Robbie Dupree & Friends make their first appearance at the Bearsville Theater in several years with a show at 8 p.m. Saturday, December 8, featuring longtime cohorts Peter Bunetta on drums and Rick Chudacoff on bass, along with guitarist Tony Pulizzi, keyboardist Bette Sussman and Manuel Qunitana on percussion. Special guests for the show are saxophonist Bill Harris and Cindy Cashdollar on lap steel and Dobro.
“This is a special show for us,” says Dupree, the singer/songwriter best known for his early hits Steal Away and Hot Rod Hearts, but who has built a career decades long on the strength of more than a dozen albums, most filled with original songs, and worldwide appearances. “We get to play new material for a forthcoming album and revisit material from the past catalog. And we’ve got a great opening act — Anthea White and Mark Palmer known as the Hipstones, an Australian duo who now live in Kingston…they’ve been friends for a long time. They’ll open the show and sing backrounds on my show.”
Dupree is excited that his first two albums containing his hits are available on CD for the first time and will be sold at the show. “The rights for them have been returned to me. It’s shocking that they haven’t been available.” And he described the new recording on which he is working. “We cut some new tracks in California, and it’ll be nice to play them live, give them a debut at the show. And it will include some songs never before released in America…you know, it’s fine when you have the support, but when the big machine is not behind you, people don’t get a chance to hear some of the material. So we picked some of the songs that didn’t really get a shot here in America, for the new album. It’ll probably come out in February, and we’ll go out and play some shows to support it. But this is the last show of the year.”
Tickets for Robbie Dupree & Friends, 8 p.m. Saturday, December 8 at the Bearsville Theater are $25 in advance or $30 on the day of the show, and are available at
http://ashokantalent.com/index.php or bearsvilletheater.com. For more information, call 845-679-4406.
