Lisa Love discusses her Experience

The Lisa Love Experience has picked up so much steam over the years that they are now booking their clubs and weddings over a year in advance. One of New England’s premiere cover bands, Lisa Love Experience is fronted by their energetic front woman and name sake of the band.

Yes, “Lisa Love” is her real name, not her stage name, and it has been for 12 years. She changed it from her maiden name but her husband’s last name is not Love. That was all she would tell.

This pop rock front woman loves giving energetic performances. “People always say I’m a maniac,” she said. “I jump around and I sing. You don’t come and see me to sit down and relax, for sure.”

Eight years ago, Love and her husband Billy Garzone found it convenient, as they were married, to start a band together. Love had been living in a world of guy band leaders and thought she could do just as well. Today, LLE plays at least a hundred shows a years, two to three times a week.

Love grew it as a business after paying her dues at $50 gigs playing Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix songs with some pop rock thrown in. North Shore rooms like Kitty O’ Sheas, Baybridge, and Crackers became regular haunts back in the day. The fans were receptive and Love wanted to make a living at it. She was around many cover bands and she learned the business by watching what they do.

“I love to sing. I love to sing in front of people,” she said. “People that know me know that I’m serious about it. If you see me, I want people to walk away happy. They were drinking and laughing with their friends, and they’re sweaty from dancing, and they forgot about their lives for a little while. We really want to be about positive energy. We’re not an angry rock band. We’re a happy pop band.”

Lisa Love Experience had to forge an identity as a first rate pop dance band to become known amongst all the talented cover bands in New England. Her branding strategy worked. No one ever calls this singer Lisa. They call her Lisa Love. Their logo features a little red cartoon figure holding up a big, bright, red heart. They also named the band “Experience” to reinforce the idea that audience members had an experience as opposed to just sitting down watching.

Love believes the energy level is what keeps people coming back. She also networks with her audience. “If you come to a show, I want to know you. I want to make sure I say ‘hi’ to you. I want to make sure I sat down with you and had a conversation about how your kids are, or, how you’re feeling, or, how was your vacation. That connection beyond the stage with your audience is imperative. You want to make people feel like they’re special, and they are. What would I be without them? We would just be a cover band playing to no one. I could never get all that energy on stage without their help. You can’t give out energy if you’re not getting it back.”

Love is a self-taught singer. Yet, her voice is loud and rangy enough to reach people across a huge wedding hall. She has always been the little girl with the big voice. She performed in community theater, learning a lot about how to project her voice. She had an agent in New York City when she was little. She had auditioned for movies and TV shows. Her father, an Italian immigrant, had wanted her to be a lawyer. She was pushed in that direction and she received a degree in Litigation/Paralegal and she had a day job for ten years as an executive assistant.

“That really helps me run this business, and it is a business,” she said. “If I just wanted to go out and not promote myself, I could do that and be happy as a clam, but I’d probably have to have some kind of day job.”

Over the years Love had to develop a sense for what songs each audience is looking for. At weddings, she plays a mix, as she’s playing for four generations. When her band plays at Rockafellas in Salem, Massachusetts, you’ll likely hear her play the latest songs by Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, or Black Eyes Peas. If you see them at Capones, you’re more likely to hear The Doobie Brothers and Janis Joplin material.

“It’s all about the audience,” she said. “You instinctually know while you’re playing one song what song the next song is that’s going to keep them on the dance floor that’s going to make everybody happen. You have to have a vision for the end of the night, so people will leave saying ‘That was awesome. We had a great time.’” At weddings Love can rely on “I Want You Back” and “Shout” to go over big with certain age groups and “I’ve Got A Feeling” by Black Eyed Peas will have everyone from age five to 80 on the dance floor.

When asked about her career beginning in the 1970s with Community Auditions on Channel Five, she said, “Oh, God. My husband loves to put that on the website. He thinks it’s the funniest thing ever.” She lost her first audition to get on the hugely popular TV show at age seven. She went back a year later and got on. Winning the season championship sent her into a world of autographs and further auditions. Love admits, jokingly, to having “delusions of grandeur” at age nine when she was signing autographs for other kids.

Afterwards, it was not all peaches and cream. Love had to pay her dues in the early days. On Wednesday nights she was sitting in at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge. She had, in those earliest rock years, three bands, a wedding band, a blues/R&B band, and an original band. The original band placed second in the old Disk Makers competition with 800 other bands. Although she was pleased with her showing, Love wanted to make a living at music, and she knew that the original music scene wouldn’t keep her employed.

These days, she has to travel to maintain, in one weekend, for example, a club gig, a New Hampshire wedding, and a Cape Cod wedding. That amount of traveling and performing adds up to 16 hour days three days in a row. Love has a regular rotation duo called A Pair Of Lisa’s with Lisa Guyer of New Hampshire’s most popular cover band Mama Kicks. A Pair Of Lisa‘s do Thursdays at The Pasta Loft in Hampstead, New Hampshire. “She’s a bad ass rock singer,” Love said of her duo partner. Her interaction with Mama Kicks got her teased by its infamous keyboardist Gardner Berry. Berry likes to call her a “wimp” when she gets intimidated by his daily performance schedule.

She calls wedding season The Chicken And Cake Tour because she eats a lot of chicken and cake during breaks at weddings. When wedding season is over, she can let her hair down, come back to Rockafellas, and see many of her long time friends. The energy is her favorite thing about being an entertainer.

“Singing is therapy,” she said. “Singing and singing in front of crowds and being validated by them, and them really appreciating what we do, and them giving the energy back. it’s just incredible. To know we can create this energy with a roomful of people, it’s really kind of like a high.”

Love’s husband-guitarist Billy Garzone has impressive credentials in his own right. She met him through a mutual agent ten years ago. He plays flute, harmonica, guitar, and sings. His harmonica can be heard in a Mary Lou Coffee TV commercial. He also backed up Bo Diddley on harmonica when Diddley was in New England. Garzone released a CD of original music 12 years ago that still sells on the internet.

Although Love is the front person, she freely credit’s the guys in the band for making The Lisa Love Experience an experience. Drummer Gabe Cobral has been with the band since the beginning. He’s a Berklee College of Music graduate who’s worked with Johnny A. “He sits in the pocket so unbelievably,” Love said. “He’s such an amazing drummer. I’ve always been very picky about drummers. He’s funny as all hell on stage.” Bass player Otis Rogers, a Vermont native, has only been with the band for two years. Rogers fit the bill after the band had auditioned countless bass players.

Love related that the band has had many adventures in their travels. Three years ago Lisa Love Experience was handpicked by the executive vice president of Norwegian Cruise Lines as guest entertainers on their newest ship in Hawaii called The Pride Of Hawaii. They were flown from Boston to Honolulu, and they played four one-week cruises of Hawaii. They went on stage after a comedian finished a comedy routine. They also played a wedding for a writer from Martha Stewart Magazine. One of their most memorable gigs was a memorial concert for a slain Manchester police officer held at the Black Brimmer in Manchester, New Hampshire. Love sang a duet with Lisa Guyer on Janis Joplin’s Piece Of My Heart.

Love’s home base is still in the Salem-Peabody-Woburn tri-area where she spots her fans at the grocery store. “I love that. That’s like my favorite thing. I love that people are happy when they see us and like us. We’re a happy, party, fun band,” she said.
www.lisaloveexp.com

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