Amongst the wealth of entertaining visual content that spawned from this past weekend’s party, we also have a damn great interview with the event’s aband—Dexter Lake Club Band. These guys absolutely crushed the jams, leading 98% of the celebration’s attendees into war on the dance floor. We didn’t get a chance to catch up with them after the event for both obvious and not-so-obvious reasons, but we’re glad we followed up.
Get to know the legendary cover band below, and extra large shoutout to a certain member of the female gender that dropped an on-stage split during their performance of “Welcome to the Jungle.” Jungle access granted fo sho.
First things first—hope you guys had some fun at the One Year Anniversary. Did you guys go out afterward? Wake up in some well-trimmed bushes in an unfamiliar backyard?
We had such a good time that we decided to splurge on some post-party dining, so we ended up at John’s Drive-In. Ran into a few folks from the Yacht Club Time Machine Party there as well. Everyone was keeping it very classy at that point. One of the guests from the party bought our keyboard player an ice cream cone, so that was validating.
The squad. Photo courtesy of Dexter Lake Club.
Where are all of you originally from, and how did things come together?
Most of us met in school at Oberlin College. Long winters, boredom and no money led to learning lots of cover songs. We all ended up in NYC after college, playing with indie rock bands and people started asking us to play their weddings and parties. We got lucky with a couple of high-profile gigs and ended up getting written about on the cover of the NY Times Sunday Styles. Who would have thought that the secret to a successful music career is just to NEVER write your own songs?
Your performance was inarguably the driving force behind much of the night’s debauchery. Were there any moments, maybe dance floor observations from the party that made you guys step back and question if things we’re still within the confines of the law?
Aside from the woman who decided to come onstage during “Welcome to the Jungle” and ended the song in the split position? I think there is some video of that up on our Instagram by the way (@dexter_lake_club_band). We also saw some very tender romantic moments in the crowd, so look there will likely be a couple of Yacht Club Time Machine babies in about nine months. She didn’t do a ton of dancing, but we also want to go officially on record in saying how much we liked the lady in the skintight watermelon body suit.
I think someone from our camp might have requested that you guys play Beyonce’s “Formation” at least twice…which probably isn’t a staple on your oldies-themed setlist. What’s the weirdest-yet-most-common song request you guys can expect to receive at events?
We’ve had some pretty odd ones over the years. At one wedding we did, the father of the bride asked us to play Hall and Oates’ “Maneater” for his dance with his daughter. Not sure what sort of message he was trying to send. The most common request is probably to play Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”. The second most common request is to please not play Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin.”
Wildest party you have ever played? What about the most bizarre?
We played the Princeton University Reunions a few times. I know those people are generally quite smart but you get a bunch of them together after they’ve been sweating it out on Wall Street for a few years and they are shockingly debauched. Never seen so many guys in bright orange shirts passed out face down in a field.
Photo courtesy of Dexter Lake Club
Is there anything you guys would like to see more of out of your audience? Jackson 5 dance battles? People doing the worm to Bon Jovi? How can the dance floor participants reciprocate the fun experience that you provide?
We feel like we’re pretty lucky with our audiences. Our clients hire us because music is really important to them, they have good taste themselves and they don’t want some bad, nightmare Vegas/cruise ship sort of band. Most of the events we do are open bar, so we usually see some pretty amazing dance moves by the end of the night. There have been some amazing moments and some epic fails, either way we win.
Can you give us three overlooked + underplayed golden oldies jams? Maybe a feel good for the AM, a kick-starter for the PM, and a slow jam for the late night? Whatever you’re feeling.
- From the oldies section, we don’t think you can go wrong with “Build Me Up Buttercup” to start things off early. That song has everything.
- A good kick-starter for the PM could be our version of “Come on Eileen”. That’s sort of the Colt .45 of seemingly ill-advised covers for us—somehow it works every time.
- We actually don’t play a lot of slow numbers late night, but when we do it’s hard to go wrong with “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake. Oh, wait, one of the guys just told me that’s not really a slow jam. Got confused because it’s so incredibly romantic. Will have to get back to you.
Whalebone would like to personally thank the Dexter Lake Club Band for their performance throughout the night. Hope to see you guys again, soon.
