The Gene Simmons Band played his only scheduled show in the U.S. this year at the Riviera Theatre in North Tonawanda, NY this past Monday night. Opening the show was Joel Hoekstra and Brandon Gibbs doing an acoustic set together. This show took a lot of work to make happen and Simmons and his Band were willing to do the show to help raise funds and garner interest for the expansion that is currently taking place on the theatre’s site. In fact, it was the first opening of the new space but its not totally 100% up and ready to go yet. You can call it a “soft opening” that took place. The guitar wall (signed guitars of past performers) and bathrooms were ready to go but the bar portion wasn’t open yet. Due to Simmons coming right from Europe (Italy to be exact) to do this show, unfortunately a lot of their equipment didn’t make the show in time. The band had to improvise and rent and borrow some equipment for the show to take place. So, setting up and soundcheck took a lot longer than expected. It caused doors to not open to about 7:25pm. Almost an hour after they were supposed to. Nevertheless, the staff at the Riviera Theater made sure that they did the best they could to make the night a memorable one for all the concert goers.
Joel Hoekstra (TSO, Whitesnake, Cher, etc.) and Brandon Gibbs (Devil City Angels, Poison) played a cool 45-minute acoustic set that consisted of popular classic rock songs that everyone knows and loves. Each traded off vocals and shared road stories. Some of the songs that the duo tackled during their set were: “Dirty Deeds” (Hoekstra) and “Love Ain’t no Stranger” (Gibbs). Some others were “Is This Love” and “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn” which Gibbs handled lead vocals on. Hoekstra did a fabulous impersonation of David Coverdale before they played the Whitsenake classic “Love Ain’t no Stranger. Gibbs talked about how he sang background vocals on the 2022 Poison Stadium tour. Only having 2 acoustics on hand, the sound was very full, and it almost felt a band was backing them. I’m sure the Riviera will love to have them back in some sort of fashion as they went over tremendously well.
Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and icon Gene Simmons and his Band took to the stage and kicked off into the KISS classic “Deuce.” The current Gene Simmons Band consist of Brent Woods on lead guitar, Jason Walker on rhythm guitar and Brian Tichy on drums. Again, what was noticeable was that Simmons wasn’t playing any of his traditional basses but a Fender precision bass. He pretty much played that throughout minus his new Gibson double neck punisher bass/guitar. That instrument comes with a bass neck and a guitar neck. Simmons stuck to only playing to the bass neck. You can tell the band was locked and loaded from the shows they just got done doing in Europe. Woods made his borrowed Gibson Les Paul sound very loud & crunchy. Walker (who I wasn’t familiar with before) made his impact as well as he did lead vocals on the Van Halen cover ‘House of Pain,” which Simmons co-wrote with Van Halen. It was never released until it made his way onto the Gene Simmons Vault back in 2018. Tichy has always been one of the most underrated drummers on the planet. There isn’t anything he can’t do and always impresses everywhere he has played. He even did lead vocals on the Motorhead cover “Ace of Spades.” Simmons voice is still strong as ever as she showed on “Are You Ready” and “Dr. Love.” He was very playful and interactive throughout the show. He brought up all sorts of people multiple times including a few small kids (one’s name was Shannon, no joke) and another guy who was Charlie the barber. Simmons asked the mayor’s wife to come up. You can tell she was uncomfortable and not familiar with KISS. She asked if Simmons was going to play “Beth,” which brought a lot of laughs.
There has been plenty of discussion on what should or shouldn’t be included in the setlist. Most fans that I know who went really wanted to hear the deeper cuts, like “Larger Than Life,” “Almost Human” and even “Radioactive.” There were two songs that were on the setlist that didn’t get played. One was “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and other one was “Charisma” (the one most of us die hard KISS fans wanted to hear the most). In speaking to the band members after, I’m hoping they can work with Gene to cut down on the stoppages on bringing people on stage multiple times throughout the show. I can tell you I had a multitude of people telling me that 4 stoppages (approx. 5-10 minutes each in length) was way too much. It stopped the momentum of the show. There are some serious players in this band, Simmons included. Cut down on the stoppages; maybe bring them people up for RRAN and let that be it. Play more songs. Less is more as they say.
I can say that besides the Sammy Hagar’s ‘Best of All Worlds tour,’ this was the other show I was most excited to see in 2024. I saw a few Gene Simmons Band shows back in 2017 and 2018 and those were some of my favorite shows in those years. Even though people were called up on stage a few times then too, it seemed that the flow still was good, and the show moved along. I still believe some tweaking will be made and Simmons will get back to basics as the band are still trying to iron out how to take this band moving forward. Overall, I’m a diehard KISS fan and still glad I got to see Simmons do a show at one of my local venues.
Setlist:
Deuce (KISS song)
War Machine (KISS song)
Are You Ready
I Love It Loud (KISS song)
Ace of Spades (Motorhead cover)
Guitar & Drum solo
House of Pain (Van Halen cover)
Shout it Out loud (KISS cover)
Parasite (KISS cover)
Cold Gin (KISS song)
Calling Dr. Love (KISS song)
Rock and Roll All Nite (KISS song)
We would like to thank David Fillenwarth from the Riviera Theatre for the credentials to cover the show.
