Audiences in the Manning and Hastings are in for a treat when Mark Shelley and John Robertson perform the hits of four of the music industry’s best know legends –Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Willie Nelson and Roy Orbison.
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These four greats will never be on tour again, so the combination of two shows in one amazing concert at the Manning Entertainment Centre on March 9, and the Glasshouse on March 10, is not to be missed.
Shelley and Robertson have worked together for about 28 years beginning with corporate gigs, then touring as an acoustic vocal harmony. Then, about a dozen years ago, they came up with the idea of putting together the Willie and Roy The Legends show.
“Occasionally, we would do an Orbison song, and people would say, ‘oh you can do it’. I wasn’t a big Orbison fan growing up, but the more I went into it, the more I appreciated him – not just as a singer, but as a songwriter.
“With Willie and Roy we do the complete tribute, acting the part, wigs, glasses and outfits. We put a lot of time into researching, watching interviews, jumping on Google, and hundreds of hours watching and listening to concerts, practising their mannerisms, videoing stuff and watching it back.”
“The audience get to suspend belief. We always like to meet people afterwards and we stay in character. I remember one lady saying she had all of my albums.”
He says you can feel the audience initially having an ‘okay let’s see if they can do it’ attitude, but then they see when people start to get into it. “There’s quite a bit of humour. We have funny exchanges, and it’s based on fact.”
It is however, a fantasy, as the two legends never performed together.
“We start it as if it’s a Willie concert and he tells the audience: ‘There's one person I would really have liked to have performed with, that’s the late great Roy Orbison. Wouldn’t it be great if he was here tonight?’ –then Roy appears.
“It’s quite tiring coming back from the dead,” Shelley laughs. So, the show opens with Simon & Garfunkel The Concert. They started touring that show in 2015-2016. “It’s is a celebration, we wear the outfits but we don’t take on the characters.”
Shelley believes the tribute shows are so popular because the demographic for both is 50-plus. “From that era they can’t see the acts themselves anymore, either because they aren’t touring or they’ve passed on. It’s a way of reliving moments from the past. These songs are timeless.”
The audience will get to hear about 30 of these classics backed by their solid four-piece band.
