Calling All Nerds!
Calling All Nerds!
Nerds Gone Wild to Perform at Ellicottville Brewing Company
It’s fall in Western New York and that brings beautiful changing leaves, fresh apples and apple cider, crisp air and many festivals. One of the most popular festivals takes place in Ellicottville with their Fall Festival full of food, vendors, arts & crafts and of course, music.
Hitting the stage at Ellicottville Brewing Company on Saturday, October 8th at 4:00pm is a band that has won the “716 Award” for Best Band two years in a row. Nerds Gone Wild has become one of the most popular bands in the area with their signature style of dress, “choreography”, a 1980’s playlist and of course those nerd glasses with tape across the bridge.
“We’re celebrating our 10th Anniversary next year and we have a lot of special plans,” said Eddy Tabone aka “Eugene”, during our interview with him earlier this week. “One day I thought to myself that WNY needs an 80’s band and now we’re going into our 10th year, having a blast with our fans of ‘Nerd Nation’.”
With each member of the band creating their alter ego character, complete with a “nerdy” name, these guys have come up with a show that is big on crowd participation with trivia, contests, prizes, dance moves and just plain fun to the best tracks of the 1980’s.
The drummer, Eddy Tabone, recently retired after 36 years in the beer business and has Nerds Gone Wild and another band called Route 66, which is ironically celebrating their 36th Anniversary. Tabone is also a member of the band, The Yachfathers.
Tabone and I had a fun conversation about Nerds Gone Wild - where the name came from, their connection to the Sabres, a couple of beyond crazy fans, the music and his message to the fans. I think the musician summed it up best when he told me why you need to make plans to see this band, saying, “It’s contagious fun and it’s a contagious family of nerds.”
For more information on the band visit www.nerdsgonewildwny.com. Follow them on FB/IG @nerdsgonewild #nerdsgonewild #nerdsgonewildwny. For more information about Ellicottville’s Fall Festival visit www.ellicottvilleny.com.
A CONVERSATION WITH EDDY “EUGENE” TABONE
HULICK: How long have you guys been together?
TABONE: Around 2010 I thought WNY needs an 80’s band. So after a couple years of just talking to people and procrastinating a bit, in 2012 I thought I gotta put this band together. I started putting the effort into it and in February of 2013 we had our first rehearsal and debuted in August 2013. It will be our 10th year next year and we have a lot of special things coming and a lot of good shows … so stay tuned, it’s gonna be great!
HULICK: Did you guys know each other or was the band created by auditions?
TABONE: Well, the members have changed over the years because of job changes, priority changes and things like that. When we brought in new people it was more like I knew a guitar player and I knew the keyboard player, that kind of stuff. So no auditions. You know who’s around WNY and you kind of do this behind the scenes where you contact them and ask if they were interested … and so on.
HULICK: Who thought of the name of the band?
TABONE: It was a combination of my wife and me. Originally it was the idea of the music. I actually have another band called Route 66; it’s a party band and we’ve been going strong for 36 years now. The whole nerd idea came about because of the music I wanted to do but I was one that didn’t know what to do with the clothes. I just knew that I didn’t want to be the guy that was dressed like Don Johnson or something from the 80’s.
HULICK: (laughs) How funny.
TABONE: There were Elvis bands, Kiss bands, Beatle bands throughout the whole country, so it’s safe to say I borrowed a couple pieces of clothing out of their closets, so to speak, and we did our own spin on geeks and nerds and came up with the old Girls Gone Wild reference and changed it to Nerds Gone Wild.
HULICK: How about the “aka” names of each member? Did you each pick the name you were going to use?
TABONE: We all picked our own stage name. So we ended up with “Eugene”, which is me, and the other members' stage names are Milton, Gilbert, Irwin and Barney.
HULICK: You have such a great list of songs from the 80’s to choose from. Which is your favorite to do live?
TABONE: They’re all good but my favorite is “You Spin Me Round” by … I can’t think of the band …
HULICK: (laughs) Neither can I. I’m singing it in my head right now and I can see them performing the song back when …
TABONE: Yeah, (singing the song over the phone) but I’m drawing a blank right now. But when we do that song there’s a lot of interaction with the crowd.
HULICK: The whole experience of your show sounds like so much fun. You have the interaction with the audience, you’re giving people those awesome memories from the 80’s as you go through the list of those iconic songs …
TABONE: One thing I can tell you is that we’ve beaten any expectations beyond what this band has done. I knew there was a niche for this in WNY. I knew it would be big, but not as big as it’s gotten. This is a nerd family, and so many relationships and friendships still exist today that were made at Nerd’s show. One thing I’m so proud of is - and it makes me emotional sometimes - but when I see these people that are still coming out to the shows and now their kids are coming out … the 21 to 24 year olds … it’s just a bunch of people who worship the music of the eighties.
HULICK: That is one of the greatest things about music today. In years and decades of the past if your parents went to a concert, you wouldn’t be caught dead going to the same concert. Now it seems music is so inclusive of every genre and every age group.
TABONE: I’m gonna steal that from you. That’s exactly what I want you to put in this article … one thing the Nerds have done is to create exactly what you just said … a show that you can get two or three generations coming out to see us. Incidentally it was “Dead or Alive” is the band that sang “Spin Me Right Round”.
HULICK: (laughs) I know. I just pulled it up on my computer too. That was obviously bugging both of us a lot! (laughs)
TABONE: (laughs) It was driving me crazy!
HULICK: You play at the Sabres games a lot.
TABONE: Yeah, we’ve become like an unofficial house band for them. They started having music before the game and in-between the two periods. I don’t have the dates all locked in yet for this season, but that will be happening soon.
HULICK: You likely have some crazy fans. Is there anyone who is really crazy and stands right out in your mind?
TABONE: We have a gentleman (laughs) - we have two actually - but we don’t really want to single anyone out because all our fans are really important to us, but we have two. We’ve named this one gentleman “Mr. Bean”. He looks like him and he comes up and he has his own signature dance move. (laughs) He does it to the song, “Fight For Your Right”… (laughs) then we have another gentleman that we call “Nate Dog” and he does a little skit to the song, “Sunglasses At Night”. So we got Mr. Bean who comes up with his dance that he does (laughs) and Nate just comes up on stage and combs his hair for the entire song. (laughs)
HULICK: (laughs) That’s hysterical! I am going to have to make it to one of your shows.
TABONE: (laughs) We don’t know why Nate does that, but he came up on stage one time and stood there and combed his hair for the entire song … sometimes he will spin around while he’s doing it. Then we always recognize six to eight ladies at every show. It might be because you come in with a birthday hat or you are having a stagette party … you better believe you’ll be on stage for our dance medley.
HULICK: You do cruises with a large group of fans from Buffalo.
TABONE: Yep! I gotta tell you this story … the last cruise we did was out of New Orleans and it was right when the pandemic was starting and people were getting sick and you’d hear people saying, “You’re going on a cruise ship”? We ended up sailing … our cruise was booked for March 1st through the 8th. We took off out of New Orleans and the following Sunday the country was shut down. So we got that cruise in by one week. We’re hoping to get one going for late 2023 or early 2024, so stay tuned.
HULICK: Do you have a message for your fans that are coming out to see you at EBC during Ellicottville’s Fall Festival?
TABONE: You know it’s gonna be a great time! Make sure you make this a priority to be there. It’s one of the best outdoor festivals we do. Throw on your Nerds glasses and come and enjoy the concert and all that Ellicottville has to offer, because you don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow.