Mike Fornatale is a musician’s musician, the kind of guy who can play – or sing – just about anything.
He’s proven it over the years in a variety of ways, including recreating the entire first Moby Grape LP by himself in his basement, which led to him becoming part of that band for a show in 2001, filling in for the late Skip Spence. His homemade take on a track by the legendary Monks was the reason that the reunited combo hired him to fill in for their ailing lead singer in 1999.
As Fornatale explains, “For no reason I can fathom, the song “Monk Time” was running through my head as a Christmas song, sung by an angry reindeer. I recorded it, sent it to The Monks on cassettes and against all odds, they loved it.”
Among other projects, he was also lead singer with The Left Banke for their reunion in 2010-2013.
Fornatale recounts how his loose collective entitled Murderers’ Row came about, which led to the series of birthday shows that he’s been doing since he played a set of vintage 1964 songs at the defunct and very lamented Treehouse when he turned 64 in 2018.
“Tom Shad and Lizzie Edwards were sitting around one night in 2015 (I think) and one of them said, ‘We should do a show where we just play Paul McCartney’s RAM album from start to finish.’ They recruited several people I knew, including Charly Roth and Dave Foster,” Fornatale recalls. “The person who was going to handle most of the McCartney vocals was purged, due to a bitter breakup of a romantic relationship, and Dave immediately said ‘I know just the guy for this’. And here I am.”
Last week at The Cutting Room in Koreatown, he was front and center leading a formidable group of Murderers Row players and more to celebrate his 70th birthday. The ensemble managed to nail a whole pile of tunes from 1969 (one year got skipped due to Covid, so he’s a year behind) which ranged from hits like The Kinks’ “Victoria” to somewhat (okay, extremely) obscure fare such as “Did You See Her Eyes” by The Illusion — which, Fornatale notes, “is virtually unknown, but by all rights should have been a major hit.”
One of the singers who joined Fornatale last week, Rembert Block (who has performed at all of his birthday shows), enjoys the challenge of learning new songs for the shows.
“I didn’t know my songs beforehand and I usually don’t know a lot of the music Mike picks for these shows,” she says. “They are always an education for me! People sometimes wonder (aloud) why there are not more hits included in these shows, but I appreciate the idiosyncratic, personal choices Mike makes, based on his deep immersion in the music of the time.”
Lizzie Edwards, another singer and veteran of these events, has similar feelings: “One of the things I love about these shows is they really stretch me as a singer and a writer. I learn something new every time and come away with new favorite songs to sing that I otherwise would not have encountered.”
Vocalist Erica Smith, also a regular birthday show participant, noted, “This year is different in the sense that the music itself is exploding in every direction. The setlist is incredibly wide-ranging. Over the years we’ve covered the heights of sunshine pop, girl groups, Motown and country of every stripe. Then we had to add the birth of funk and garage and psychedelia! Now we’re connecting those threads and driving straight into the 70s with big rock and tender singer-songwriters and everything in-between.
In addition to the aforementioned musicians, the following were part of the 47-song show: Tom Shad, Russ Alderson, Dave Foster, Justin “J.J.” Jordan, Tommy DeVito, Pam Fleming, Jeff Hudgins, Emilie Bienne, John Cowsill, Vicki Peterson, Tony “Z” Zajkowski, Tommy Von Voigt, Tom Clark, Stephanie Marie, Lane Steinberg, Carlton J. Smith, Lauren Agnelli, David Milone and Jahn Xavier.
“Murderers’ Row has no leader,” Fornatale explains. “Basically, whoever has the idea for a show runs the show.”
Kudos were universal — not just from the audience, but also from the players.
“I think it was a particularly strong show—the band rocked even the most out-there psychedelic songs, and the singers truly connected. I think there were so many wonderful moments,” reflected Vicki Peterson of The Bangles, who also sang at the 1968 show with her husband John Cowsill. He mentions that it was “just a very cool musical experience! An eclectic set list to be sure, filled with deep cuts and b-sides of the year they came out. I gotta say he’s opened my eyes and ears to songs I’ve never heard until now! So cool!”
“Mike is the most musical person I know…with an ear for harmony and rhythm that continually surprises me. How he pries apart vocal harmonies or matches songs and keys to singers for these shows is a masterclass,” adds singer/guitarist Dave Foster.
“He has a maximalist vision—he puts together these shows that seem absolutely impossible to pull off, and yet each year they come together spectacularly. We keep falling for it, haha! And he keeps knowing that we can do it. He is one of the many gems in this brilliant collective,” states Block.
Fornatale’s feat of producing the show is not without stress. Just creating the setlist is quite a chore, as he admits.
“It’s always a horrible and gut-wrenching process,” he says. “I just write down the songs I absolutely have to have and cannot give up for any reason whatsoever, and it ends up being somewhere around 130 songs. And then, over a period of a couple of months, I angrily and tearfully whittle it down to somewhere around half of that.”
He adds that “this year was rougher than usual. I had some bad time constraints and a few things hanging over my head, so I was late pulling it together. Charly finally pulled me aside and gently said, ‘We have to cut this show in half, do half now and half in November if they’ll have us.’ So that’s what we’re doing. With some overlap, but not much. There are a few songs that simply have to be repeated at the Nov. 23 show.”
And how does Fornatale feel about this year’s soiree? “I think it was the best one we’ve done,” he says.
Follow Fornatale on Instagram @sknoof and on Facebook at facebook.com/mike.fornatale.
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