Published: November 24, 2009 10:44 pm      

MUSIC: After almost just making it, Night Shift is back in gear

Niagara Falls band reunites for old times on Saturday

If someone were to hold their thumb and pointer finger about a quarter-inch apart, that would be a good measure of how close they were.

It was 1977 and the Niagara Falls band Night Shift had already opened for the Police and the Romantics. Just after that, the group went on tour and was just about to hit the elusive big time, only to implode miles from home. Night Shift’s story is a familiar plot in every movie about struggling rock bands. But the four young musicians, born and raised in Niagara Falls, actually lived it. And though the group’s members might have chosen a different ending for their sojourn, they are looking to put an epilogue on their story Saturday night with a reunion concert at Niagara Falls’ Evening Star, some thirty years after the fact.

“We survived a lot of crazy things,” said Tom Gariano, his voice thick with the gravelly tones of a lead singer in a rock band.

Back in the late 1970s, Night Shift was a popular regional rock band, sharing the same booking agent as other local notables including Talas, The Road and Weekend. The group got really lucky one night when they were playing at the Warsaw Hotel and their guitarist, Larry Boscarino, got friendly with a female bartender who had just taken a job with a Hollywood talent agency.

She got them hooked up to tour the country, but there was one hitch — they had to perform as the Kingsman, a band that had made its mark in the 60s with the teen anthem “Louie Louie.”

It didn’t seem like a bad gig. “We needed to get out of here,” recalled bass player Kevin Connor. “Any platform to get out of here, we took.”

So, the guys, all in their late teens, went to their local Recordland and got an old Kingsman’s greatest hits compilation.

“If we were going to do the Kingsman, we were going to do them right,” said lead singer Tom Gariano, smiling.

The way they tell the story, it was apparently not unusual back then to recreate a once-famous band with all new guys and send them on tour. Apparently, the industry still practices that kind of musical subterfuge to this day. If nobody notices it’s no harm, no foul. But, after several weeks touring as the Kingsman, the four teens were screamed at by an angry Kingsman fan who knew what they were trying to pull. They began to consider the cost of fame when it’s achieved while playing as someone else.

“We were all bummed out,” Gariano said. “We thought, this is so not cool.”

As fate would have it, the company that was backing their Kingsman tour was shut down by the IRS. Things were looking grim for the four lads, still teenagers. But, as they jumped into their van to head out of town, a path opened in front of them when a producer from the Milwaukee area told them to come on over. He was going to put them up in his home studio and they were going to make a record.

Then fate dropped another lucky break. It was near Christmas in 1979, and the band was shopping for a violin bow in a little music store in Rockford, Illinois. While there, they met the lead guitarist from Cheap Trick whose parents, coincidentally, owned the store.

Rick Neilsen was home for the holidays. His band had just released their live album “Budokan,” which had propelled them into superstar status with the hit “I Want You to Want Me.” The music shop moment sparked a friendship that lit a match to their fates. Turns out that night was Neilsen’s birthday. He surprised the band by walking into the bar where they were performing and joining them on stage — much to the delight of Night Shift and the handful of people in the room.

The buzz built from there. Night Shift’s following grew larger and they played at Notre Dame, Iowa State and other prestigious locations including Mothers in downtown Chicago. They also did some touring in out west, in Texas and Denver and Colorado.

“Here we were, a band that didn’t even have a record on the radio and we were constantly touring, building a following,” Gariano said.

Then, as often happens, there was some clashing with management. The band moved to New York City and pretty much crumbled in the way that some bands do under the pressure of the rise in the road.

In retrospect, Gariano is philosophical. “It’s 1979, and the popular bands in New York City were the Ramones and B-52s,” he said. “We should have been in Los Angeles with Motley Crüe and Van Halen. We just took a wrong turn.”

Such, he notes, is life. These days, three of the young men are now fathers but each still holds firm to the music. Bass player Kevin Connor, now living in Cambria, is CEO of a health care company but still performs locally with Powertrain and Brothers of Invention. His daughter, Emily, just signed a record deal in Japan. “Her CD is unbelievable,” the proud father said.

Kevin DeDario, the drummer and only remaining bachelor, has been touring Europe with the Gothic Knights. Boscarino is the vice president of a music marketing firm in Orlando. Gariano, of Niagara Falls, is lead singer for the A-List, and runs the hot lunch program at North Tonawanda Catholic School. He also has his own catering company, TNJ Catering. His dreams of music stardom have unfolded in his son, Rob Bilson, the lead singer for Seven Day Faith.

In short, it’s all good. Night Shift hopes to rock the house at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Evening Star in Niagara Falls. There will probably be more than a few stories shared as they remember the days they toured 38 states and opened for some of biggest bands of their time.

“Not too many musicians in this town can say they did what we did for four-and-a-half years,” Gariano noted. As often happens in life, the high points more than made up for the lows. “I love being a singer in a rock and roll band and I’ve loved it since I was 14 years old,” he said.

Come Saturday, four guys who have known each other since the tenth grade will take the stage. Gariano is certain it’ll be just like he’s 14, all over again.