Chicago Tribune: Yacht rock is docking in Chicago. What’s yacht rock, and why do I want a pina colada all of a sudden?

The Yachtfathers

Yacht Rock Revue, who’ll be at House of Blues Saturday as part of a national tour sponsored by LiveNation and SiriusXM, are, it is fair to say, the admiralty of the yacht rock bands. They got on board this musical vessel almost by accident.

Nick Niespodziani graduated Indiana University and he and his IU band Y-O-U relocated to Atlanta. They toured some, got some of their original songs in commercials, opened for well-known acts, he explains, but they weren’t making a living.

Niespodziani, a talented vocalist who had entered IU thinking he’d sing opera, was in law school, and other band members were thinking about getting real jobs, too, he recalls. But they did have a regular Thursday night cover gig at an Atlanta club.

Niespodziani says it started, sort of, via temp jobs: “Our drummer, Mark, and I, we were both secretaries in the same insurance office. He had this mix that he called the ‘Dentist Office Mix’ that we would play in our cubicle to try to annoy the other people. And it was all like, 10 CC and Player. Orleans. And as it turned out, it didn't annoy them. They loved it. And so we were like, man, wouldn't it be kind of funny if we did a whole show of songs like that?”

They were going to call it something like “Seventies AM Gold.” But they discovered the web series “Yacht Rock,” from 2005, one of the first viral successes of the Internet era. Each episode in the comedy series purported to tell the story of how a yacht rock hit was born, with the actors playing Loggins, ex-partner Jim Messina, McDonald and so on. John Oates, in the series, is kind of a thug, Daryl Hall his stooge. It still holds up. (And the show’s writers now have a podcast called “Beyond Yacht Rock,” because of course there’s a podcast.)

But the musical point is: This juggernaut of a cover-rock genre takes its name from a web comedy series, and that series seems to have taken its name from the Loggins and Messina LP “Full Sail,” which gets held up at the start of each episode.

When the band that would become Yacht Rock Revue played its first yacht rock gig, in 2008, the crowd at the club responded like the workers in the insurance office, “and then it kind of went crazy from there,” Niespodziani says.

Slowly, he recalls, he got over his conflicted feelings about playing these songs rather than ones he’d written.

“In 2010 everybody was into everything being ironic,” he says. “And so there were people in the crowd that were kind of elbowing each other like, yeah, this is funny, right? But that's not the vibe at all anymore. Now it's people who just genuinely love Hall and Oates.”

His own stance evolved along a similar path, and the shows moved from a touch campy to more celebratory. The crowds kept coming. Yacht Rock Revue bought a van. They got an office and people to work in it. They developed a Beatles act and a Prince act, and they bought a club so they’d have something to fall back on when yacht rock dried up. It hasn’t.

“As it turns out, yacht rock is super sustainable and not going anywhere,” he says. The SiriusXM Yacht Rock channel supporting the tour is on the air in warm months, he notes, and there is talk of it going year-round.

YRR has sold out a 6,500-seat venue in Atlanta and has performed with many of the original yacht rock musicians at their annual yacht rock festival. And, Niespodziani notes with something approaching wonder, the band members have health insurance and 401K plans.

“You know, we’re playing a Gary Wright song or a Pablo Cruise song, but we’re playing it with the intensity of an AC/DC song,” he says. “There’s something about it that connects when you bring that kind of energy.

“It's weird to be up there playing a Kenny Loggins song and seeing, you know, crazy ladies out there who look like they're ready to eat each other’s brains or something. They just get wild. You never knew this soft rock could bring that out of people, but it kind of gives them a sense of empowerment, like, I can't believe this band is playing these songs, and now I can do whatever I want and drink whatever I want.”

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Written By: Steve Johnson