photo: Bruce Gannon-Pheonix Photography
Success can be measured in 4/4 time, if you have a good drummer and a good band.
Cape Cod drummer Janie MacAuslan has been keeping the beat for her rocking cover band Just Like That for over two years now. The five piece band has caught on like wildfire in the Cape Cod music scene, playing plenty of gigs each month and getting invited to play numerous outdoor events every summer.
MacAuslan said Just Like That began its run with a male vocalist but that female vocalist Amy Marie came on board after the band decided to try something different. “Amy Marie had just moved up here from Connecticut. She has a major opera voice. She’s a fully trained opera singer with and she was in these choral shows before. She’s like Pat Benatar.”
Currently, MacAuslan and her bands have been lobbing for their singer Amy Marie to get a Limelight Music Award for best female vocalist, which Limelight allows the bands to do, give input.
MacAuslan said her band’s success might stem from their interaction on stage. “The audience can feel the chemistry we all have together on stage,” the drummer said. “Amy interacts with the audience. She jumps right out there. We get people up and going. We have a blast.”
There are other factors that might be making Just Like That a hit on the Cape. The band, MacAuslan said, tweaks a given song’s arrangement so that it has Just Like That’s personal stamp on it. “We put out own take on songs,’ she began. “We put an edge to it. We catch people off guard. We also add new songs all the time, so people hear something different each time they come see us.”
photo: Bruce Gannon-Pheonix Photography
Just Like That, MacAuslan also mentioned, is like a family. A close knit group, they don’t suffer through personnel changes. “It’s the most difficult thing about bands is keeping a band together,” she said. “But, were all on the same page, so we’re not always doing ‘Ring Around The Rosies’ with different musicians.” The band does have plenty of support on the Cape music scene, so when they do need to give a player a night off, someone is always ready, willing, and eager to fill in.
It certainly beneficial to a band when they belong to a supportive music scene like the Cape’s. It’s a small, close knit community in which “Everything that happens on the Cape, stays on the Cape,” the drummer said. “Last summer, we had so many different outdoor events.” Just Like That performed at time honored Cape events such as Music Stroll, a Parker Pink Beach show sponsored by TD Bank and Arts Forum of Cape Cod. The band got to also perform for 2,000 motorcycle riders at the end of the annual Big Nick’s Ride For The Fallen event.
Just Like That has a big event coming up on February 20th. They are going to perform a full concert at The Cape Cod Media Center which will be filmed and live streamed. This series of shows is called Live From Center Stage, broadcast and streamed out of Dennisport, Massachusetts. “It’s exciting,” MacAuslan said.
MacAuslan has had a long and varied career in the Cape Cod music scene. She began in the 1980s, playing mostly cover bands, a few originals bands, a mix of genres including a jazz quartet and general business gigs like weddings, functions. The drummer’s last regular band was called Green Dame, an all female Green Day tribute band. Her most important influences as a drummer came from jazz drummer Buddy Rich and The Who’s Keith Moon.
“I used to see Buddy Rich at an annual concert when I was a kid,” she said. “He is a total influence. He was very inspirational. And Keith Moon had that pure, crazy technique, style. I had to learn it.”
For her Just Like That outfit, MacAuslan and her band mates communicate all the time about their upcoming set lists, constantly posting to each other on a message board. “We play a bit of everything,” she said. “Some venues have a crowd that like 70s music. Some venues book bands that play 90s music. We cater to the crowd based on our experiences with that crowd.”
The drummer said Just Like That will be playing four new songs this weekend at Rum Runners in Dennisport, Massachusetts on Friday night and The Fan Club in East Wareham, Massachusetts on Saturday night. The band’s repertoire includes many songs that most other cover bands would never tackle. “There are some songs like ‘You Shook Me’ that always goes over well,“ she said. That’s always a hit.”
Her band also plays “Crazy” as popularized by Patsy Cline as well as Elle King‘s “Exs & Ohs,” which is a current hit. Their four new songs for this coming weekend will be “Hey Bulldog” by The Beatles, “Listen To The Music” and “Long Train Running” by The Doobie Brothers, and “Lonely Boy” by The Black Keys.
The drummer said her band came to call itself Just Like That back when they had a male vocalist. It came about from a running joke the band had about their tendency to tweak songs to sound a bit different from the records. “At practice, after we came up with something, we would say ‘Yeah, something like that.’ Then, we started to think that ‘something like that’ makes us sound like people who don’t know what they mean, and so we thought some more. Someone said ‘How bout Just Like That?’”
Aside from MacAuslan on drums and Amy Marie on lead vocals, Just Like That features Mike Guerrieri on bass, a holdover from Green Dame as well as a huge supporter of music on Cape Cod. “He supports music all over Cape Cod,” MacAuslan exclaimed. “He’s a mascot of music down here. He‘s always posting every band‘s events.”
Keyboardist Mike Santos has been around the scene a while. He can also sing lead vocals, which he does on “Soul Kitchen” by The Doors, so he’s a little bit Jim and a little bit Ray on that number. Guitarist Glenn Davis, a well-respected musician on the Cape for many years, completes the band.
What MacAuslan likes best about playing in Just Like That is the freshness her band brings each time they perform. “Every time we play,” she said, “It’s a brand new show, like we’re doing it for the first time. It’s rejuvenating. People have a ball and it’s a good feeling.”
As for the future of Just Like That, MacAuslan and her band mates would like to expand their audiences. They have added gigs in Plymouth, Massachusetts and Kingston, Massachusetts for this spring and summer. “We love what we’re doing,” the drummer exclaimed.
http://www.justlikethatrocks.com/
