
 

Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers - April 25, 2015 — at The Ardmore Music Hall

Images of Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers performing at The Ardmore Music Hall on April 25, 2015. All photographs courtesy of Bud Fulginiti.

(Click images to see a larger file size.)