Like many others around the country, I’ve discovered that the event centers and clubs at the casinos are some of the best places around to hear live music.
Down The Road with the Original Buffalo Dale
Welcome back. With a Little Help from My Friends is a song that was first performed by the Beatles and then became even more famous when Joe Cocker sang it at Woodstock. After that every garage band in the world began playing it. Saturday night at the Osage Event Center that must have been running through the heads of all available security officers as over 500 people went wild listening to Creedence Clearwater Revisited.
This band is a version of Creedence Clearwater Revival and includes original band members Stu Cook and Doug “Cosmo” Clifford and let me tell you from the first song the commotion started. Girls rushed the stage screaming wildly and a couple of them climbed on it, some people actually passed out and through it all the band played on driving the already worked up crowd into a frenzy Suzie Q, Proud Mary, Down on The Corner, Who’ll Stop The Rain, the band played them all in a ninety minute set that was one of the best shows I’d seen for a long time.
The original Creedence Clearwater Revival band started in the 1960s in California and today they have sold 26 million albums, been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and is heard around the world on the radio. It’s a success story about four guys who gave a generation of young people music to dance to.
As for a report on the Osage Casino & Event Center, you’ve got to like this place even if you’re not a gambler. They bring these great musical groups to town, the food is fabulous and they put a lot of people to work. This show had started at 7 PM and when it was over I was hopped up for some more music. The night was still young and my next stop while in Tulsa would be to catch a band that plays the same sort of music and is coming to Bartlesville.
As I’m sure you’ve heard, the Creek Nation has recently begun a 335 million dollar expansion of their River Spirit Casino on south Riverside Drive and that was where I was heading. The Creeks say that Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville Lounge is coming to town next year along with a 26 story tower with a 500 room hotel. They will be creating 800 new permanent jobs and have even told Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett that they’ll help pay for a new dam upriver so that water will always flow through Tulsa. If you haven’t been in that part of Tulsa lately its well worth the trip just to see the stuff that is going on. Restaurants have popped up all along the drive and construction is booming. I’m planning on coming back for a visit with the marketing people for both the Creeks and the Osage in the near future to discuss all their expansion projects and I’ll likely be bringing you an update.
Back to the reason I was going there. I was first introduced to the Fabulous Midlife Crisis Band back in 2000 when I was doing some volunteer work for the Nature Conservancy. The Conservancy was holding an annual fundraiser called Wild Brew in an airplane hangar at the Tulsa Airport and Midlife Crisis was the featured band. I could tell right away that these seven guys had some magic. They were playing 60s rock and roll with a sound so pure that you could close your eyes and picture the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys and all the other great bands from that era.
On Saturday night they did it again as the happy crowd packed the dance floor and spilled out over the walkways at River Spirit Casino’s Mystic River Lounge bar. Like Creedence Clearwater Revisited, most the guys in Midlife Crisis are older but that sure doesn’t mean they can’t rock and roll. When I finally gave out around midnight the crowd was still dancing. I’ll have more on these fellows as their September 12th show out at Woolaroc gets closer.
You may also be wondering about Youth & Family Services, the organization that’s benefiting from this dinner dance at Woolaroc. First off, after a little research I learned that they help a lot of kids throughout this area. They give temporary shelter to kids aged 7-17 and provide food and counseling services to these young people who are homeless and basically are lost in life. Many of these kids show up with nothing but the clothes on their backs. You wouldn’t think it could happen here but it does.
I’m about out of room but before I go I want to mention the R.K gun show which I also attended in Tulsa this past weekend. Their director told me he had rented over 500 vendor tables and there were lines of people waiting to get in throughout the day. While I was at the Tulsa fairgrounds where the show was held, I noticed a lot of improvements to the property. There are new exhibit buildings, animal barns and roads and there were events of some kind going on in all of them.
Till next week I’ll see ya down the road………………….
#