If you closed your eyes and didn't notice the six musicians standing on the DreamMakers Theater stage Saturday night, you'd think that the Kewadin Casino staff was hosting a retro party spinning nothing but Boston records.
A pretty amazing feat considering that multi-instrumentalist, technical wizard and founding member Tom Scholz is the only remaining original musician in the lineup.
"As excited as I am, I'm also incredibly concerned and a bit bummed because I'm leaving my wife, who is very ill," Sweet said.
Since then Boston has certainly done that, and then some.
BOSTON S future never looked more bleak that it was on March 9, 2007 the day vocalist Brad Delp took his own life. Now, a little over a year later events have come to pass that bring a renewed energy and spirit to the band. Tom Scholz has once again assembled a band that can carry out and carry on his musical vision. A genius musician, songwriter and engineer, Scholz has recruited new vocalist, Tommy DeCarlo, who was discovered under the most unlikely of circumstances and new guitarist/vocalist Michael Sweet. The unknown DeCarlo, employed at Home Depot, contacted the band with a link to a website showing him singing BOSTON songs. Michael Sweet, a huge BOSTON fan, is also the front man for the band Stryper. The events that brought both men to the band seem to have been scripted by someone up above that someone being Brad Delp.
Tommy DeCarlo of Charlotte, N.C., dreamed of becoming a rock star, listening to his favorite band's albums and memorizing their songs.
"A Boston song would come on and I'd get fired up and I'd start singing it," said DeCarlo, 43, a father of two kids -- Talia, 19, and Tommy Jr., 17.
But dreams didn't pay the bills, so DeCarlo worked as a credit manager at a Home Depot store in Charlotte to support his.
Still, he never gave up singing along to his Boston CDs, and his daughter Talia took notice. She posted a MySpace page of DeCarlo singing karaoke to Boston songs after the band's lead singer, Brad Delp, committed suicide in March 2007. And, in an instant, DeCarlo's whole world turned upside down.