DSB at The Canyon Club 5/17/2013

DSB:

Juan Del Castillo – Lead Vocals

Roger Cain- Guitar

Scotty Kormos- Drums

Henry O’Neill- Keyboards

Tony Love- Bass

with special guest Mike McManus from Queen Nation on guitar

Fresh off their national TV appearance on AXS TV’s The World’s Greatest Tribute Bands, DSB came back to rock The Canyon Club.

This is one of their main places to play shows and they’ve been doing so for almost 4 1/2 years now (their first gig here was in January, 2009).

DSB kicked off their set with a rocking version of “Wheel In The Sky”. They rocked the crowd from the onset and never let up.

The next song was “Any Way You Want It” and it was hard not to associate this song with the State Farm commercial where the guy saw Journey back in ‘83 (and the place was crawling with chicks). It was definitely a “Journey moment”.

DSB was then joined onstage early on by special guest Mike McManus, guitarist of Queen Nation and local guitar hero, who just played an incredible show with Queen Nation on The World’s Greatest Tribute Bands 4 days ago. They performed a rocking version of “Stone In Love” , which was easily one of the biggest highlights of the show.

After Mike left the stage, the slowed it down a bit with “Lights”, “Still They Ride”, “Only The Young” and

You could tell the band was really enjoying playing, as they had audience participation, acknowledged birthdays in the crowd, recognized fans and the such.

The sound and lighting were really good. Their logo was behind the drum kit and on the screen on the stage and all over the venue. There was no question about who was playing…

One of the highlights of the set was the underappreciated song “Escape” (every song on that album is a good one and this one kind of got overlooked as a result). It was rocking.

It was even more impressive a few feet from the band, where there was an undeniable intensity in their performance.

They clearly love what they do and that carries right over into their performance.

Although they’re all smiles during the show, they are playing so hard and this isn’t easy music to “nail” by any stretch of the imagination. They nailed it.

Just before they played “Open Arms”, there was video footage being shown of Steve Perry, which served as a great intro to the song.

One of the nicest surprises was “Oh Sherrie”, which is actually a Steve Perry solo tune. Talk about a trip down memory lane. The crowd was loving it.

They finished out their set with three of Journey’s most popular songs ever.

Seeing the fans reactions from the band’s perspective was a site to behold. The crowd swayed back and forth to “Faithfully”. There was a young lady in the front that was singing along to every word of every song. People were holding up DSB posters as they danced and sang. I recognized a few of their “super fans” that were also front and center during their live TV performance. What a fun scene and display of dedication. Loyal fans are cool.

The band completely jammed out to “Separate Ways”, and, yes, Scotty Kormos once again nailed every drum part.

They finished strong with the classic, staple Journey song, which simply read “DSB” on their set list.

Check out the ending of “Separate Ways”– talk about bringing it home… The drum parts resembled some sort of cross-fit training. I was exhausted just watching this:

The crowd digging the encore:

After the conclusion of the show, the band hung out and took pictures with fans and friends. Truly nice guys and great players as well. More bands should be like DSB.

These guys are real pros. Other bands should take notice of their professionalism and dedication to their performance.

Juan is a phenomenal singer with a great vocal range and a pure, clean tone to his voice. Roger Cain is a shredding guitar player and does a great job playing all of Neal Schon’s guitar parts.

Tony Love is a great bass player. And he’s funny. Henry O’Neill does a great job on keyboard duties and Scotty Kormos is a hard-hitting champion on the drums.

They played with a “happy intensity” throughout the show. It’s nice to see guys smiling during every song while delivering a shredding performance throughout. Nothing beats that.

One of the best parts of the show was when Tony jokingly yelled at someone backstage for “Facebooking” during the performance. While playing, he ran over to the side of the stage with a big smile and yelled “Get off the phone!” and then strolled back to the front on the stage without missing a beat. It was truly classic.